When the Associated Press calls a claim in a Democratic ad false, as it did for a Laura Kelly ad attacking Kris Kobach, the ad has to be seriously false.
Such is the case with Kelly’s ad attacking Republican gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach on school funding. Says Kelly in the ad, “He actually says our schools are overfunded.” As the AP confirms, Kobach said no such thing.
The ad refers to a Republican primary debate in April. According to the AP fact checker, “In a nearly three-minute response, Kobach touched on a number of issues, including his plans to make Kansas schools compete for dollars based on student test scores and give students vouchers to move out of failing school districts.”
Kobach did not “actually” say “overfunded.” He said nothing like “overfunded.” In fact, he said quite the opposite, namely that “every school should have the resources it needs.”
The Kelly ad pulled from an arguably fake news article from the Kansas City Star with the absurdly loaded headline, “Kobach tears into Colyer at GOP debate, but Colyer resists urge to ‘scream and shout.'”
Star reporter Bryan Lowry wrote, “[Kobach] contended that some school districts have been overfunded, enabling them to construct “Taj Mahal-like” buildings and offer administrators inflated salaries.” To its credit, the AP did what the Kelly camp chose not to do, namely review the actual video of the event. Kobach never said “overfunded” in any context.
The AP fact check points to a larger problem, the consistent use by Democrats of dubious major media reporting to bolster their own advertising claims. As the Sentinel has reported in some depth, media throughout the state have been attributing sentiments to the “controversial” Kobach that he has never said or even implied.
As Kobach campaign manager J.R. Claeys observes, “Kris Kobach has a plan for education that directs dollars to teacher salaries and technology for students by requiring 75 cents of every education dollar goes into the classroom, where it has the greatest impact on our kids.”