Kris Kobach, your moment has arrived! At last, there is evidence of actual rather than imagined voter fraud in Kansas.
Only, while the U.S. Senate candidate and former Kansas secretary of state has long envisioned throngs of nonexistent "noncitizens" casting illegal ballots, the potential perp actually under investigation is not an undocumented immigrant but a Republican congressman.
The Topeka Capital-Journal was first to report that U.S. Rep. Steve Watkins may have committed felony voter fraud and perjury by claiming on three different government forms that his residential address, for voting purposes, was a UPS Store in Topeka, Kan.
Watkins had been registered at an address in the 5th City Council District. The Overlook Apartments, where a Watkins aide says the congressman really lives, are in the 9th district. As of Wednesday, Watkins' address in his state voter file was still the UPS store in the 8th district.
Shawnee County's district attorney has asked the county sheriff to investigate whether Watkins did cast an illegal ballot in a city election in Topeka last month. And Sheriff Brian C. Hill should definitely follow through on that investigation.
Watkins' chief of staff said this whole thing was just an oopsie _ and that even noticing such a minor matter was "a little ludicrous."
But that's a pretty good description of Watkins, a freshman congressman whose fellow Republicans with good reason are not exactly leaping to his defense.
"This person undoubtedly voted in an election in November for candidates that he had no constitutional right to vote for," Republican state Rep. Blake Carpenter told the Capital-Journal. "This is wrong and illegal. No one should be above the law."
"This person" already has a primary opponent in next year's race, State Treasurer Jake LaTurner.
Back in Alaska, where Watkins lived until he moved home to try and buy a congressional seat, he recently faced foreclosure on his condo, then paid his debt after The Associated Press reported on the situation.
But none of the above can be much of a surprise to anyone who read The Star's extensive coverage of Watkins' dishonest, resume-padding run for office last year.
Or to those who saw at first glance his penchant for stunts. Or who noticed the dozens of his fellow Republicans in the 2nd District who expressed concerns about his fitness for office during his 2018 race.
Watkins falsely said he started a business he neither launched nor ever owned.
He seriously exaggerated his extreme sports experience, too. Four-time Iditarod winner Jeff King told The Associated Press that he saw Watkins' entry in that race as a PR exercise and his whole persona as an adventurer as a "gigantic fallacy."
"Musher Tara Cicatello was at the back of the pack with Watkins," the AP reported, "and both were forced to quit 11 days into the contest because they were so far behind. She said Watkins' chief concern after being forced to withdraw was the publicity he had lined up. He was on the phone talking about speaking engagements and left the dogs that had carried him more than 700 miles in the care of people who were already overwhelmed with other dogs."
Did this strike anybody in the state as the modus operandi of an empathetic and responsible leader?
Watkins seems to have wholly invented a story of providing "heroic leadership amid the chaos" to other Mount Everest climbers during a 2015 earthquake in Nepal. The Everest outfitter quoted to that effect on Watkins' campaign website told the AP that "There was not really anything heroic to be able to do. We all felt quite hopeless ... because we were not there, where all the injured and dying people were, through that event. We were actually up on the mountain, so there was very little we could contribute."
Before Watkins' physician father bankrolled his out-of-nowhere congressional run, the Army veteran and former defense contractor in Afghanistan had never even voted in Kansas.
He ran against an honorable man in last year's general election, moderate Democrat Paul Davis, and beat him by 1.2 percentage points. But voters also had their choice of seven candidates in the Republican primary, too.
And there were so many questions about Watkins' integrity during the campaign that Kansans now have no excuse for having awarded the seat to the highest bidder.
In Watkins' race next year, we hope voters will consider both the experience and character that are better indicators of future performance than family money and meaningless, by-the-numbers promises that, "It's time for some conservative Kansas values and some Army leadership on Capitol Hill."
