The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
●KS-Sen: On Monday, former Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach announced he would run to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Pat Roberts in Kansas, but he'll have to overcome a record of failure that has left the national party deeply skeptical of his ability to win—and Democrats cautiously optimistic about the chance to put this race in play against an opponent with a long record of voter suppression and anti-immigrant activism.
Campaign ActionKobach was Team Red's gubernatorial nominee lost year, but he lost in an upset to Democrat Laura Kelly despite Kansas' heavy Republican tilt. Thanks to an endorsement from Trump, Kobach won his primary over Gov. Jeff Colyer by just a microscopic 40.6-40.5 margin. However, his lackadaisical approach to campaigning in the general election—which one prominent GOP operative called "the most dysfunctional thing I've ever seen in my life"—resulted in a taint of loserdom that prompted the NRSC's spokesperson to swiftly bash Kobach on Monday as someone who would risk handing Democrats victory in 2020.
Kobach's poor performance in his last campaign, which focused heavily on immigration even though school funding was the dominant issue Kansans were concerned about, isn't the only mark against him. Kobach has a long history of anti-immigrant xenophobia and reported ties to avowed white supremacists, the latter of which even the Trump administration identified as a "red flag" that could pose a problem if he were to be nominated for a government job.
Both prior to becoming secretary of state and during his tenure in office, Kobach pushed state and local governments across the country to adopt xenophobic policies. Those efforts included Arizona's notorious SB 1070, which required law enforcement to attempt to determine a person's immigration status when stopped or arrested.
That evangelism for anti-immigrant measures also earned Kobach serious scrutiny when it was reported that his activism also served as a scam. Kobach would sell cash-strapped local governments on passing restrictive laws, then rake in legal fees defending the measures in court, which often led to legal defeats that left taxpayers holding the bag for Kobach's profits.