KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has championed some of the strictest voting laws in the nation, announced a campaign for governor Thursday in Lenexa.
Kobach, the architect of controversial election and immigration laws, advised President Donald Trump on immigration policy throughout the 2016 campaign and was appointed to serve as vice chairman of a new federal commission that will investigate the prevalence of voter fraud.
The announcement at Thompson Barn in Lenexa comes two days after the Kansas Legislature repealed Gov. Sam Brownback's landmark tax cuts to fill the state's budget hole, a move that prompted Kobach to say it's time to "drain the swamp" in Topeka.
During his six-year tenure as secretary of state, Kobach has repeatedly made claims of widespread voter fraud that election experts say are overblown. He became the only secretary of state in the nation with prosecutorial power in 2015 and has so far secured nine convictions for election crimes.
He crafted a law that requires Kansas voters to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, in order to vote.
Kobach has repeatedly said the law ensures the integrity of Kansas elections, but opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union, say that it makes it harder for rightful voters to participate in elections. Dale Ho of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project referred to Kobach as the "king of voter suppression" last month when his appointment to the commission was announced.
The law blocked thousands of potential voters from participating in the state's last gubernatorial election, but it could not be fully enforced in 2016 under orders of judges at both the state and federal level. The cases remain pending.
Kobach, an attorney who holds degrees from Harvard and Yale, worked in the U.S. Department of Justice under former Attorney General John Ashcroft in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack.
Most of his work was focused on studying the loopholes in the immigration system exploited by the hijackers.
Kobach is a figure of national controversy for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration and his association with groups considered extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Kobach has repeatedly rejected accusations of racial bias.
He helped craft a 2010 Arizona law that critics say encouraged racial profiling by requiring law enforcement officers to determine a suspect's immigration status if there is reasonable suspicion he or she is in the country illegally. Portions of the law were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, but that provision was upheld in a 2012 decision.
"If we could clone him, you know, we would prevail everywhere," Mike Hethmon, an attorney with the conservative Immigration Reform Law Institute, said in 2015 about Kobach's work on the issue.
Kobach, who appears regularly on cable news shows and previously hosted a weekly talk radio show, has developed an intensely loyal following both in Kansas and from conservatives nationally.
Conservative author Ann Coulter said in a column on Breitbart last July that Trump should have considered Kobach as a running mate.
Speculation mounted in the weeks following the 2016 election that Kobach would land a major role in Trump's administration _ especially after he was photographed carrying a document labeled as a strategic plan for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into a meeting with Trump in late November.
Kobach said in an interview on Fox News in April that he "decided the best thing for me to do right now is for me to stay in my home state of Kansas."
Kobach is the third Republican candidate to enter the 2018 race. Wichita oil magnate Wink Hartman, a Republican megadonor, and former state Rep. Ed O'Malley, a moderate who now runs the Kansas Leadership Center, launched campaigns earlier in the year.
Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer is also expected to enter the race in the near future. U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder, an Overland Park Republican, weighed a run but appears increasingly likely to pursue another run for Congress instead of the governor's mansion.
Two Democratic candidates, former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer and former state Secretary of Agriculture Josh Svaty, have also announced campaigns.
