Kansas Republicans fight over who will ‘stand with President Trump’ in U.S. Senate

President Donald Trump starred in the Kansas Republican Senate debate Saturday as the candidates fought aggressively over who could serve as his best and most effective ally in Washington.

Sparring over the course of an hour, they repeatedly vowed to assist the president, underscoring how loyalty to Trump has become a defining factor in the race and the extent to which Republican voters demand fealty to their leader.

During charged exchanges, Roger Marshall, Kris Kobach and Susan Wagle tried to tie themselves as closely as possible to Trump, who won Kansas with 56% of the vote in 2016 and remains highly popular among Republicans.

Raising the stakes, Trump has signaled he is keeping an eye on the race. He recently tweeted a poll showing Marshall and Kobach in a virtual tie.

On Saturday, the candidates at times appeared to be auditioning for Trump as much as voters.

“I am running to keep standing beside this president to stop the left’s socialist agenda,” said Marshall, the state’s 1st district congressman.

“I want to lead the president’s initiative on immigration. I want to be his point man and carry the ball in the United States Senate,” said Kobach, a former Kansas secretary of state and the 2018 Republican nominee for governor.

“I stand with President Trump. I’ve been standing for conservative values for many, many, many years,” said Wagle, president of the Kansas state Senate.

The debate, at the Kansas Republican Party convention in Olathe, marked the start of a more aggressive campaign season as candidates jostle ahead of the August primary election. The race moved into a new phase in recent weeks after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signaled he doesn’t plan to run.

While Kobach, Marshall and Wagle battled on stage, a fourth candidate, Johnson County businessman Dave Lindstrom, couldn’t participate because of a medical procedure.

For nearly every question in Saturday’s debate, the candidates were quick to include some version of the line, “I will stand with President Trump.”

But they also tussled over the idea of electability.

Marshall never specifically said he didn’t believe Kobach could defeat a Democrat in November, but he seemed to invoke that concern by repeatedly bringing up polling he said showed he’d defeat Democrat Barbara Bollier by 10 percentage points in the general election.

“What I said about polling is not true about everyone up here,” he said.

Wagle emphasized her legislative career, saying she’s the only candidate with a proven record of helping elect other conservatives up and down the ballot.

“I’m the one candidate you can trust who can win this race, elect other conservatives underneath me and who can get things done when I get there,” she said.

And she was the only one to directly attack Kobach for his 2018 loss to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, saying “you had a three-way race for governor, and we have a Democratic governor now raising money and promoting liberal policy.”

Kobach pushed back on the notion that his 2018 loss means he could put the Kansas Senate seat at risk 2020.

He said he’s won two of three statewide races he’s been involved in, and in 2018 garnered more votes than former Gov. Sam Brownback did when he was re-elected in 2014.

A Senate race, Kobach said, is very different than a race for governor.

“History shows the best Senate candidate during a presidential election year is the candidate who aligns most closely with President Trump,” Kobach said, noting he’s the only candidate who endorsed Trump before the 2016 Kansas caucuses.

Trump’s impact

When Kobach decided to fight back, it was mostly directed at Marshall — and it was mostly questioning both Marshall’s loyalty to Trump and his conservative bona fides.

Specifically, Kobach accused Marshall of “stabbing the president in the back” with a May 2019 op-ed in The Kansas City Star that argued that Kansas farmers “cannot withstand another round of tariffs.”

Kobach said the op-ed “probably ended up on the president of China’s desk” and undermined Trump’s negotiating position.

Marshall responded by calling the attack “fake news.”

“After I spoke on Fox News about agriculture, (the president) called me to say ‘Roger, thank you for doing a great job,’” he said, later adding: “I have an incredible relationship with the president, and that’s why he’s supporting me and not anyone else on stage.”

Kobach and Marshall have jockeyed for Trump’s favor in recent weeks, a dynamic the president appears to enjoy.

