Kansans should take comfort in Tuesday’s election in Alabama. Political neophyte Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore, a longtime judge known for his misogynist and racist leanings.
Jones’s victory is akin to a Democrat, or perhaps Independent Greg Orman, defeating Kris Kobach, the likely 2018 Republican nominee for governor of Kansas.
Yes, the odds are long, but the races would have many similarities with stakes every bit as high.
Like Alabama’s Moore, Kobach is an anti-Muslim, anti-gay bigot. On the side, he has worked as legal counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which sounds upstanding but whose mission is to wage war against gays, minorities, Jews and Muslims.
Only last month white nationalist Marcus Epstein was caught in the background of a picture of Kobach at a Washington, D.C. fundraiser for his campaign. Epstein’s agenda, aside from denying the Holocaust, is to stoke racial tensions and political divide by organizing anti-LGBT protests, white supremacist rallies and propagating anti-Muslim rhetoric.
JONES was able to win, in part, by saying he wouldn’t be an embarrassment to Alabama.
The state has somewhat of a chip on its shoulder because of backward-thinking people like Moore who hog headlines. In interviews leading up to Tuesday’s election, many, especially the young, said they were tired of Alabamians being portrayed as rednecks and illiterates stuck in a time warp from the 1950s.
In 2005, Kansans bore the same burden when the state board of education put creationism on par with evolution. More recently, Kansas has been shamed by the legislature’s disastrous tax cuts that eroded funding for its schools, social services and public health.
Kobach is on record saying if he were governor, he’d reinstate those cuts.
PERHAPS the most galling is Kobach’s overarching confidence that the race is his to call.
“People know who I am,” he said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. “I don’t have to spend a lot of time and money explaining what my position is or what my brand is.”
Of course, like Moore, that reputation can be, should be, Kobach’s demise.
Had Alabama’s thoughtful, humble and reputable Doug Jones not won, Kansans might as well concede the election to Kobach now.
