Milton Wolf has filed a request to get his Republican primary opponent, incumbent Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, thrown off the state ballot.
“As a citizen and permanent resident of the State of Kansas, I would like to formally request that his application for the ballot be denied by your office given that Senator Roberts isn’t currently a resident of the State of Kansas,” wrote Wolf in a letter to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
Wolf, a distant cousin of President Obama and a Kansas City-area radiologist, claims that Roberts is actually a resident of Alexandria, Va. rather than Dodge City, Kan., as the senator claims on his election forms.
This disqualifies Roberts from holding office, claims Wolf, who cites Article I, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution which says “No person shall be a Senator who shall not…when elected, be an inhabitant of that state for which he shall be chosen.”
Wolf, a tea party favorite, pointed out that Roberts only recently began renting a room from a donor in Dodge City.
Before that, Wolf claims that Roberts was merely a landlord in the Kansas town who listed his Virginia home as his primary address.
“In at least his past two elections, Senator Roberts has used half of a duplex that he owns in Dodge City as the address from which he voted, and filed for the ballot,” wrote Wolf in the letter, released Friday.
“I call upon you,” Wolf wrote to Kobach, “to extend the same treatment to Pat Roberts that you would extend to anyone else whose primary residence is outside of Kansas, and not allow him to enjoy privileges that others do not enjoy, merely because he is a U.S. Senator.”
Wolf has relentlessly hammered Roberts on the residency issue in campaign ads, on Twitter and on the campaign trail.
The underdog challenger — a February poll had Roberts at 49 percent and Wolf at 23 percent among Republican voters — takes a La-Z-Boy recliner to campaign events, a play off of an off-the-cuff remark Roberts made to a reporter.
“I have full access to the recliner,” Roberts joked to The New York Times earlier this year.
Roberts, 78, was fist elected to the Senate in 1996 and to the House in 1980.
In an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation, Kobach clarified the process by which objections must be filed in Kansas, saying he does not have unilateral authority to boot Roberts off of the ballot.
“We certainly take it seriously,” said Kobach, “but Mr. Wolf is asking me to do something I don’t have the legal authority to do.”
“If Mr. Wolf wishes to, he has three days now to file a formal objection to the qualification for the office of Senator Roberts. If he files that objection it triggers a hearing to the state objections board.”
The board consists of Kobach, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer.
Wolf’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request on whether they planned to file a formal objection.
“Wolf’s charges are untrue, a fact recognized today by the Kansas Secretary of State,” Roberts campaign director Leroy Towns told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Kansas Republican primary will be held Aug. 5.
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