Immigration-obsessed lawyer and Kansas secretary of state candidate Kris Kobach is, according to recent polls, blowing out Chris Biggs, the current officeholder and his Democratic opponent, by a cushy 18 points.
So, voters should have expected a Hail Mary attempt. But what Biggs came up with manages to make Kobach look like the less slimy choice.
Biggs, who has described the job he wants to keep as "not a terribly glamorous office," started airing a TV ad this week that outlines how early voting works in the Sunflower State. The catch is, Biggs ran the ad as the Secretary of State, not as a candidate. It's a sleazy distinction, but it's an important one.
Although the ad doesn't pump him up as the right candidate for the
job or tout his mad banjo skills, it does end with an extremely campaign-y photo of a stately looking
Biggs in an office surrounded by staff and/or actors paid to look like
his staff gazing upon him like he's the baby Jesus. It's a shot that looks
ripped straight from a glossy mailer. The voice-over informs viewers
that the spot was "Brought to you by the office of Secretary of State,
Chris Biggs."
Kobach is whining
-- fairly -- that the commercial is nothing more than a political ad
that doesn't identify itself as one, and he wants it taken off the airwaves.
He told the Lawrence
Journal-World that the ad was "crass-politicking at taxpayer
expense." Biggs' camp defense is that the
commercial is a harmless voter education effort. His spokesman told the
paper that ad cost $159,000 and was paid for by a grant from the Help America
Vote Act, which is a federal law that aims to do what its name says. The ad leaves that detail out.
Kobach also raises some pretty valid concerns about Biggs calling the
ad a public service. Specifically, the LJW reports, Kobach notes PSAs
rarely run during plum evening hours, like, say, during the 5 p.m. news, like he says this ad has.
He also claims that a nearly identical ad was aired earlier without the
Biggs-as-savior photo slapped onto the end.
I couldn't dig up the alleged
earlier version on YouTube, but here's the version Kobach objects to:
Showing 1-2 of 2
Hey Kobach, and his supporters, stay on this Pitch web-site, type in "Kobach photo with a gun", open that link, that will give you a pretty good idea what most people from this community think of Kris Kobach and his policies, type it in your see!
Based on the Republican Party's track record, it's the first 27 seconds of the ad that Kobach really objects to. The GOP generally prefers that the rabble devote more time to providing cheap labor to businesses and less time exercising their right of suffrage.
If the tag was left off, he'd probably be accused of trying to evade anti-incumbent sentiment.
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