Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has lost his bid for a second term, the Associated Press projected, with Democrat Chris Mann defeating the Republican incumbent in a tight race for the state's top legal office.
Mann, a former prosecutor and police officer who came close to unseating Kobach in 2024, holds 50.6 percent of the vote to Kobach's 49.4 percent, a margin of roughly 13,000 votes. Decision Desk HQ, The Hill's election desk partner, has not yet called the contest.
Kobach built a national profile around claims of widespread election fraud, including during his tenure as Kansas secretary of state, the office that oversees elections. He went on to serve as vice chair of President Trump's voter fraud commission during the president's first term, a panel created to find the "full truth" about fraud in American elections.
The commission became embroiled in controversy after demanding that states hand over voter roll data containing partial Social Security numbers, a request that drew objections from both parties. Kobach himself said Kansas would not provide the last four digits of voters' Social Security numbers even as his own commission sought that information from other states.
A report from Matt Dunlap, Maine's secretary of state at the time, concluded that the commission found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Trump ultimately dissolved the panel.
The defeat marks Kobach's second statewide general election loss in the past decade, an unusual record for a Republican in a state that typically votes deep red. In 2018, Gov. Laura Kelly beat him by seven points in the race for governor. He later sought the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in 2020 but fell to Roger Marshall, who went on to win the seat.
Kobach's loss on Tuesday was part of a broader collapse for Kansas Republicans. Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor, defeated Marshall by five points in the Senate race, becoming the first Democrat to capture a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas in nearly a century.
Kansas Democrats also appear set to gain about 20 seats in the state House with nearly all ballots tallied. The party looks likely to retain the governor's mansion as well, although no winner has been projected in that race.
The results in Kansas mirrored a wider Democratic surge across the country. The party flipped Senate seats in Republican-leaning states including Texas, South Carolina, Iowa and Ohio, and it captured several governorships in states currently led by Republican governors.