Last week, the president posted on Twitter the results of a poll, paid for by a pro-Marshall PAC, that showed the congressman with a margin-of-error lead over Kobach with 29% to 28%.

“Close race in Kansas!” Trump said without stating a preference.

The fact that Trump has seen the poll, which runs counter to others that have Kobach ahead, is a good sign for Marshall’s campaign, which has been communicating regularly with the White House political team after Pompeo announced his decision to forgo the race.

“It’s like going to a job interview where you already work. I feel like I’ve been interviewing for this job for three years and we’ve earned the president’s support. I didn’t say endorsement. We’ve earned the president’s support and respect,” Marshall said a few days before the convention.

The congressman, who attended the USMCA signing ceremony at the White House earlier this week, said the No. 1 issue to Republicans is whether you’re standing with the president.

Kobach, who served on Trump’s transition team, has also been eager to highlight his own connections to the president.

His campaign sent out a clip last week of him going on the BBC to defend Trump against criticism, and ahead of the convention he promoted a candidate coffee event with a fake Trump tweet in an email blast and social media posts. The posts were later deleted.

Wagle has attempted to undercut Marshall’s claims of Trump support by pointing to comments Marshall made to the Wichita Pachyderm Club in 2017 that were skeptical of the president’s border wall proposal. She criticized Trump as a potentially weak general election candidate when speaking to the same group in 2015, roughly 11 months before Trump won the presidency.

Fundraising gap

The debate came as a fundraising gap between the Republican candidates and Bollier came into sharper focus.

Bollier, who launched her candidacy in October and quickly earned a string of high profile endorsements, led all candidates in fundraising for the quarter with nearly $1.2 million, a haul that’s about $900,000 more than any other candidate during the period.

She has more than $810,000 cash on hand as of Jan. 1.

Republican candidates struggled to raise money during the quarter as speculation swirled that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo might join the race.

Marshall led Republican candidates for the quarter after raising nearly $218,000. Despite Bollier’s strong quarter, Marshall still has an overall money advantage with more than $1.9 million cash on hand, more than double any other candidate, after transferring money from his House campaign account in September.

Wagle, Lindstrom and Kobach all raised more than $100,000 for the quarter.

Wagle has roughly $523,000 cash on hand and Lindstrom roughly $291,000 after each candidate made substantial personal loans early in the campaign.

Kobach trails both with more than $190,000 cash on hand.

Asked about the fundraising difference between Bollier and the GOP field, Mark Kahrs, the Kansas Republican national committeeman, said Bollier was the only candidate running in the Democratic race (in fact, Manhattan Mayor Pro Tem Usha Reddi is also running).

“Obviously, all the money’s going to flow to her,” Kahrs said of Bollier. “So that doesn’t concern me at all.”

Still, Bollier during the fourth quarter of 2019 raised more than double what every major Republican candidate collected combined.

Trump endorsement?

While the candidates spent Saturday demonstrating their loyalty to the president, on the sidelines some party faithful suggested Trump should stay out of the race for now.

State Rep. Willie Sutton, a Gardner Republican, said he “kind of hopes” Trump doesn’t get involved in the primary.

“We’ll decide who the candidate is and then he can decide whether to support them in the general,” Sutton said.

Beth French of Olathe said she came into the debate undecided and “I’m still undecided.”

“I need to hear a lot more from each of them,” she said. “I’m happy with all three, and all three have strong credentials and strong areas. I would support any of the three who wins the primary.”

Supporting the president will be a key issue that helps her make up her mind, but French has mixed feelings about whether Trump should endorse anyone before the primary.

“I’m interested in how he perceives the candidates we have,” she said, “but on the other hand they should run on their own credentials and let the people decide who they want.”

All agreed that the candidates need to support Trump, even if they are hesitant about whether the president should insert himself into the race.

Voicing a common refrain at the convention, Marianne Stevens of Leawood said she can only support a candidate “who is behind the president 100 percent on everything.”

This story was originally published February 1, 2020 at 2:15 PM.