SALINA, Kan. – Shedding his reputation for being reluctant to engage, Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer came out attacking rival Kris Kobach Saturday, accusing him of misrepresentations and hypocrisies – even dragging his opponent’s campaign manager into the debate.
Colyer, who hasn’t been inclined to go after Kobach so far this campaign, reached into an arsenal of issues, ranging from a 14-year-old abortion controversy to Kobach using public money to pay court fines and a recent revelation that he tried to get a pardon for a campaign contributor.
A packed house at the Salina Innovation Foundation roared with applause – and sometimes jeered – as the candidates battled back and forth during the 90-minute debate.
Fellow Republicans Ken Selzer and a lesser-financed candidate Patrick Kucera largely stayed above the fray as Colyer and Kobach traded blows.
It was a markedly different tenor for Colyer, who has tended to shy away from getting mired in a tit-for-tat with the articulate law professor who has been running hard to the right in the primary.
At an earlier debate Colyer passed when he was criticized by Kobach and even declined comment once when the secretary of state was held in contempt of court. “I don’t scream and shout,” he said after a debate in Atchison.
Colyer wasn’t screaming and shouting Saturday, but he zeroed in on his opponent, starting in from the opening moments of the debate and not ending until it was about over.
“As a surgeon, you talk to people and sometimes you have to tell the hard truth even when it’s tough to hear,” Colyer said after the debate. “That’s what we did today.”
Colyer rejected the idea his approach had changed.
“I always level with people,” he said. “Sometimes you have to point out when people aren’t leveling with Kansans. That’s what we did today.”
For his part, Kobach lashed back throughout the debate, at one point referring to the governor as “ignorant” or “misinformed.” He called some of the governor’s arguments “ridiculous.” He even referred to the governor as the “other person” once.
Later in the day, Kobach characterized the attacks as a desperate tactic of a campaign that knows it’s in trouble going into the final weeks.
“He knows he’s not leading and he wants to hang onto power,” Kobach said following a fundraiser with ’70s rock guitarist Ted Nugent in Lenexa.
Time and again Saturday, Colyer went after Kobach.
At one point, Colyer suggested it was hypocritical for the secretary of state to tout his fiscal conservative credentials when he wants the state to pay his legal fees for a contempt-of-court fine in defending the state’s proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting.
“What really amazes me,” Colyer said, “is that the person standing there before us wants you, the taxpayers, to pay for his court fines.
“And he wants to lecture you on who is spending money.”
Colyer questioned how genuine Kobach is in his opposition to abortion, pointing to news stories from 2004 when Kobach ran for Congress that suggested he was soft on the issue.
Those stories from the Kansas City Star revealed that Kobach said in a questionnaire when he ran for the state Senate in 2000 that he supported a woman’s right to an abortion in most cases. Now, Kobach opposes abortion rights.
“You need a governor who is pro-life and will always tell you the truth,” Colyer said.
Kobach said he had no idea where the governor got the abortion quote. When he graduated from law school, Kobach said he was pro-life with some exceptions. He said that changed with his first child, especially after he saw the sonogram.
“A sonogram made me 100 percent pro-life,” he said.
Colyer tried to capitalize on a new revelation last week in which The Associated Press reported how Kobach tried to get a pardon for a campaign contributor.
The AP detailed Kobach’s request to the governor to pardon a man who, according to a police affidavit, had threatened a cab driver with a gun to his head.
Kobach sought a pardon for Ryan Bader, who had pleaded guilty in Johnson County to attempted robbery and a judge expunged his record in 2014. Bader is vice president and treasurer of his family’s Kansas City, Mo. firearms business.
Colyer recently denied a pardon for Bader because it was a violent crime committed with a firearm. As Colyer offered up his closing statement, the governor put more pressure on Kobach to account for the pardon request.
“I stand up for victims. I do not stand up for political donors,” Colyer said. “Kris, I’m going to ask you to answer the question: If you are elected governor, will you pardon your largest donor who held a gun to a man’s head?”
Kobach called Bader a “great young man.” He said he represented Bader – a hunter – because he wanted his Second Amendment rights returned.
The expungement, Kobach, said, wasn’t good enough in the eyes of the federal government to get his gun rights returned.
The debate even turned to Kobach’s campaign manager – Republican state Rep. J.R. Claeys – who was absent the last day of the legislative session when the House deadlocked on a key tax bill that would have returned a federal revenue windfall to taxpayers.
Claeys was among seven lawmakers absent that day when the bill fell four votes short of the 63 required for passage.
“The count was 59-59 and your campaign manager was out on a campaign event. We needed that vote,” Colyer said. “I would have told him, ‘Do your job in Topeka.'”
Kobach said he urged Claeys to return to Topeka from a National Rifle Association convention in Dallas but House leadership indicated that his vote wouldn’t matter given that they wouldn’t get to the 63 votes needed for passage.
“You don’t hear the full story from the other person on the stage here,” Kobach said.
Claeys responded to the criticism on Twitter. “Typical Jeff. Colludes with Democrats, attacks conservative Republicans, misleads voters.”
