Both the New York Times and Politico today have great pieces on Kris Kobach, America’s least favorite Secretary of State, and his unexpectedly tight reelection campaign this November. A wide swath of Kansas voters are fed up with his extremism, his voter ID crusade, and his apparent preference for furthering anti-immigrant state laws across the country over actually fulfilling his duties as Kansas’ Secretary of State.
Here’s what we learned about Kobach today:
- He “absolutely” still supports hardline anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 because “it works.” That’s a hard claim to believe considering that Alabama just settled the last provision of its HB 56 law this week, after years of the law being blocked in courts and dismantled piece by piece.
- He doesn’t believe that the anti-immigrant positions of Republicans leave them at a disadvantage in presidential contests. That’s also rich considering that Mitt Romney’s greatest regret from the 2012 elections seems to be his support of self-deportation, a stance that Kobach — as Romney’s immigration advisor — championed.
- Kobach is definitely spending all of his time attacking immigrants. Check out this quote from him, courtesy of Politico:
“I virtually never golf now,” Kobach said while in a donor’s kitchen in the Kansas City suburbs. “Since becoming secretary of state, virtually all my spare time is consumed with litigating these outside [immigration] cases.”
That’s right. Kobach’s not forsaking golf for the Secretary of State duties he was actually elected for. He’s forsaking golf because he’s too busy attacking immigrants across the country.
