Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer concedes GOP primary to Secretary of State Kris Kobach Colyer said in a statement he hopes to see Kansas remain in Republican hands Share Shares Copy Link Copy Hide Transcript Show Transcript WEBVTT I GO WENDY POINT SHAPE IN A FEW MINUTES. LARA: WE BEGIN WITH THAT BREAKING NEWS. GOVERNOR JEFF COLYER CONCEDING THE GOP RACE FOR KANSAS GOVERNOR TO SECETARY OF STATE KRIS KOBACH. KRIS: ALL THIS AFTER NEW NUMBERS GAVE KOBACH A BIGGER LEAD. KMBC 9’S WILLIAM JOY IS LIVE IN TOPEKA WHERE COLYER DELIVERED HIS CONCESSION SPEECH TONIGHT. WILLIAM. REPORTER: COLYER’S THEME FO THIS SPEECH WAS DOING RIGHT THING AND THIS IS A MOMENT TO STEP UP AND DO WHAT’S BEST. AFTER THE RESULTS IN HIS HOME OF JOHNSON COUNTY SHOWED THE MARGIN GETTING WIDER, NOT SMALLER, SAID TONIGHT, THIS IS THE CLOSEST ELECTION IN AMERICA, BUT THE NUMBERS JUST AREN’T THERE. >> I’VE JUST HAD A CONVERSATION WITH THE SECRETARY OF STATE AND I CONGRATULATED HIM ON H SUCCESS AND I REPEATED MY DETERMINATION TO KEEP THIS SEAT IN REPUBLICAN HANDS. REPORTER: FROM THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE SPEECH TONIGH COLYER WAS EMOTIONAL, HIS VOICE BREAKING AT TIMES. HIS FAMILY AND STAFF WHERE IN THE ROOM FOR SUPPORT AND THE PHRASE HE SAID MOST WAS THANK YOU. >> WE WANT TO SAY THANK YOU FOR THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KANSANS WHO VOTED FOR US. WE WANT TO SAY THANK YOU TO THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SUPPORTERS WHO GAVE THEIR TIME AND THEIR TREASURE AND THEIR BLESSINGS T MAKE OUR CAMPAIGN POSSIBLE I’M VERY PROUD OF THE WORK THAT WE HAVE DONE OVER THE PAST SIX MONTHS AND I’M VERY HOPEFUL THAT KANSAS’S FUTURE, OUR BEST DAYS, ARE AHEAD OF US. > COLYER SAID HE WON’T BE CHALLENGING THE RESULT IN COURT AND HE WON’T BE ASKING FOR A RECOUNT. HE DIDN’T’ TAKE ANY QUESTIONS AFTERWARDS BUT MANY ARE LIKELY WONDERING WHY NOW AND WHAT’S NEXT. LIVE FROM THE CAPITOL, WILLIAM JOY, KMBC 9 NEWS. LARA: MICHEAL MAHONEY JOINS US NOW. MICHEAL WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP MOVING FORWARD. MICHEAL: UNITY IS A BIG STEP MOVING FORWARD BECAUSE THEY HAVE A 59% OF ALL OF THE VOTERS THAT CAST A BALLOT LAST TUESDAY. TH NOTED FACILITY BESIDES KRIS KOBACH. THEY NEED TO BUILD A REFRACTORY PARTY. THE FACT THAT TH FEEL THE KOBACH CAMPAIGN IS WINNING -- BREAKING AND EIGHT YOUR WINNING STREAK. THIS IT, YOU KNOW WHAT, IF HE WANTS TO LEAD THE PARTY, IT IS ALL HIS DOWN. A PIECE OF HISTORY. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1956 THAT A KANSAS GOVERNOR WAS DEFEATED IN A PRIMARY. KRIS: DOES THE PRESENCE OF THE INDEPENDENCE IN THIS RACE, DOES HE BECOME A BIGGER FACTOR? MICHEAL: ABSOLUTELY. AS WE SAID JUST A MOMENT AGO, THIS IS A FRACTURED PARTY IN THE STATE OF KANSAS. THIS IS A TWO-PERSON RACE. KOBACH IS GOING TO HAVE HAV -- GO AGAINST BOTH CANDIDATES. IT IS DIFFICULT TO RUN A CAMPAIGN AND WHEN WHEN IT IS HEAD-TO-HEAD. IT IS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT WHEN YOU’RE IN A SITUATION WITH HER ARE THRE PEOPLE THEY ARE ATTACKING ON TWO DIFFERENT FRONTS. LARA: HERE’S A LOOK AT THE GOVERNOR’S RACE IN NOVEMBER. KOBACH WILL TAKE ON TOPEKA STATE SENATOR LAURA KELLY THE DEMOCRAT IN THE RACE AND INDEPENDENT GREG ORMAN IN NOVEM GET LOCAL BREAKING NEWS ALERTS The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox. Submit Privacy Notice<doc-sep>Mr. Kobach, who has spent years building a national profile, is a brash, outspoken ally of the president whose campaign rhetoric sometimes sounds like Mr. Trump’s and who has long excited the party’s base. Mr. Colyer, more measured in his speech and not known as well outside Kansas, was seen by many national Republicans as a safer general election candidate with more appeal to moderate voters. Though Republicans are dominant in Kansas politics, Democrats are energized and could benefit from the other side’s prolonged primary squabble. State Senator Laura Kelly, the Democratic nominee, and Greg Orman, a businessman running as an independent, will face Mr. Kobach in November. In a statement on Tuesday night, Ms. Kelly compared Mr. Kobach to Sam Brownback, the former Kansas governor whose conservative tax-cutting policies led to revenue shortfalls and significant budget cuts. Mr. Brownback, who was deeply unpopular by the end of his tenure, resigned early this year to become an ambassador. “With Kris Kobach as governor, Kansans get all of the failed policies of Sam Brownback plus Kobach’s unique brand