Olathe ? Kris Kobach on Monday became the all-but-certain Republican Party nominee to take on Democrat Dennis Moore in the 3rd Congressional District race.

“Kris Kobach is the nominee and the party is 100 percent behind him,” said Kansas Republican Party executive director Scott Poor.

Kobach, a conservative law school professor, was locked in a tight vote count against former Navy pilot Adam Taff for the GOP nomination in the district that covers east Lawrence, other parts Douglas County, and all of Johnson and Wyandotte counties.

In the Aug. 3 primary, Kobach bested Taff, a moderate, by a mere 87 votes out of more than 88,000 cast.

Counts Friday of provisional ballots — those where the voters’ eligibility may have been in question — in Wyandotte and Douglas counties cut the margin to 81 votes.

But the official count Monday in vote-rich Johnson County added 126 votes to Kobach’s tally, putting him 207 votes ahead of Taff. The final tally was Kobach, 39,129; Taff, 38,922; and Patricia Lightner, 10,836.

Taff has until 5 p.m. today to request a recount by the secretary of state’s office.

“We’re going to do the right thing for our party and our supporters,” Taff said, adding he would make an announcement today.

Upon receiving word of the outcome after 5 p.m., Taff privately addressed his somber staff and supporters at campaign headquarters.

Kris Kobach celebrates with his wife, Heather, left, and daughter, Lilly, at his campaign headquarters in Lenexa. Kobach learned Monday he had likely won the Republican nomination in the 3rd Congressional District by a slim margin. Opponent Adam Taff could still call for a vote recount.

As far as Kobach was concerned, the race was over.

Campaign spokesman Todd Abrajano said Kobach was focused on battling Moore, who is seeking re-election to a fourth term.

“We are strengthening and energizing our volunteer base,” Abrajano said.

After the results were announced, Moore said: “This frankly doesn’t change the way I’m going to conduct my campaign.”

“I’m going to be talking about the issues that are important to the 3rd District and the country: affordable health care, quality public education and a safe, strong country that is not deep in debt,” he said.

On election night, Kobach carried Douglas and Wyandotte counties, but Taff prevailed by a narrow margin in Johnson County, where most of the votes were cast. For that reason, and the fact Taff gained ground in canvassing last week in Douglas and Wyandotte counties, his campaign had been optimistic about picking up more votes in Johnson County’s count of provisional ballots.

Provisional ballots are set aside by election officials when they are not sure people are eligible to vote in a particular race or precinct. Each ballot remains in a sealed envelope until a county board of canvassers decides whether it should be counted, then it is opened.

When that happened Monday morning, Johnson County commissioners acting as the board of canvassers agreed to count 2,533 of 3,209 provisional ballots. Another 676 were disallowed.

The most common provisional ballots counted were those of registered voters who had moved to a new precinct and were not yet listed on the precinct log.

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Most commonly disallowed were ballots cast by voters who registered too late to vote in the primary.

Monday’s vote count was a nerve-wracking affair for campaign workers.

Campaign staffers and volunteers — many of them attorneys — waited in a warehouse area of the Johnson County Election Office as election officials counted and sorted provisional ballots. A window in the viewing area allowed a view of the work being done in an adjoining room.

The process of tallying the provisional ballots was painstaking, said Johnson County Commissioner Connie Schmidt. Some voters were registered Democrats but insisted on voting in the closed Republican primary. Their votes were stricken in partisan races, but had to be preserved in non-partisan races, such as for county commissioner and specific local ballot questions.

“We have to work pretty hard right now,” Schmidt said.

Taff was dejected about losing so much ground in Johnson County, where he thought he would run the strongest as a moderate Republican.

But, he said, “the reality is that when you have provisional ballots, there’s really no rhyme or reason where they come from.”

Taff, who lost a tight race with Moore in 2002, said regardless of the election’s outcome he would work to help Republicans in the fall campaign.