Kris Kobach

Kris William Kobach (born March 26, 1966) is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the attorney general of Kansas since 2023.

Kobach was born in Madison, Wisconsin on March 26, 1966.

His family moved to Topeka, Kansas when he was seven years old, where his father owned a Buick dealership, that Kobach worked at while in high school.

In 1984, Kobach graduated from Washburn Rural High School in Topeka, Kansas, where he was co-valedictorian, and the student body class president.

He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude and first in his department.

Kobach was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

The director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs, Professor Samuel P. Huntington, was Kobach's faculty advisor from 1984 to 1988.

Huntington believed that migration, especially from Mexico and Latin America, represented the most perilous threat to what he called the "American identity."

When Kobach taught law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Huntington's writings were required reading in the course.

From Harvard, Kobach went on to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in politics from Brasenose College of Oxford University, having been selected for a Marshall Scholarship.

Returning to the U.S., he earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1995, and became an editor of the Yale Law Journal. During this time, Kobach published two books: The Referendum: Direct Democracy in Switzerland (Dartmouth, 1994), and Political Capital: The Motives, Tactics, and Goals of Politicized Businesses in South Africa (University Press of America, 1990).

From 1995 to 1996, Kobach clerked for Judge Deanell R. Tacha of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Lawrence, Kansas.

He began his professorship at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law (UMKC) shortly thereafter.

In 2001, President George W. Bush awarded him a White House Fellowship to work for Attorney General John Ashcroft.

At the end of the fellowship, he stayed on as counsel to the attorney general.

Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, he led a team of attorneys and researchers who formulated and established the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System.

In addition, he took part in work to reshape the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2002.

After his government service ended, he returned to UMKC to teach law until he was elected Kansas Secretary of State.

He was later the Republican nominee in Kansas's 3rd congressional district in the 2004 election, losing to Democratic incumbent Dennis Moore.

While running for Congress in 2004, Kobach represented out-of-state students on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in a lawsuit against the state of Kansas, challenging a state law which grants in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants.

The suit was dismissed for lack of legal standing for the plaintiffs.

In 2005, Kobach filed a lawsuit on behalf of FAIR's Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), challenging a similar law in California.

In September 2008, the California Court of Appeal held that California's law granting in-state tuition rates to undocumented immigrants was preempted by federal law.

(Martinez v. Regents, 166 Cal. App. 4th 1121; 2008).

He was elected Secretary of State of Kansas in 2010, winning nearly 60% of the total vote.

As Secretary of State of Kansas, Kobach implemented some of the strictest voter identification laws in the history of the United States and fought to remove nearly 20,000 registered voters from the state's voter rolls.

In November 2010, the California Supreme Court unanimously reversed, finding that the law was not so preempted, because it was based on attendance for three years and graduation from a California high school.

In 2010, Kobach filed a third similar tuition lawsuit, this time in Nebraska.

The case was dismissed in a Nebraska district court in December of that year, for plaintiffs' lack of legal standing.

He previously served as the 31st secretary of state of Kansas from 2011 to 2019.

A former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, Kobach rose to national prominence over his support for anti-immigration advocacy, including involvement in the implementation of high-profile anti-illegal immigration ordinances in various American cities.

Kobach is also known for his calls for stronger voter ID laws in the United States.

He has made claims about the extent of election fraud in the United States that some studies and media have said are unsubstantiated.

Kobach began his political career as a member of the City Council of Overland Park, Kansas.

Kobach announced in June 2017 that he would run in the 2018 primary for Governor of Kansas against then-Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer, who became governor in January 2018 following the resignation of Sam Brownback.

After narrowly defeating Colyer in the Republican primary by less than 500 votes, Kobach was defeated by Democrat Laura Kelly in the general election.

In July 2019, Kobach launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate in the 2020 campaign after Senator Pat Roberts announced his retirement.

Upon the campaign's launch, Kobach implied he had Trump's support.

Kobach's main opponent in the Republican primary August 4 was U.S. Representative Roger Marshall, who received 40 percent of the vote to Kobach's 26 percent; nine other candidates split the remaining 33.5 percent of the vote.

He became the Republican nominee for Kansas Attorney General in 2022 and was elected to the post on November 8, 2022.