of hyper-partisanship and self-promotion,” Ms. Kelly said. Though Mr. Kobach and Mr. Colyer had each acknowledged their race was too close to call after the initial count ended with a 191-vote margin, the days that followed brought increasing acrimony. Despite platitudes about party unity, the tone grew harsher after one rural county discovered a tabulation error that added 100 votes to Mr. Colyer’s tally. In recent days, Mr. Colyer warned that many political independents had been given faulty information at the polls and that their ballots may be improperly discarded. He also started a “voting integrity hotline” and accused Mr. Kobach, in his role as secretary of state, of providing bad advice to county election officials.<doc-sep>WICHITA, Kan. — Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer conceded Tuesday evening in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary, saying he would endorse Secretary of State Kris Kobach a week after their neck-and-neck finish threatened to send the race to a recount. Colyer accepted defeat after a review of some provisional ballots from most Kansas counties failed to find enough votes for him to overcome a deficit of 110 votes at the time of poll closing in the Aug. 7 primary, out of more than 311,000 votes initially counted. Kobach will face Democrat Laura Kelly, and is likely to face independent candidate Greg Orman, in the November general election in the decidedly conservative state. The disputed race was intense and prompted a lengthy county-by-county review of provisional ballots. The aftermath of the primary included both candidates challenging each other's legal interpretations, sending observers to monitor the vote count and raising the specter of lawsuits. It included a fight over how to count unaffiliated voters who were simply given a provisional ballot by poll workers without first having them fill out a party-affiliation statement. Colyer's campaign had representatives in all 105 counties when provisional ballots are reviewed. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach votes on Aug. 7th, 2018, at the Lecompton City Hall. Thad Allton / The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP Colyer also questioned whether Kobach — as secretary of state the top election official in Kansas — was advising counties not to count some mail-in ballots, including those with missing or unreadable postmarks. Kobach removed himself from election-related duties on Aug. 10 until the primary outcome was resolved, but Colyer argued that Kobach still had a conflict of interest because his top deputy took over Kobach's responsibilities. Kobach rejected Colyer's criticisms, saying his "unrestrained rhetoric has the potential to undermine the public's confidence in the election process." Kobach, 52, has a national conservative following thanks to his strong stance against illegal immigration and his fervent defense of voter ID laws. He was vice chairman of the Trump administration's election-fraud commission, though the commission eventually found no evidence to support Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. Kobach's voter ID efforts also took a hit in June when a federal judge found the Kansas voter ID law he championed was unconstitutional. Colyer, by contrast, is far more low-key. He is a 58-year-old plastic surgeon from suburban Kansas City. He served as lieutenant governor for seven years and took over as governor in January when Sam Brownback resigned to become ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. He helped craft state health care legislation as a lawmaker before his election as lieutenant governor in 2010. As lieutenant governor, he supervised a 2013 initiative that privatized Kansas' Medicaid health coverage for the needy. Provisional ballots are cast when questions about a voter's eligibility cannot be easily resolved. The problem could involve a name not showing up on the voter rolls or a voter's address not matching a photo ID in states where that is required. National data from the Election Assistance Commission shows that the most common reason for rejection was that a voter was not registered in the state. Other reasons include provisional ballots being cast in the wrong county or wrong precinct and problems with a voter's identification or signature. Colyer ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2002 before being elected to the Kansas House in 2006, then to the state Senate in 2008. He has for