Embracing election conspiracies could sink a Kansas sheriff who once looked invulnerable

DE SOTO, Kan. (AP) — The sheriff in Kansas’ most populous county faced no opposition to his reelection four years ago, extending a decades-long Republican lock on the office despite big gains locally by Democrats during the Trump era. Then he took on election fraud as a cause.

The GOP in Johnson County in the Kansas City area is deeply divided over Sheriff Calvin Hayden’s investigation for at least two years into what he has called scores of tips about potential election irregularities, with no criminal charges filed so far.

Hayden is in a contentious race ahead of Tuesday’s primary election and Democrats are bullish about their chances of winning their first sheriff’s race since 1930 in the general election in November.

Hayden’s opponents, including the former top deputy challenging him in the GOP primary, contend he has made the sheriff’s office unnecessarily political and hindered its crime-fighting.

His public doubts about the integrity of local and state elections track with the rise of like-minded leaders in GOP organizations in Kansas and other states and former President Donald Trump’s false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

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