GOP Operative: Kris Kobach’s Campaign Was ‘The Most Dysfunctional Thing I’ve Ever Seen’

While Kansas Republican gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach might blame his Tuesday night loss to Democrat Laura Kelly on a lack of funds, a series of GOP operatives say his own “dysfunctional” campaign is to blame, according to a Friday report from the Kansas City Star. “It was the most dysfunctional thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” one unnamed GOP operative told the Star. The operative explained that Kobach ignored campaign advice and failed to establish a basic “get out the vote” program, and that at one point his office didn’t even have a working phone system, and that many volunteers were never contacted. “It didn’t appear that Kris Kobach seemed all that interested in working on the things that mattered, like fundraising, grassroots organizing, or asking voters for their support,” another source said. But some members of Kobach’s team were committed to blaming a lack of funds: “We got outspent,” Kobach’s campaign manager said, speaking on the day following the election. “It’s hard to deliver messages when you don’t have the resources to get them out to everybody.” But yet another GOP source disagreed: “The joke was, you’d say ‘the Kobach campaign’ and (then) you’d say, ‘what campaign?’”