Ethics board probes GOP Senate candidate

An ethics board has launched an official investigation of Kansas Republican Senate candidate Milton Wolf over Facebook postings of patient X-rays that included his off-color commentary.

{mosads}The Kansas Board of Healing Arts, the board that licenses healthcare providers and enforces medical laws in the state, confirmed to the Topeka Capital-Journal that the investigation of Wolf, a doctor, was underway.

Wolf’s campaign manager, Ben Hartman, though, said the investigation won’t turn up any violations.

“Any investigation into these politically motivated charges will result in a finding that Dr. Wolf never violated patient privacy and that he remains a doctor in good standing,” he said.

X-rays of Wolf’s patients were posted to a Facebook page alongside comments from the doctor.

Reports of the postings contributed to Wolf’s stalling early on in his campaign to unseat Sen. Pat Roberts (R). Kansas political observers say while many voters in the state still don’t know Wolf, they’re familiar with the controversy.

Roberts’s campaign manager Leroy Towns said the investigation makes it “clear” that Wolf is a “dangerous choice for Kansas Republicans,” and warned it could open the door for a Democrat to win the seat if Wolf is nominated.

“In the unlikely event Wolf would become the Republican nominee, he would enter a general election seriously damaged as a candidate. For Kansas Republicans, it is important that Wolf deal with those ethics charges in coming months as a private citizen, not as the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate,” he said in a statement.

While that outcome remains unlikely — Kansans have not sent a Democrat to the Senate since the 1930s — it’s also unlikely that Republicans will even need to confront such a scenario, as Roberts remains well-poised for reelection, leading by double-digit margins in every independent survey of the race.