I’m not sure I understand why some people are so critical of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
Many nights I have lain awake worrying that some diabolical immigrant might vote illegally in our state and, horror of horrors, cast the deciding vote that elects a non-Republican to public office.
Soon, everybody in Kansas would be smoking pot and meeting for heathen orgies.
God Bless Kris Kobach.
ARMAND WAY, Topeka
Kris Kobach has faced difficult challenges. He became secretary of state with 1.4 million eligible Kansans not voting, more than 600,000 eligible Kansans not registered to vote and three elderly Republicans illegally registered to vote. What problem did he focus on? The three illegally registered Republicans.
CHRIS ROESEL, Roeland Park
Education[edit]
Kobach graduated from Washburn Rural High School in Topeka, Kansas in 1984. Four years later, he earned an A.B. (summa cum laude) in Government from Harvard University, graduating first in his class in the Government Department. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship, which allowed him to earn M.A. and D.Phil. degrees in Politics from Oxford University (in 1990 and 1992, respectively). He then attended the Yale Law School, where he earned a J.D. in 1995[1][3] and was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. During this time, he published two books: The Referendum: Direct Democracy in Switzerland (Dartmouth, 1994), and Political Capital: The Motives, Tactics, and Goals of Politicized Businesses in South Africa (University Press of America, 1990).[1]
That second book looks interesting. I wonder if it's a handbook of how to raise dark money.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Political_capital.html?id=gVcwAAAAMAAJ$379, paperback for $220.
One (biased) source describes it as a defense of apartheidt.
The donor organization in question is the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC (USIRPAC), which gave Kobach $10,000 in 2003 and 2004, according to the Federal Election Commission. USIRPAC President Mary Lou Tanton is the wife of John Tanton, the founder and board member of the Federation of American Immigrant Reform (FAIR), an organization that has been labeled a “nativist hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its hard stance against illegal immigration. Since 2004, Kobach has also worked on contract on a variety of cases for FAIR’s legal arm, the Immigration Law Reform Institute.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/02/oppo-men-break-silence-on-kris-kobach-114120#ixzz3zUt8fx1l.
Usurpac sounds like a self-parody. Admittedly, SPLC thinks anybody they disagree with is a hate group, so that doesn't mean Kobach keeps white robes in his closet.
The book was Kobach's thesis, and is maybe not a pageturner. Kobach says the quote from the book was taken out of context and is no way a defense of apartheidt, and that's likely true. I haven't read it. Someone should.
Nearly two years following his failed congressional campaign, Kobach was chosen by his peers to a two year term as Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party. His tenure in this post was likewise not without controversy, especially after his creation of "the party's 'loyalty committee ... to sanction wayward Republicans," which, in turn, stripped more than a dozen members of "voting rights in party organization races .... - ballotpedia.
Here's a defense of Kobach on a racist site. Still, that they endorse him doesn't mean he endorses them. Kobach burrowed deeply within the system and rose to become Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party. In the midterm elections, he was elected Kansas Secretary of State, and will undoubtedly use that position to leapfrog to a higher position in Kansas state politics. ...
Heading into the midterm elections, Republicans controlled the Kansas House, 76 to 49. In the upcoming legislative session, they will control the lower chamber, 92 to 33.Republicans have a supermajority in the Kansas State Senate. They control the upper chamber, 31 to 8. In Kansas, state senators serve four year terms. The next elections in the Kansas State Senate will be held in 2012.The Democratic Party has more or less ceased to exist in Kansas.
I'm not sure which are the rabbits and which are the goats, but it looks like the races in kansas are between the hard right GOP faction and the mainstream suburbanite GOP. My uncle, now 91 and in a nursing home, has talked to me before about how this plays out in Johnson County, in school board races and other local elections. Kobach represents the hard right faction. I'm a hard right Republican myself, but from the libertarian side of things, which has never been comfortable with the nativism and anti-immigrant positions of Kobach and his friends.
