Kansas Supreme Court will hear Chad Taylor v. Kris Kobach on Senate ballot issue

The Kansas Supreme Court will hear Chad Taylor’s case against Secretary of State Kris Kobach, after rejecting on Thursday a petition from Kobach’s attorney to move the case to a district court.

The court will hear oral arguments in Taylor v. Kobach on Tuesday in order to decide whether Taylor will remain on the November ballot for U.S. Senate. Ballots must be ready to be mailed overseas to absentee voters by Sept. 20.

Taylor, the Democratic nominee, attempted to withdraw from the race last week, a move that many political analysts said would give a boost to independent candidate Greg Orman against U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, the three-term Republican incumbent.

Kobach ruled that Taylor would remain on the ballot for failing to declare himself incapable of serving if elected, as required by Kansas statute.

Kobach accused Taylor, the district attorney of Shawnee County, of intentionally not including a declaration in his letter.

“He’s an attorney and knows what a declaration is. For some reason he didn’t want to make that declaration. And I don’t want to speculate about what his reason was, but I think he knew perfectly well that he was not following the statute and he probably hoped he could get away with it,” Kobach said.

Taylor filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court to remove himself from the ballot on Tuesday. Kobach’s attorney sought to move the case to a district court to allow fact-finding to take place.

Chief Justice Lawton Nuss wrote in a court order Thursday that additional fact-finding would not be needed in the case, as the court had the pieces of evidence necessary to proceed.

Taylor and his campaign manager, Brandon Naylor, made sworn affidavits that Bradley Bryant, the deputy assistant secretary of state, repeatedly assured them that a letter Taylor submitted to the office, which cited the statute in question, would be sufficient to withdraw from the race.

“During our conversations, Mr. Bryant repeatedly stated his assurances that my letter had effectively withdrawn my name from the election ballot and I relied upon his representations,” Taylor said in his affidavit.

Thursday afternoon the Secretary of State’s office released an affidavit from Bryant, which contradicted Taylor’s account.

“During this conversation Mr. Taylor never asked me for a complete list of what this withdrawal letter had to say to be effective to remove his name from the ballot for the November 4 general election,” Bryant stated in his affidavit. “I therefore assumed he knew what the statute he cited says.”

Bryant’s affidavit says that Taylor and Naylor arrived at the Secretary of State’s office at 4 p.m. on Sept. 3, the last day to withdraw from the race, with a letter on campaign stationery. Bryant stated that the letters were signed by a notary and photocopied, but that he at no point guaranteed that the letter would withdraw Taylor from the race.

“Mr. Taylor asked if his name would be removed from the candidate list and I gestured by shrugging my shoulders as to indicate ‘we’ll see,’” Bryant said in his affidavit.

Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka attorney representing Taylor, would not talk about Bryant’s testimony before Tuesday, citing the case’s importance to both the state of Kansas and the nation as a whole.

“There’ll be plenty of time to talk about this after this case is over,” he said.

Naylor’s affidavit affirms Taylor’s version of events.

“Before we left, Mr. Taylor asked Mr. Bryant again if he had done everything he needed to do to have his name removed from the ballot, and Mr. Bryant confirmed that there was nothing further that Mr. Taylor had to do,” Naylor said in his affidavit.

Taylor’s affidavit notes that the Secretary of State’s office initially removed his name from its online list of candidates after he submitted the letter. His name was placed back.

Kobach said that it is the office’s policy to do this when candidates submit paperwork to file or withdraw, but that the list does not equal an official ruling.

“The protocol is that you immediately put it up on the unofficial list on the website. And then if there’s any legal question … then the unofficial list is amended,” Kobach said. “But it’s a way of notifying the public that something has happened. Putting something on the unofficial list doesn’t make it official.”

The Kansas Republican Party raised objections to Taylor’s withdrawal before Kobach made his ruling last week, accusing Democrats of undermining the electoral process in an attempt to unseat Roberts.

This week the Kansas Democratic Party accused Kobach of “bending the rules to serve his partisan political agenda.”

Kobach, a former state chair of the Republican Party and a member of Roberts’ honorary campaign committee, has repeatedly denied that his party’s desire to keep Taylor on the ballot played a role in his decision.

He said he is enforcing the law, which states that a party’s nominee can be withdrawn from the ballot if that candidate “declares that they are incapable of fulfilling the duties of office.”

Even if Taylor gets removed from the ballot, Democrats may have to appoint a replacement candidate since another statute says that when a vacancy on the ballot occurs after the primary it “shall be filled by the party committee of the congressional district, county or state, as the case may be.”

Despite his desire to withdraw from the race, Taylor was still receiving support from 10 percent of likely voters, according to a poll released this week by SurveyUSA and KSN-TV.

Orman and Roberts were deadlocked at 37 percent and 36 percent, respectively, with a margin of error of 4.2 points.

Orman’s campaign declined to comment on Taylor’s lawsuit against Kobach. Roberts’ campaign did not return a request for comment Thursday but has previously alleged that Taylor’s withdrawal was the result of a backroom deal meant to benefit Orman’s candidacy.

This story was originally published September 11, 2014 at 1:50 PM with the headline "Kansas Supreme Court will hear Chad Taylor v. Kris Kobach on Senate ballot issue."