three decades traveled abroad for medical relief missions, working and training local doctors in Afghanistan, Rwanda, Iraq and other countries. Before becoming governor, Colyer was a loyal No. 2 to Brownback, even when budget problems that followed the governor's aggressive income tax cuts caused his approval levels to plummet. Lawmakers in 2017 rolled back most of those cuts. Colyer skirted legal trouble after making three $500,000 loans to Brownback's and his own re-election campaign in 2013 and 2014. Two of the loans were paid back within days. Democrats speculated they might have been timed to inflate campaign-finance reports. They came as the Republican governor faced the prospect of losing to a well-financed Democratic challenger, Paul Davis. Brownback eventually won by a 50 percent to 46.1 percent margin. Brownback's office said the loans were in compliance with Kansas law and ethics regulations. A grand jury investigation ended with no criminal charges.<doc-sep>Trump’s endorsement reportedly came against the wishes of some Republican insiders, who had hoped the president would stay out of the race. Nevertheless, Trump — who has been known to demand and reward loyalty — waded in at the last minute in support of Kobach, who has long played up his ties to the president and his family.<doc-sep>
Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer conceded his extremely close Republican primary to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — who will be the Republican nominee for governor — on Tuesday night. A week after the Kansas election, Colyer said he would not challenge the results of the vote tally in court or request a recount. Colyer’s concession comes as the two men were still locked in a close race a week after the Kansas primary on August 7. As of Tuesday, Kobach had more than a 300-vote lead on Colyer, according to Wichita Eagle reporter Jonathan Shorman. The governor sounded congratulatory in his speech, saying he wanted to ensure the next governor of the state was still a Republican. Democratic state Sen. Laura Kelly, who won 51 percent of the vote in the August 7 primaries, will face Kobach in the fall, as will independent candidate Greg Orman. “We will make sure the next governor is fully prepared, and I hope it is a Republican governor,” Colyer said. Even with Colyer’s conciliatory speech, the last week in Kansas Republican politics hasn’t exactly been cordial as the last remaining votes were counted in an extremely close race. Vote-counting errors made the race between Kobach and Colyer tighter, and there were questions about why Kobach — the state secretary of state — didn’t immediately recuse himself from the recount process. As Vox’s Tara Golshan wrote last week: On Thursday, state election officials reported that they discovered an error that shortchanged Colyer 70 votes. According to the Washington Post, a clerical error in the secretary of state’s office entered Thomas County’s votes for Colyer as 422 votes, where it should have been 522. In another county, results that should have given 257 votes for Kobach and 220 votes for Colyer, instead were filed as 110 for Kobach and 103 for Colyer. Kansas doesn’t require an automatic recount in a close race; as Vox explained it’s up to a candidate, registered voter, or election officials to ask for one. The state would pay for a recount if the margin is less than .5 percent. The same day as the vote-error discovery, Kobach recused himself from the recount process, a move he described as symbolic. Kobach is a controversial conservative and staunch Trump ally who served as the vice chair of Trump’s now disbanded voter fraud commission. Trump endorsed him the day before the election. It is an unusual move for a Republican president to endorse the primary opponent of a sitting Republican governor, but Trump lending support for Kobach was a sign of how loyal the Kansas secretary of state is to the president. Democrats see an opportunity in Kansas, especially after former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s extremely unpopular conservative policies — including extreme tax cuts — left the state’s economy and school system in the lurch. Some Democrats are likely celebrating Kobach’s win; he is seen as such a hardline conservative that some think he would be easier to beat than Colyer. But Kobach has been in the state a long time, and the big question is whether Democrats — and Kelly in particular — can beat him in November.