Sometimes it isn’t who you know, it is how you know them. When Kris Kobach’s finance report dropped recently, The Kansas City Star noticed something interesting:
Kansas Republican Kris Kobach’s Senate campaign paid an Olathe man who regularly posted hateful comments about Jews and racial minorities on a white nationalist website.
Kobach’s campaign paid Joe Suber $500 for field coordinating services in September, according to the Republican’s latest campaign finance report. Suber also filed the paperwork with the state of Kansas creating the Kobach for Senate campaign as a limited liability company in August.
While the payment of $500 is small, the creation of the Senate Campaign Committee as an LLC is an interesting step for someone the campaign now seems to be distancing themselves from.
Kobach fired back about the distance between himself and Suber, stating:
“Mr. Suber’s comments are abhorrent, and I am personally offended by them. As a Christian, I reject all forms of racism and anti-Semitism,” he said Thursday.
While Kobach makes this statement about rejecting racism, the association with Suber isn’t the only time ties to racist organizations have haunted the candidate.
As The Guardian published last year:
“Kris Kobach has been a close and early ally of Donald Trump and a lot of his ideas have been adopted,” Mueller said. “I think he is smart enough to know where the lines are in terms of his language because he won’t want to be labeled a white nationalist in public, but we can look at his policies and his friends.”
He added: “The white supremacist guys, they love Kris Kobach because he can put on a suit, have the fancy degrees, and translate their ideas into something that is more palatable.”
Fancy degrees, yes. Good choice of friends? No.