Kris Kobach blamed money. He blamed history. He didn't blame himself for losing a race for governor in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2 to 1.
"Obviously, if we'd had more money to spend on TV we probably would have done so," Kobach said Tuesday night. "But no, in terms of the decisions made or how we structured the campaign, no, I don't think we made any critical errors like that."
Kobach's campaign was marked by his parade appearances on a jeep with a mounted replica machine gun, a rally with rock star Ted Nugent and his fiery debate performances in which he derisively compared suburban public school buildings with the Taj Mahal.
But behind the scenes is where the circus really took place.
Interviews with more than a dozen Republican strategists and officials paint a picture of a candidate who refused to listen to advice, was unwilling to put energy into fundraising and did not set up a basic "get out the vote" operation.
Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, struggled to pay his campaign staff on time and at one point lacked a working phone system at his Johnson County campaign office, according to Republican sources familiar with the campaign. And people who offered to volunteer were never contacted.
"It was the most dysfunctional thing I've ever seen in my life," said a longtime Republican operative in Kansas.
Kobach trusted that his regular presence on cable news, dominance in headlines and the support of President Donald Trump would carry him to victory, strategists said. He also expected independent Greg Orman to siphon more votes from Democrat Laura Kelly than he did.
Two weeks out from Election Day when polls showed Kobach in a tight race with Kelly, members of his senior staff did a walk-through of the governor's office, according to a Republican source.
"Is there nothing else you can be doing with your time right now?" the source recalled thinking. "The joke was, you'd say 'the Kobach campaign' and (then) you'd say, 'What campaign?'"
Kobach won his primary against Gov. Jeff Colyer by 343 votes after Trump endorsed Kobach the day before the election.
"Primary elections should not only be focused on finding the right ideological fit, but on finding a candidate who's willing to put in the work necessary to win the general election," said Scott Paradise, a Republican consultant who works in Kansas and Missouri. "It didn't appear that Kris Kobach seemed all that interested in working on the things that mattered, like fundraising, grass-roots organizing or asking voters for their support."
Kelly crushed the Kansas Republican in fundraising and won nearly 46,000 more votes in the state, handing the Republicans their first loss in a statewide race in 12 years. She methodically crisscrossed the state and won endorsements from every living former governor except for Sam Brownback.
"We got outspent," Kobach's campaign manager J.R. Claeys said the day after the election. "It's hard to deliver messages when you don't have the resources to get them out to everybody."
Kobach spent roughly $2 million between the opening of his campaign and end of July before his primary against Colyer in August.
But he spent less than $1.4 million from the end of July through Oct. 25, when Kelly spent $2 million, according to campaign finance records.
Most of Kobach's money came from his running mate, Wichita oil magnate Wink Hartman, who put more than $2.2 million into the campaign, records show.
Republican strategists say Kobach's fundraising problems were self-inflicted.
One Republican official received a phone call from a Republican donor who was pleading for a phone call from Kobach because the donor wanted to give to the campaign, but Kobach never called.
"Kris didn't deserve to win," the Republican official said. "He does things his own way, check logic and reason at the door. I think it's probably for the best that he didn't win."
Kobach rejected the suggestion that his campaign did not build a turnout operation on par with previous nominees.
"Lots of people fancy themselves political experts on how to win campaigns," Kobach said Wednesday. "We knew from Day One that we would need an aggressive 'get out the vote' operation."
