Anti-Gay and Anti-Immigrant Bigot, Voter Disenfranchisement Activist With Ties to White Nationalism
Kris Kobach is a man who wears many hats. For six years he’s been the Secretary of State of Kansas. He’s managed to kick tens of thousands off the voter rolls while endearing his anti-immigrant hatred to the upper echelons of the Republican party.
Remember Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” idea? That came from Kobach.
Arizona’s largely unconstitutional anti-immigrant law SB-1070? Kobach wrote that too. ThinkProgress in 2010 called it “the harshest immigration bill in America.” Kobach’s photo was at the top of the article.
“If you really want to create a job tomorrow, you can remove an illegal alien today,†Kobach told Republican Party platform writers in 2012.
So it should come as no surprise to learn that Kris Kobach, that’s Secretary of State Kris Kobach, is “of counsel,” the attorney of record, for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the activist arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR is an anti-immigrant hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
It should naturally also come as no surprise that President Donald Trump named Kobach the co-chair of his Commission on Election Integrity, which is designed to help Republicans disenfranchise Democratic voters.
And, since this is Kansas, it should come as no surprise that Kobach is now powerful enough to run for governor, which he just announced.
“Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach launched his campaign for Kansas governor on Thursday, decrying a culture of corruption in Topeka and vowing to crack down on illegal immigration in a speech with echoes of President Donald Trump,” the Kansas City Star reports. “Kobach, the architect of controversial election and immigration laws, advised Trump on immigration policy throughout the 2016 election.”
Also trumpeting today’s chilling development was the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“As recently as 2015, Kobach was a featured speaker at a ‘writer’s workshop’ organized by The Social Contract Press, a white nationalist publisher known for resurrecting the obscure racist novel Camp of the Saints,” the Southern Poverty Law Center noted.Â
“In March of this year, Kobach invited Austrian anti-Muslim activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff to a meeting in Topeka. Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted of hate speech in her native country in 2011 and works closely with ACT For America, the largest anti-Muslim hate group in the United States.”
The Center for American Progress in 2012 called Kobach “a virulently antigay bigot,” who “uses divisive politics and has grouped gays and lesbians together with pedophiles.”
During his 2004 run for Congress, Kobach accused the Human Rights Campaign of promoting “homosexual pedophilia†in an attempt to smear him.
CAP also called Kobach “a birther,” and “a self-serving opportunist” whose “efforts have netted him more than $6.6 million in legal fees.”
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Kansas Secretary Of State Warns Obama’s Immigration Action Could Lead To ‘Ethnic Cleansing’
Native American State Rep To Anti-Immigrant Pol: When You Say ‘Illegal Immigrant’ I Think Of You
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Image by AndrewRosenthal via Flickr and a CC license