(From left to right) Kansas U.S. Senate candidates Kris Kobach, Roger Marshall, and Bob Hamilton – Photos: Facebook
Three of the leading Republicans running for a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas have launched ads attacking transgender rights as they attempt to court social conservatives ahead of the state’s Aug. 4 primary.
Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall, and Bob Hamilton, the owner of a plumbing business, have all attempted to outflank each other in terms of who is most opposed to transgender rights, even as the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that LGBTQ workers are protected from workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
Kobach, the presumptive frontrunner, has promised that, if elected, he would introduce legislation to withhold Title IX federal funds from schools that allow transgender students to participate in women’s sports, citing a lawsuit brought by three cisgender female track athletes from Connecticut who claim they’ve lost opportunities as a result of having to compete against transgender females.
“It’s important to remember these trans athletes destroyed the dreams of female athletes who trained their whole lives for the honor of winning that championship only to have it snatched away by a biological male,” Kobach says in a nearly five-minute web video posted to his campaign’s YouTube channel.
In the ad, Kobach also compares the fight over transgender rights to the battle over same-sex marriage, and says conservatives need to take action to ensure they don’t lose another battle in the culture war.
“It’s time to take a stand for what’s right and what’s fair. Let’s face it. People who won’t stand up for their own daughters won’t stand up for yours,” Kobach, who has five daughters, says.
Tom Witt, the executive director of Equality Kansas, denounced Kobach’s proposal.
“In the past four years we have had five bills introduced in the Kansas Legislature that single out transgender and gender-nonconforming children…and now Kobach is taking this attack on little kids national,” Witt told the Wichita Eagle. “He is clearly hostile to LGBT people and has no place making laws for us.”
Marshall has launched his own ad attacking Hamilton by claiming he “bankrolled a transgender rights group,” based on Bob Hamilton Plumbing’s membership in the Mid-America LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Hamilton’s former company joined the chamber in 2016, a year before he sold it.
But Hamilton has his own ad claiming Marshall’s ad is false, and reiterating his opposition to transgender people using the bathroom matching their gender identity.
“I’m a plumber. Public bathrooms stay separate,” Hamilton says in the ad. “NO TRANSGENDER BATHROOMS.”
When asked about his business’s membership in the Chamber, Hamilton told the Eagle, “You know, you don’t control everything in your company.”
Suzanne Wheeler, the chamber’s executive director, told the Eagle that Marshall’s ad overstates the level of financial support Hamilton’s company gave the chamber, which was about $300 a year, or slightly more than the cost of annual dues and being listed on the chamber’s website as an LGBTQ-friendly business.” The chamber has since yanked the company’s name from its website in response to Hamilton’s ad.
Wheeler also criticized Marshall for implying in his ad that belonging to the chamber was something negative.
“Almost every employer across the country has LGBT+ individuals working for them,” she said. “Attacks like that just show folks like that aren’t supportive of an inclusive business environment.”
The winner of the Republican primary will likely face off against State Sen. Barbara Bollier, the presumptive Democratic nominee and a former Republican who left the GOP after being turned off by its embrace of Donald Trump and the Kansas GOP’s repeated attacks on LGBTQ rights.
The Human Rights Campaign, which has endorsed Bollier, issued a statement denouncing the Republicans’ decision to run anti-trans ads.
“Kobach, Marshall, and Hamilton are clearly in a race to the bottom trying to scapegoat vulnerable people to win a contentious primary vote,” Geoff Westrosky, HRC’s national campaign director, said in a statement. “The ads by their campaigns attacking transgender kids and LGBTQ people are cruel and completely out of step with Kansan and American values. LGBTQ people already face marginalization, higher than average suicide rates, and fears for their own safety. They should be protected, not demonized, and dehumanized for political gain.”
Citing a PRRI poll from April, Westrosky added: “Kansas voters overwhelmingly support equality — with over 72% of Kansans supporting LGBTQ non-discrimination protections — and will reject the Kobach-Marshall-Hamilton politics of extremism.”
Lio Cundiff was sitting on a bench near Chicago's Belmont Harbor on February 18, talking on the phone with his aunt, when he looked up to see a woman screaming and chasing a baby stroller rolling toward the water after being carried off by the wind.
The National Weather Service had warned of sustained winds of 20 to 30 miles per hour, with gusts reaching 50. The force of the wind sent the stroller -- carrying an 8-month-old girl -- into the lake.
While the baby’s mother stood in shock, Cundiff, a 31-year-old Chicago transgender man and server at the local restaurant Oak and Honey, jumped into the lake and swam to the stroller, despite not knowing how to swim. He fought to keep the infant from slipping beneath the surface.
President Donald Trump has threatened to bring the government to a standstill by refusing to sign any legislation until Congress passes the SAVE America Act, a bill requiring voters to prove their citizenship.
The bill, approved by the U.S. House of Representatives last month, is currently stalled in the Senate. It would require voters to prove their citizenship by submitting a U.S. passport or birth certificate matching the name on their voter ID when registering and present valid photo identification before casting a ballot. The measure would also require states to share voter information with the Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship.
The Kansas Division of Vehicles has sent letters to transgender residents ordering them to surrender their driver's licenses under a newly enacted anti-LGBTQ law.
The letters state that transgender individuals' current licenses -- those with gender markers matching their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth -- are considered invalid as of Thursday, February 26. Recipients are instructed to surrender their licenses to obtain new credentials reflecting their sex at birth.
First reported by transgender journalist Erin Reed on her Substack, Erin in the Morning, the letter cites a recently enacted law -- vetoed by Gov. Laura Kelly and later overridden by the legislature -- requiring that all driver's licenses and state identification cards reflect the holder's "sex at birth."
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