DE SOTO, Kan. The sheriff of Kansas’ most populous county has faced no opposition to his re-election for four years, prolonging a decades-long Republican lock on the post despite big local gains by Democrats during the Trump era. So he assumed electoral fraud as the cause.
The Republican Party in Kansas City-area Johnson County is deeply divided over Sheriff Calvin Hayden’s decision investigation for at least two years in what he called numerous tips about possible election irregularities, with no criminal charges filed thus far.
Hayden is in a contentious race ahead of Tuesday’s primary election and Democrats are optimistic about his chances of winning the first sheriff’s race since 1930 in the November general election.
Hayden’s opponents, including the former deputy who challenged him in the Republican primary, say he has made the sheriff’s office unnecessarily political and made it harder to fight crime.
His public doubts about the integrity of local and state elections parallel the rise of like-minded leaders in Republican Party organizations in Kansas and other states and former President Donald Trump false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
But local Republican leaders who have looked into allegations of voter fraud in 2020 say evidence of wrongdoing was scant.
Marisel Walston, former chairwoman of the county Republican Party and co-founder of a statewide group for Hispanic Republicans, said she and other local party officials investigated allegations of voter fraud after the 2020 election. While they uncovered some errors and administrative errors, they found no fraud, she said.
Hayden remains undeterred. Asked at a candidate forum if he had confidence in the 2020 election results, he noted that the official count for his uncontested race was more than 260,000 votes, but added: “I don’t know if that’s accurate.”
As in other U.S. suburban areas, a pro-Trump pedigree is likely to be a political risk in November in Johnson County, a longtime GOP stronghold where Democratic voter registrations have grown nine times faster than Republican registrations since 2016. But Republican Party primaries the electorate in Kansas is much redder and more pro-Trump.
“Obviously, a lot of moderates have gone independent or just stopped voting in the primaries,” said former state Rep. Stephanie Sharp, a moderate Republican. “I don’t think there are enough moderates voting in the primaries anymore to vote them out in the primaries.”
Voters must choose major party candidates for Kansas’ four congressional seats, all 40 state Senate seats and 125 state House seats and offices in the state’s 105 counties.
Hayden is a former Army reservist who joined the sheriff’s department in 1981 and rose through the ranks until winning a seat on the county commission in 2008, serving a four-year term. He won a three-candidate Republican primary for sheriff in 2016, with no Democrats on the ballot.
He argues that installing a new sheriff is risky.
“We kept Johnson County safe,” he said during a candidate forum in July. “I’ll keep my record.”
Hayden confirmed his 2022 voter fraud investigation, saying he had been receiving reports of problems since the previous fall. Then, in the summer of 2022, she attended a conference for a group promoting a dubious theory that sheriffs have virtually unlimited power in their counties, although he says he is not a member.
Last month, Hayden said he suspended the investigation, blaming the county’s destruction in February of the 2019, 2020 and 2021 votes, which is at least 17 months behind schedule but in line with State Law.
Hayden’s office referred questions about his work as sheriff to his campaign, which did not respond to an interview request.
In his primary race, Hayden faces Doug Bedford, a former U.S. Navy SEAL and longtime sheriff’s officer who served as Hayden’s undersheriff from 2017 to 2021 before retiring and becoming the state’s liquor control officer. .
Bedford suggested the sheriff broke with the tradition of his office’s 700 employees being “quiet professionals” who avoid public attention.
“Now it almost seems like the goal is to be in the news,” he said during an interview at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in his hometown of De Soto, in the far west Kansas City area.
The winner of the Republican primary will face Democrat Bryan Roberson, police chief of suburban Prairie Village, whose office decor includes a cartoon portrait of “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening. The former Navy reservist would be Johnson County’s first black sheriff if he wins.
Roberson said he believes the Hayden voter fraud investigation has had a negative impact on local law enforcement.
“I’m all for investigating crimes,” he said. “But if there is no information that proves a crime, it will not be possible to keep it open.”
For at least two decades, Johnson County’s violent crime rate — homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — remained well below the state’s, according to annual report data. Kansas Bureau of Investigation reports. The homicide rate has increased since Hayden took office, from 1 to 2.2 per 100,000 residents, but all 14 of the county’s reported murders in 2023 occurred in areas outside its jurisdiction.
The county’s population has grown 75% over the past 30 years, to more than 620,000. It is also more diverse: previously 94% white and non-Hispanic, now 77%.
The Republican Party’s difference in voter registration was once almost 26 percentage points and is now 8.5 points. In an August 2022 state referendum, 69% voted to affirm the right to abortion.
“You look at what used to be this powerful, dominant Republican base in Johnson County, and you have a hemorrhage of voters who disaffiliate or switch Democrats or just start voting Democrat,” said Cole Robinson, executive director of the Democratic Party. of the county.
While Trump is expected to carry Kansas comfortably again this year, he will likely lose Johnson County after losing it by about 8 percentage points in 2020. He was the first GOP presidential candidate to fail there since 1916.
Hayden said he took it for granted that local elections ran smoothly until Trump’s appearance in 2020. He said at the recent candidate forum that his office still receives tips and complaints about election issues “every day.”
Hayden’s supporters see criticism of his voter fraud efforts as an unwarranted campaign to discredit him.
“I believe election integrity is the absolute root cause of all the ills in our country right now,” said Kay Shirley, a Johnson County Republican Party volunteer who supports Hayden. “It caught my attention when I saw he was willing to stick his head and neck out, and he just listened and paid attention.”
But even some longtime conservative Republican activists have broken with Hayden after previously supporting him.
Watson, a former chairman of the county Republican Party, said he believes Hayden’s actions and public comments undermined confidence in local elections and discouraged people from voting.
“I was very disappointed in him,” she said. “I was totally surprised that he was lending himself to this kind of thing.”
