The two were on the 2022 ballot, when Kobach won by one and a half percentage points.
Kobach is running on his record of the lowest crime rate Kansas has seen in more than 50 years. Mann is running to remove partisanship from the attorney general’s office.
Lately, donors are pouring more money into Mann’s 2026 race than the 2022 race. Compared with the same funding period as the 2022 election, Kobach has about $22,000 less in recent donations. Mann has $477,000 more.
Kris Kobach — Republican incumbent
Political experience: Kris Kobach has drawn national attention for his hardline stance on immigration and Trump-aligned contentions about voter fraud.
Kobach worked for the George W. Bush administration, where he helped design the controversial post-9/11 national security system that imposed tight supervision of male visitors from Muslim-majority countries. That was dismantled during the Obama administration.
He chaired the Kansas Republican Party from 2007 to 2009 and traveled the country calling for tighter immigration enforcement.
He won his 2010 bid for secretary of state by more than 20% after floating unsubstantiated worries about non-citizens voting. He wrote a law requiring Kansans to prove their citizenship to register to vote, but his efforts to prove widespread voter fraud crumbled in court.
President Donald Trump appointed Kobach to his short-lived voter fraud commission.
Kobach ran for governor against Democrat Laura Kelly in 2018 with Trump’s endorsement. He beat former Gov. Sam Brownback’s successor after his resignation in the Republican primary, but lost the general election by four percentage points.
He ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020, without Trump’s endorsement, and lost in the Republican primary.
He was elected attorney general in 2022 over Mann by one and a half percentage points.
What else? He got his undergraduate degree at Harvard, a Ph.D. from Oxford and then a law degree from Yale. He graduated first in the Harvard government department, and received the prestigious Marshall Scholarship to attend Oxford.
Platform: More than 50 Kansas sheriffs endorsed Kobach for his “proven law-and-order leadership,” which they attribute to the lowest crime rate in Kansas in 56 years.
He showcases the challenges he brought against Biden-era laws, like when he sued over the Title IX rule promising women the same educational opportunities as men that replaced “sex” with “gender.” He’s been a driving force behind the lawsuit against Kansas City, Kansas, Public schools for allegedly violating parents’ rights by allowing students to socially transition at school without their parents knowing.
Kobach teamed up with the U.S. Department of Justice on a legal challenge to end in-state tuition for non-citizens who grew up in Kansas.
Chris Mann — Democratic challenger
Political experience: Mann has never held elected office.
He was a police officer in Lawrence until a drunk driver hit his patrol car, sending him airborne. The damage to his nerves and muscles rendered him temporarily unable to walk, and the lasting pain forced him to retire.
He then went to law school and worked as a prosecutor in Wyandotte County and later for the Kansas Securities Commission.
He’s spent much of his career representing victims of drunk driving and volunteering with Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
What else? Mann points to the one-and-a-half percentage point margin between him and Kobach — the smallest margin in a statewide election that year — and said this time is different because he expects to raise more money and travel to more parts of the state.
Platform: On his website, Mann says the attorney general’s office should not promote partisan agendas.
He wants to support local law enforcement, expand training and mental health resources for police officers, fight fraud — especially when it’s AI-generated — and better fund domestic violence shelters.
“For the past three and a half years, the Kansas attorney general’s office hasn’t been focused on protecting Kansans,” his site reads. “It’s been focused on grabbing headlines and scoring political points.”