Kobach opponents engage U.S. Senate candidate at McPherson coffee social
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of the story incorrectly identified the group as Black Lives Matter protesters. (Updated 12:08 a.m. on June 7, 2020)
Opponents of Kris Kobach, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and vocal opponent of illegal immigration, showed up at a McPherson coffee shop Saturday to voice concerns about the former Kansas Secretary of State’s representation of minorities if he’s elected, according to attendees.
The event at the Craft Coffee Parlor almost didn’t happen. Kobach said the owner was concerned about the potential of a disruptive event if protesters showed up. The owner, Kobach said, told him roughly an hour before the event that it was canceled. Kobach said he told the owner people had already been invited and planned on attending, so the owner allowed it to go on as planned. The coffee shop did not return a call from The Eagle..
Kobach said the event ended up leading to a fruitful, hour-long conversation with about 30 people, including 12-15 people he described as Black Lives Matter protesters. But members of the group say they were not there to represent the movement. A few of them said they think Kobach drew the conclusion because one of the people was carrying a “BLM” sign.
“We were really there to just ask him questions,” said 25-year-old Addie Johnson, who said the group showed up to ask him how he would help minorities if he was elected. “They really seemed on edge and on the defensive right when they walked through the door as well.”
Kobach and members of the group said the conversation was civil but there were disagreements.
“When people of different political persuasion sit down and talk to each other you can actually find that there is a lot of area of agreement,” Kobach said in a phone interview. “And I think that when I spoke to the Black Lives Matter protesters there were some areas of agreement that we shared common ground on. There were some things we definitely disagreed about. There is no question about that. But I always think it is better to talk to people face-to-face than to shout at them from across the street.”
Kobach said everyone was in agreement that the killing of George Floyd, who died last month in Minneapolis while in police custody, was wrong and so was any rioting that has followed. Kobach said they disagreed with his saying that the U.S. should move toward the society Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned, one where people are judged by their character and not their skin color.
“I can’t understand why they would disagree with that but they disagreed with Martin Luther King’s words,” Kobach said. “I didn’t get a clear explanation of why they thought that was wrong. They apparently thought the color of a person’s skin should matter and that should be a basis for judging a person. I think it goes to their concept of white privilege. I am standing with Martin Luther King on this one.”
Group members vocally opposed Kobach when he said he supports a “society that is colorblind,” according to a video of the discussion that one of the group posted on Facebook.
“Yes, you should judge them by their character, but you can’t deny someone’s black or somebody’s white or somebody’s brown,” one person says in the video.
Amanda Stiebens, another person who was in attendance, said in a phone interview that “you can’t be colorblind.”
”We are just saying you have to recognize that fact,” the 23-year-old said.
Kobach made immigration a central theme in his failed 2018 bid for Kansas governor. He also championed a controversial law that requires residents to prove their citizenship when registering to vote before it was struck down by a federal judge in 2018.
Contributing: Jonathan Shorman with The Eagle
This story was originally published June 6, 2020 at 7:00 PM.