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After a tight Republican primary, Democratic incumbent Dennis Moore took aim at Kobach's hard-line stances on immigration policy and his connection to groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, whose political action committee had donated $10,000 to Kobach's campaign.

Organizations that monitor white-supremacy groups count FAIR as having thinly veiled racist motives. The organization's founder, John Tanton, asked in a 1986 study, "As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining ,will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?" More recently, FAIR has lobbied for an immigration moratorium and for reversing parts of the 14th Amendment that grant automatic citizenship to all U.S.-born children.

Kobach lost the race by more than 36,000 votes. He still bristles at what he calls deceptive allegations of ties to white supremacists. "I never got to a point where I said never again, but I certainly wasn't in any hurry to run again in 2006," he says.

Kobach has been encouraged to run for public office again, says Doug Patterson, former chair of the Johnson County Republican Party, though Patterson has some advice when it comes to heated issues such as immigration.

"It's dangerous to break it down to small issues because you can look like a radical," Patterson says. "For Kris to focus on in-state tuition or driver's licenses, it can take a regular voter back to 'Gosh, Kris is extreme' where the big message is, 'We have an immigration problem.'"

Now, two years after he went down to electoral defeat, Kobach has taken a central role with FAIR.

After 9/11, a Washington, D.C., lawyer named Mike Hethmon took over FAIR's legal department. Ashcroft's young immigration counsel caught Hethmon's attention as a potential ally.

In the past two years, Hethmon and Kobach have become a legal team working to shift the federal immigration debate to states and cities. Hethmon is director and general counsel of FAIR's Immigration Reform Law Institute; Kobach, a senior counsel on paid retainer, is second-in-command.

The partnership started in 2004 when Kansas passed a law granting in-state tuition to those children of illegal immigrants who had attended a state high school for three years and graduated. Kobach says his interest in the issue dates back to his time at the Justice Department. He and his colleagues were appalled when states such as California and Texas circumvented federal law by granting in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants while charging higher rates for kids from other states and international students with legal visas.

"It just seemed like an incredibly perverse set of incentives — to punish people who follow the law and benefit those who break the law," Kobach says.

Their Kansas challenge was booted last year, and a similar case in California — argued by Kobach — was dismissed in October. FAIR is appealing both cases.

But Kobach is a hot property because of his work on another case, too.

Last summer, the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, population 30,000, passed a controversial ordinance that financially penalizes landlords and businesses that house or employ undocumented immigrants.

In November, Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta told CBS' 60 Minutes that the aim of the ordinance was simple: "I'm going to eliminate illegal aliens from the city of Hazleton."

Kobach is helping him do it.

"We looked at the Hazleton ordinance and said, 'Uh oh,'" Hethmon recalls. "The idea was great, the concept was absolutely valid, but it was clearly drafted by some average folks sitting around a table. So we brought the issue up with Kris immediately."

Hethmon and Kobach quickly created a model ordinance. By the end of 2006, about 50 municipalities had passed or were considering similar legislation.

One such city is Valley Park, Missouri. Defending the ordinance in that St. Louis suburb, Kobach faces a team of nearly two dozen lawyers, including university professors, the ACLU and the St. Louis-based law firm Bryan Cave LLP.

During a mid-December broadcast of his Sunday-evening call-in show on KMBZ 980 (it kicks off with the Mission: Impossible theme and an introduction that boasts, "Kris is a constitutional lawyer, conservative and proud"), Kobach asked listeners to contribute funds to the Valley Park and Hazelton cases.

He went on to assert that states and cities should pass laws requiring government services and information to be offered only in English. He predicted that such measures would pop up in Missouri and Kansas statehouses during the next legislative session.

And if anyone has insider information on upcoming legislation, it's Kobach.

His students help write it.

Last year, Missouri Rep. Jerry Nolte, a Gladstone Republican, sponsored a bill requiring public universities to certify that they had not admitted any illegal aliens before they could receive funds from the state. The idea for that measure, he says, came from Kobach, and the language came from students in Kobach's legislation class at UMKC.

Hethmon believes that Kobach could be remembered as a legal advocate who blazed a new civil rights movement.

"Some folks have compared this issue of citizens' rights to where the NAACP was in the 1920s, where the ability of a few very smart, very principled lawyers to marshal and advocate issues that were both unpopular and, in a certain sense, unfamiliar to the judiciary was essential," Hethmon says. "Without that intellectual and legal foundation, that kind of civil rights reform couldn't have gone forward. So I think Kris' talent and commitment are essential. I wish I had a dozen of him."