The head of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission said Thursday that Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s political action committee “Prairie Fire” violated Kansas campaign finance laws by failing to make a timely disclosure of last-minute independent expenditures it made in the days leading up to the Aug. 2 primary.

Executive Director Carol Williams also called it a “technical violation,” however, and said it probably will not result in a fine or other penalty.

The Journal-World first reported Wednesday that Prairie Fire filed a campaign finance report in October, listing expenditures that were clearly made before the Aug. 2 primary and should have been disclosed in campaign reports filed at that time. The expenditures were made on behalf of four Republican legislative candidates, three of whom lost their primary races.

Kobach’s political aide Moriah Day on Wednesday acknowledged that those expenditures should have been reported earlier, and he was unable to explain why they hadn’t been.

On Thursday, though, Day was able to provide more detail. He said Prairie Fire had contracted for the last-minute mailers on July 28, five days before the primary. But he also acknowledged that it did not report those expenditures until Aug. 5, three days after the primary. Furthermore, he said, those disclosure reports were only filed with the secretary of state’s office and were never forwarded to the Ethics Commission as required by law.

Campaigns typically engage in a flurry of activity in the final days of an election cycle, after the normal campaign finance reports have been filed. But Kansas law still requires those late expenditures to be disclosed in daily reports made after the initial filing deadline, and those last-minute expenditures are supposed to be reported by 5 p.m. the next day.

After the Journal-World began inquiring about the expenditures, Williams said, Prairie Fire’s treasurer Merilee
Martin hand-delivered copies of the reports to the Election Commission office. But Williams said the reports were not dated.

Williams said it is unclear within the statutes whether violation of that particular rule can result in a fine or penalty. She also said the commission typically gets involved only in cases of “willful” violations, and she said many committee treasurers are not aware that they must report activity as soon as the work is contracted, even if the actual bill isn’t paid until several weeks later.

Yoder PAC donates to group campaigning to oust justices

Third District Congressman Kevin Yoder’s campaign insisted Thursday that Yoder is not taking sides in the battle over retaining the five Kansas Supreme Court justices who are on the Nov. 8 ballot, despite the fact that his political action committee donated $2,500 in October to a group seeking to oust four of the justices.

Campaign finance reports filed this week with the secretary of state’s office indicate that Yoder’s federal PAC, “Yopac,” made the donation Oct. 17 to Kansans for Life, an anti-abortion organization that is running a vote no campaign under the banner “Better Judges for Kansas.”

Yopac is a federal political action committee registered with the Federal Election Commission. But under Kansas law, it may contribute to state campaigns as long as it discloses those expenditures and any contributions it receives that are over $300 from Kansas sources.

Yoder’s campaign spokesman C.J. Grover said Thursday that Yoder supports the other activities of Kansans for Life and that Yoder himself is pro life. But he insisted Yoder was not taking sides in the judicial retention races in Kansas.

Conservative groups, including Better Judges for Kansas, have targeted four of the five Supreme Court justices on the ballot to be not retained. Better Judges for Kansas is also targeting four of the six Kansas Court of Appeals judges for nonretention over their ruling earlier this year that said the Kansas Constitution guarantees the same right to privacy, including the right to an abortion, as the U.S. Constitution.

Gov. Sam Brownback’s political action committee, Road Map PAC, gave $25,000 to Kansans for Life in July. But Brownback has also said he is not taking sides in the judicial retention battle.

Kansans for Life executive director Mary Kay Culp said Thursday that those donations fund mailers that KFL sends out that promote the candidates that group has endorsed, for legislative races as well as for judicial retention races.

Kansans for Life’s most recent campaign finance report][7] indicates the group has spent $64,126 during the general election cycle, primarily on mail advertising.

World Series superstition

People trying to read obscure tea leaves to predict the outcome of the 2016 presidential race should not read too much into the fact that a National League team won the World Series.

To be sure, the Chicago Cubs’ victory over the Cleveland Indians Wednesday was historic. Their last World Series win was in October 1908, about one month before Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were gunned down in Bolivia.

But from 1952 through 1976, the World Series was an accurate predictor of presidential elections. Every presidential year when the National League won the World Series, a Democrat won the White House. And every year an American League team won, Republicans won the presidential race.

You can thank the Kansas City Royals for breaking that streak when they lost their first World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was first elected. For a while after that, it was kind of a mixed bag.

in 1984, the Detroit Tigers put the trend back on track by beating the San Diego Padres as Reagan rolled to re-election. But in 1988, the Los Angeles Dodgers upset things again by beating the Oakland A’s as George H.W. Bush won the White House. And Democrat Bill Clinton won both of his elections in years when the American League took the series: Toronto Blue Jays in 1992; and New York Yankees in 1996.

Since then, however, the World Series-Presidential race correlation has been back on track:

• 2000: New York Yankees (AL); George W. Bush (Rep.)

• 2004: Boston Red Sox (AL); George W. Bush (Rep.);

• 2008: Philadelphia Phillies (NL); Barack Obama (Dem.)

• 2012: San Francisco Giants (NL); Barack Obama (Dem.)

• 2016: Chicago Cubs (NL); Presidential race (?)