Republican PAC launches campaign against Senate candidate Kobach

photo by: Associated Press

Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is pictured Monday, July 8, 2019, in Leavenworth.

TOPEKA — A new Republican political action committee has launched what it says will be a $3 million campaign in Kansas with an ad that says GOP Senate candidate and immigration hardliner Kris Kobach has ties to white supremacists.

Kobach campaign spokesperson Danedri Herbert said Tuesday that the 30-second spot from the Plains PAC recycles “old false attacks” previously leveled by Democrats.

The ad notes that The Kansas City Star reported last year that an aide who’d been paid $500 by the Kobach campaign for field services had a history of making racist and anti-Semitic comments on a white nationalist website. Kobach denounced the comments, and his campaign fired the aide, whom Herbert described as an independent contractor.

The Plains PAC said the 30-second spot is running on television, radio and online. The ad also notes that Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, lost the 2018 governor’s race to Democrat Laura Kelly.

Kobach is running in a crowded GOP field that includes western Kansas Rep. Roger Marshall and Bob Hamilton, the founder of a Kansas City-area plumbing company. Many Republicans fear that if Kobach is the GOP nominee, a normally safe Republican seat will be in play in the November general election.

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