'Here's a quote for you': Republican goes for jugular over reporter's questions

TOPEKA — As Kansas Rep. Pat Proctor launched his campaign to oversee state elections, he honed in on a signature phrase that would serve his interest of dismissing critics — and reporting by Kansas Reflector — while appealing to far-right voters.

His ambiguous “axis of ballot harvesting” serves as a catchall for anyone who challenges his false claims about the hazards of early voting, and signals a vast make-believe conspiracy by foreign nationals to undermine elections.

Proctor frequently repeats the phrase on the campaign trail, and used it in a fundraising message where he suggested a new law could be used to bring criminal or civil charges against Kansas Reflector.

When video surfaced in April of Proctor asserting that women stole the 2022 election on abortion, he falsely claimed the video had been doctored by voting rights advocates at the core of the so-called “axis.”

And when three nonprofits filed a lawsuit in early May to challenge new restrictions on early voting, Proctor exclaimed on social media: “The axis of ballot harvesting strikes again!”

The Leavenworth Republican declined to answer questions from Kansas Reflector seeking clarity about his contradictory comments and a definition of “the axis of ballot harvesting,” echoing President George W. Bush’s use of “axis of evil” to describe nations propping up terrorism in the early 2000s. Proctor, a retired Army colonel serving his third, two-year term in the state House, also declined to identify an example of anything Kansas Reflector has published that is inaccurate.

Instead, Proctor responded with the following statement: “Here’s a quote for you: ‘You are a partisan hack and your so-called ‘newspaper’ is a woke, leftist propaganda rag.’ Thanks for the opportunity to comment.”

The response is consistent with Proctor’s frequent criticism — including personalattacks on social media — of journalists who accurately report on him.

So far, Proctor is the only Republican to file for secretary of state in next year’s election cycle. The job involves overseeing voter registration in Kansas and guiding county-level administrators on election policy.

Republican Rep. Ken Rahjes, of Agra, plans to join the race. In an interview, Rahjes didn’t criticize Proctor. Rahjes said he is focused on “making sure our elections are safe, secure, and that Kansans have confidence that their vote is counted.”

“If you look at the outcomes of the last three presidential elections in Kansas, Donald Trump has won all three,” Rahjes said. “It looks like those elections have turned out the way that the people in Kansas have wanted.”

In contrast, Proctor calls for restrictions on early voting — even though he acknowledges that he personally enjoys the convenience of voting early. And after launching his campaign for secretary of state in early April, Proctor has criticized voting rights groups — Loud Light, Kansas Appleseed, League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas — who challenge his proposals in legislative hearings and in court.

Loud Light circulated on social media a video clip of Proctor speaking at a June 20, 2024, forum on elections that was published on Rumble, the far-right alternative to YouTube.

During the forum, Proctor recalled the fierce campaign ahead of Kansas’ August 2022 vote on abortion rights. Kansans overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment to strip those rights, and post-election audits and recounts affirmed the integrity of the election. Illegal voting is exceedingly rare in Kansas, as a federal judge ruled in 2018, as it is in the rest of the U.S.

But Proctor said he was going around to polling places in advance of the August 2022 election, “and there’s, like, all these, like, women, like 20- to 30-year-old women who, you know, that you never saw at the polls before, and it’s like a long line, got a long line, and they’re all there to vote, and it’s just the — it’s they’re stealing it fair and square.”

The Loud Light clip was unaltered, but when Proctor was asked during an April 19 town hall in Leavenworth to explain his comments, he replied: “That’d be really terrible if I’d actually said that.”

“They chopped up a video to make it look like I said that 20- and 30-year-old women were stealing the election by voting, or something like that,” Proctor said.

Melissa Stiehler, advocacy director for Loud Light, said in an interview that she was bothered by Proctor’s willingness to “drift further away from the truth” and “really embrace things that he knows to be lies.”

“We’ve had these conversations behind closed doors in the past. He knows that these things aren’t true, and yet he’s embracing this culture of conspiracy theories for his own political gain, which is desperate and shameless,” Stiehler said.

In an April 12 fundraising email, Proctor warned of “a shadowy collection of groups I call the ‘axis of ballot harvesting.'” His targets included Loud Light and States Newsroom, the parent organization of Kansas Reflector.

Proctor’s email said Kansas Reflector “is part of a vast, dark money, left-wing propaganda machine called States Newsroom.” He said “a significant percentage of that organization’s funding” comes from foreign sources, including the Swiss businessman Hansjörg Wyss.

States Newsroom follows all laws regarding nonprofits and does not accept donations from foreign-based entities. The U.S.-based Wyss Foundation’s $1.14 million grant to States Newsroom in 2020 has never been a secret. On its website, States Newsroom publishes an extensive list of donors who have contributed more than $1,000, as well as its 990 tax forms. The organization’s annual fundraising exceeds $20 million to support nonprofit news operations, including Kansas Reflector, in 39 states.

“As Chair of the House Committee on Elections, in response to this threat, I introduced House Bill 2106 to begin the process of getting foreign money completely out of Kansas politics,” Proctor wrote. “This first-step bill requires organizations campaigning for or against constitutional amendments to ensure and certify that they have not accepted foreign money over the preceding four years or face serious civil and criminal consequences.”

He then said the law would prevent “foreign nationals like Hansjörg Wyss from improperly influencing Kansas elections.”

HB 2106 requires any entity “who engages in any activity promoting or opposing” a proposed constitutional amendment to certify that each donor is not a “foreign national,” and that each donor has not received more than $100,000 from any foreign national within a four-year period.

Kansas Reflector reports on the stakes of policies and elections but doesn’t advocate for or against ballot questions or candidates.

Proctor offered a different interpretation of the law during a Feb. 4 hearing in his committee, where Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose appeared via video to complain about States Newsroom.

“We are not about to legislate who can spend money doing news in the state of Kansas, OK. We’re not going to touch that with a 10-foot pole,” Proctor said at the time.

The Legislature adopted the bill with veto-proof bipartisan support — 94-25 in the House and 39-0 in the Senate — in advance of next year’s vote on a constitutional amendment that would replace the current nominating system for Kansas Supreme Court justices with statewide elections for judicial candidates. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly allowed HB 2106 to become law without her signature.

An abortion-rights advocacy group has filed a federal lawsuit to try to block the law from taking effect.

Stiehler said Proctor’s language in the fundraising email was “really teetering on the line of at least some dog whistle language of antisemitic, globalist conspiracy theories.”

“This is a lot of hullabaloo,” she said. “He’s making up a fake problem and making up a fake enemy to try and create and drive the fear, to prove that only he is the one to fix it. And it’s all based on lies and nonsense.”