Embattled Bourbon County Clerk Susan Walker is turning to the courts to try to defeat a recall effort aimed at removing her from office.
Walker filed a lawsuit on May 22, 2026, against County Attorney James Crux and the recall committee, initially demanding a preliminary injunction and the dismissal of the petition.
However, a few days later, Walker’s attorney — Jonathan Ehrlich — withdrew the request for an injunction against circulating the recall petition and asking for Judge Richard M. Fisher Jr. to declare the petition invalid.
In the lawsuit, Walker contends that the petition is “insufficient” because Crux failed to read a second draft of the recall petition.
The original draft accused Walker of “misconduct,” but Crux had the committee remove that word along with other minor changes before certifying the second draft as sufficient.
Walker claims that because she never saw a copy of the second petition before its circulation, the petition was invalid.
Walker also asked, in a separate motion, to dismiss the recall committee — Kevin Wagner, Kyle Parks and Lyle Owenby — as defendants in the lawsuit, which Fisher granted.
However, Kevin Wagner, through his attorney Patrick B. Hughes, filed a motion asking that the recall committee not be dismissed. As of publication, Fisher has not acted on the motion.
Wagner, in a phone interview, said Crux — contrary to what Walker claims — did indeed read the amended petition.
“[Crux] witnessed me sign the second one; he watched me sign the first one, also, but I hand-delivered it to him, and then the other two petitioners followed me and signed the petition at his office also,” Wagner said.
Moreover, Wagner’s filing contends that, because he had previously filed a motion to strike Walker’s claims under the Kansas Anti-SLAPP law, further motions should have been stayed until his motion was heard.
Anti-SLAPP laws — the Kansas statute is called the Public Speech Protection Act — are designed to protect defendants from meritless, retaliatory lawsuits known as SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation); in other words, lawsuits intended to suppress free speech. If the lawsuit is found to violate the anti-SLAPP statute, the defendant’s attorneys’ fees and costs are automatically shifted to the plaintiff.
Wagner’s attorney argues that this lawsuit — and the dismissal of the recall committee — violate the statute.
“Defendant Wagner would not object to the dismissal of the case as a whole,” the filing states. “In fact, that is the appropriate disposition since it fails to state a claim — a point for decision in connection with a motion to strike or by a separate motion. However, as a member of the recall committee whose fundamental constitutional rights Plaintiff seeks to adjudicate, he objects to the recall committee members’ dismissal from the case merely to allow it to proceed without the overlay of their rights under the Kansas anti-SLAAP statute, K.S.A. 60-5320, under which Plaintiff and her counsel risk incurring fee-shifting obligations and sanctions.
“In practical terms, this is yet another effort to silence the recall committee. This time, rather than attempting to silence them in the streets, she is attempting to silence them in the courtroom.”
Walker has a history of apparent intimidation
This is not the first attempt by Walker to silence opponents. Indeed, in a press release in response to the “vote of no confidence” by the Bourbon County GOP, Walker listed the names of three people who are sponsors of the petition, when and if they voted in the November 2025 election, and of five people carrying the petition who did not vote at all in the election.
“I completed a KORA request on the Sponsors and Circulators of Voting History to see if they voted during the General Election in 2025,” Walker said in the release.
However, she declined to answer how those names and voting records were relevant to the petition. Walker, as chief election officer, would presumably have access to those records without a KORA request. As chief records custodian, she is the person to whom a similar request would normally be addressed.
The Sentinel asked why she felt it necessary to file a KORA request for data she should have access to and to whom it was addressed. Walker declined to answer those questions as well.
Further, Walker admitted in a recent email that she had an attorney send a “cease-and-desist” letter to a Bourbon County resident, accusing them of defaming her.
“This is a legal matter and does not concern this particular situation regarding the election,” Walker wrote, while asking for more time to answer an initial series of questions about her conduct posed by The Sentinel. ‘The cease-and-desist letter was written as a result of the individual falsely accusing me of a crime in an effort to defame me.”
The Sentinel then asked Walker to provide evidence of defamatory conduct by the resident or provide the letter in question. Walker promised to send the resident’s Facebook statement, which prompted the letter, but never did so.
The Sentinel pressed further about any evidence of defamatory conduct toward Walker. She declined to comment.
Mistakes in Uniontown school board race prompt Bourbon County recall
Walker is facing a potential recall less than two years after she was elected — running unopposed — following ballot errors in the November general election.
The action stems from the Uniontown USD 235 school board race, in which Walker’s office — by her own admission — printed ballots that omitted the school board candidates’ names during early voting. Correct ballots were eventually printed — the night before the election — and delivered to polling places.
