Kris Kobach files paperwork to run for Kansas AG

Republican Kris Kobach on Thursday announced that he will run to be Kansas’s attorney general, thrusting himself back into the state’s politics after failed campaigns for governor and Senate.

The Kansan conservative cast himself as a fighter against the Biden administration, hinting he’d take the White House on over a slew of issues, including election reform and gun control.

“On a host of issues from a federal takeover of elections, to attempts to restrict our Second Amendment rights, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress have disregarded the constitutional limits on federal power. The most important officer who can fight back against such unconstitutional actions is a state attorney general,” Kobach said at a press conference announcing his candidacy.

Kobach, who served as Kansas secretary of state from 2011-2019, is a deeply controversial GOP figure.

An immigration hard-liner, he staunchly aligned himself with former President Trump and worked on a panel Trump created to investigate election malfeasance from the 2016 race. That committee was disbanded after finding no evidence of widespread fraud.

Kobach later ran for governor of Kansas in 2018, losing to Democrat Laura Kelly in an upset in the staunchly conservative state. He then ran for Senate in 2020 but lost in the GOP primary to now-Sen. Roger Marshall. 

Kobach’s 2022 candidacy filing listed Ford County GOP Chairwoman Laura Tawater as his treasurer. Tawater reportedly attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington that preceded the pro-Trump insurrection on Capitol Hill.

Kobach is looking to replace Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who has launched a bid to challenge Kelly next year.

Updated at 2:11 p.m.