topeka, kan. <u+2014> kris kobach is only 50, but he<u+2019>s the closest thing the fractured republican party has to an ideological godfather on the two most galvanizing issues in the conservative arsenal: immigration and voting rights. much of what donald trump will say on those two topics at tonight<u+2019>s third and final general election debate has been influenced, in one form or another, from kobach<u+2019>s law book-strewn second-floor office in the kansas secretary of state<u+2019>s imposing, renaissance revival-style headquarters in downtown topeka. story continued below there are lunch crumbs on kobach<u+2019>s wrinkled blue blazer, his laptop is open to facetime (he<u+2019>s on hour nine of a remote deposition with a lawyer in d.c.) and i can tell he is itching to get home for dinner to see his wife and five daughters. but the harvard- and yale-trained attorney-intellectual is a high-yield, right-wing policy farm: he almost single-handedly championed arizona and alabama<u+2019>s clampdown immigration laws and promoted the idea of immigrant <u+201c>self-deportation<u+201d> that mitt romney embraced in 2012 <u+2014> which trump used to argue was politically stupid, at least until kobach came up with a plan that could (in his view) force mexico to actually pay for the wall. <u+201c>the wall is not my idea,<u+201d> said kobach, who has been talking with trump about immigration, on and off, since the new hampshire primary. <u+201c>where i have offered some input on the wall proposition or policy is on this issue of, you know, is it possible to force mexico to pay for it, and the answer is yes, actually.<u+201d> his idea, which has been embraced by trump (and dismissed as a politically expedient joke by president barack obama and others) is to use provisions in the patriot act to tax the remittances sent by illegal immigrants back to mexico by tracking their wire transfers through banks and western union. <u+201c>it would be pretty simple to enforce,<u+201d> kobach claims, adding, without a hint of irony: <u+201c>banks are very good at following the law.<u+201d> while many republicans <u+2014> trump<u+2019>s running mate, mike pence, and campaign manager kellyanne conway, to name two <u+2014> are shying away from trump<u+2019>s incendiary rhetoric about the election being <u+201c>rigged,<u+201d> kobach offers words of tempered support for the allegation. <u+201c>is it rigged?<u+201d> he asks. <u+201c>no, i don't think so. in the sense that we normally use the term <u+2018>rigged,<u+2019> that the officials in those states are trying to make that happen? no. is it a situation where some interests are happy to look the other way when non-citizens are voting? yes. and so, you know, it depends on how you define <u+2018>rigged.<u+2019><u+201d> as secretary of state, kobach has oversight over many of the state<u+2019>s agencies and has tried to impose some of the nation<u+2019>s strictest voter id laws<u+2014> including two provisions struck down this year by judges who believed they presented unnecessary hurdles to minority voters. but kobach steadfastly defends his actions and says he<u+2019>s seen evidence that voter fraud, while rare, could swing close elections. he rejects studies, like a widely cited report from the liberal brennan center that puts the national rate of voter fraud at a .0004 percent rate (meaning it<u+2019>s less common than lightning strikes on humans), as <u+201c>biased.<u+201d> kobach counters with two data points. first, about 25 illegal immigrants recently tried to register to vote in sedgwick county, the area around wichita. (<u+201c>extrapolate,<u+201d> he said. <u+201c>that's just one county <u+2014> 25 people in three years. you're talking probably well over 1,000 statewide over a longer period of time.<u+201d>) in court papers, he<u+2019>s also pointed to 230 cases of voter fraud over 13 years as justification for requiring proof of citizenship at polling sites. <u+201c>any time you look at voter fraud as a percentage of the total electorate it's always going to look tiny,<u+201d> he admitted. <u+201c>but the question is, is there enough voter fraud to swing a very close election? and the answer is almost always yes. in kansas, in any given year, for the state legislature, we typically have, you know, three to six elections where the result is, you know, fewer than 40 votes<u+2019> difference between the winner and the loser. we had an exact tie again this year. we had an exact tie a few years ago, as well.<u+201d> he<u+2019>s not in kansas anymore: the real potential for massive fraud exists in big battleground states with high hispanic voting rates. <u+201c>florida. they started looking at this issue a few years ago, and they found thousands of aliens on the voter rolls,<u+201d> he told me. <u+201c>if it's close, the votes of aliens could turn the election. another one is colorado, where you have a large percentage of aliens. they don<u+2019>t have the protections in place in colorado that we do in kansas and the other three states. that one could be swung by aliens on the voter rolls. another one possibly is nevada. another one is possibly virginia. virginia has a very high percentage of noncitizens in north virginia.