Group run by ex-Yoder staffer launches ads attacking Kobach on white nationalist ties
A newly formed political action committee has launched a $3 million ad offensive less than a month before the Kansas primary attacking Kris Kobach’s campaign for paying a white nationalist last year.
The ad from Plains PAC is based heavily on a 2019 story by The Kansas City Star and The Wichita Eagle, which reported that Kobach’s campaign had paid $500 to Joe Suber, an Olathe man who regularly posted hateful comments about Jews and racial minorities on a white nationalist website.
Kobach said at the time that Suber’s comments were abhorrent and that the campaign cut ties with him upon discovering his history of racist comments.
The PAC behind the ads filed its statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission last week. A news release announcing the ad campaign — which will cover television, radio and the Internet — identified CJ Grover as the PAC’s executive director.
“Kansas Republicans support President Trump and his positive vision for America, but not Kobach’s consistent affiliation with a toxic ideology explicitly rejected by the President and Kansans of all stripes. Plains PAC’s mission is to remind primary voters why a vote for Kobach is too big a risk for our future,” Grover said in a statement, which noted Kobach’s defeat in the 2018 race for governor.
Grover had been a public information officer for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt from 2019 until this week when the office announced his departure.
Schmidt has been overseeing Kansas’ effort to appeal the federal court rulings that struck down Kobach’s signature policy, a law which required voters to provide proof of citizenship.
Grover said in a text message Tuesday morning that he “started working for the PAC today, left the attorney general’s office yesterday.” He would not answer questions about the ad’s production and whether he was involved while still working for the state.
The attorney general’s office said in a follow-up email that Grover had informed the office of his plans to resign on July 4. “That was the first knowledge we had of any of this,” said Clint Blaes, Schmidt’s spokesman.
Before working for Schmidt, Grover had served as a spokesman and campaign manager for former Rep. Kevin Yoder.
Yoder, who lost his 2018 re-election bid, appeared last week at a Mission Hills fundraiser for Rep. Roger Marshall, Kobach’s top rival for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate.
Kobach’s campaign condemned the ad as misinformation.
“Kris Kobach doesn’t have ties to white nationalists, and he never has,” Kobach spokeswoman Danedri Herbert said in a statement. “Last October, when we discovered that an independent contractor had in the past posted statements supporting that garbage, the campaign immediately severed ties with him.”
Herbert also raised legal concerns about Grover’s involvement, but did not cite which statute she was accusing him of violating.
“The group formed on July 1, and the ads and media planning were in process before the executive director left state employment. Groups that lie and break the law can’t be trusted,” she said.
Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, said the ethics law that restricts federal employees from doing political work on taxpayer time wouldn’t apply in a case involving a state employee.
He was not aware of any Kansas law that would explicitly bar Grover from doing work for the PAC on his personal time prior to his departure from the attorney general’s office.
The anti-Kobach ads come a little more than a week after the Club For Growth announced it was canceling its ad campaign attacking Marshall, a move The New York Times reported came at President Donald Trump’s request.
Marshall, however, is still fending off other attacks. Last week, businessman Bob Hamilton, another Republican seeking the seat, launched an ad attacking Marshall over a 2008 reckless driving conviction, which was later downgraded to a minor traffic infraction at the request of a prosecutor who was the son of Marshall’s business partner.
Marshall has maintained he was unaware of the prosecutor’s personal connection until he was asked about it by The Star last month. Marshall had previously attacked Hamilton in his own ads, which raised questions about the businessman’s social conservative credentials.
This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 12:14 PM with the headline "Group run by ex-Yoder staffer launches ads attacking Kobach on white nationalist ties."