<u+201d> in that sense, the two causes of his life are intertwined: he wants the borders protected <u+2014> to safeguard america<u+2019>s economic and cultural interests <u+2014> and wants to keep undocumented aliens from improperly contaminating the country<u+2019>s political process. trump embodies many of the same principles, but whereas he shouts them into a microphone to the millions <u+2014> kobach weaves them together in a rational, harmonious synthesis of fact, ideology, tightly argued legalese and dulcet rhetoric. he<u+2019>d probably like to be a big-time politician <u+2014> he ran unsuccessfully for congress a couple of years ago <u+2014> but he doesn<u+2019>t have what he calls the <u+201c>showman<u+201d> presence and seems destined to be a broker, not a barker. for instance: while most republicans are focused on their candidate<u+2019>s performance, kobach is urging trump to speak up for increasing domestic surveillance of homegrown islamic terrorism, an issue he thinks has gotten short shrift at the debates. despite trump<u+2019>s late-campaign swoon, kobach remains a steadfast supporter, and he thinks his man has forever made the immigration issue a core cause for the gop (even if polls show a majority of voters supporting some <u+201c>path to citizenship<u+201d>). he doesn<u+2019>t like the trump groping scandal, not so much for the moral implications, but because it distracts from the real issues (kobach<u+2019>s official line is that the developer is innocent until proven guilty by his accusers), but he hates the way the man talks about women. <u+201c>that bothers me, obviously <u+2014> you know, i'm the father of five daughters,<u+201d> he said. but kobach isn<u+2019>t about joining cults of personalities <u+2014> he<u+2019>s about using trump<u+2019>s popularity as a vehicle for his own agenda, and will gladly join the next crusade provided the crusaders carry his bible. his record of exporting that agenda is impressive but spotty, and the viability of his hard-right politics has been sharply questioned by members of his own party <u+2014> including a pre-candidate trump who once said that romney<u+2019>s embrace of self-deportation <u+201c>cost votes.<u+201d> in 2012, the supreme court struck down three of four key provisions in the kobach-drafted arizona immigration law, arguing that some provisions usurped federal authority. a similar law in alabama created significant problems on the ground, and republican state officials have been pushing to soften some of its provisions, including the use of immigration status as way to deny school registration to the children of illegal immigrants. frank sharry, one of the most vocal advocates of immigration reform, has placed kobach among the <u+201c>leading lights of intolerance and nativism in our country,<u+201d> one of <u+201c>a rogue<u+2019>s gallery of nativists.<u+201d> but in an interview wednesday, sharry, founder of america<u+2019>s voice, noted that the courts have overturned some of kobach<u+2019>s top priorities, and polls show public opposition to others. <u+201c>he<u+2019>s pushing the envelope in a radical right direction,<u+201d> said sharry. <u+201c>to the extent he succeeds, he accelerates the political downfall of the republican party, and to the extent he succeeds legally, it<u+2019>s mostly a delay." but kobach has never given up. in many ways, his will to win was forged in the classic crucible of conservatism: he was a brilliant high school debater (dad was a car dealer, mom was a homemaker) so off he went to crazy-liberal harvard, and then even more left-wing yale for law school, where he earned a reputation as a keen-eyed polemicist with a strong competitive streak. <u+201c>you kind of feel like you're under siege, because you're constantly defending yourself, and that<u+2019>s the way it was for me at harvard,<u+201d> he said with a smile. <u+201c>there is a conceit on the left that because professors are overwhelmingly liberal then evidently that's the intellectually correct position. but, inevitably, as a debater <u+2014> and i debated at harvard as well <u+2014> in most issues, when you get down to it, many of the liberal positions, when you strip away like the layers of an onion, the superficial reasons they give, at the core it's just an emotional basis,<u+201d> kobach told me, <u+201c>whereas many of the conservative positions on the same issues are much more based in facts and in data.<u+201d> and this, he said, makes liberals vulnerable, <u+201c>because they may not have the evidence that they need to marshal a defense of their position.<u+201d> he<u+2019>s candid about why he was drawn to immigration as an issue, even as a law student: it<u+2019>s important, but it also arouses people<u+2019>s political passions and he likes to be in the middle of the action. <u+201c>immigration issues in presidential election cycles, they're always in the top,<u+201d> he said. <u+201c>immigration policy affects your national security. your immigration policy will affect your taxes. it will affect the welfare systems of the country,<u+201d> he added. <u+201c>it will affect crime statistics in the country. it will affect culture, broadly defined. and so, it's one of those issues that touches everything else, and it's also an issue that people <u+2014> a lot of people have an opinion on, so it<u+2019>s a fascinating issue to work in as a lawyer, and it's a fascinating issue to work in as someone who<u+2019>s in the political field.<u+201d> and trump <u+2014> so consonant ideologically and dissonant stylistically <u+2014> fascinates kobach, in part, because the two allies are so different as individuals. <u+201c>one of the things that struck me when i first met him and spoke to him for the first time is just how intellectually hungry he was,<u+201d> kobach said of his first encounter with trump late last year. <u+201c>you give him information, you know, he'll grab at that information and say, <u+2018>that's really interesting,<u+2019> and then he'll say to another staff member, <u+2018>get that for me. i need that right now,<u+2019> or something. it struck me that his mind is like a sponge.<u+201d> sarah wheaton contributed to this report. by bill scher by joshua zeitz by thomas wright by jack shafer
trump<u+2019>s immigration whisperer - politico
jack shafer