Before the race has been called by major outlets, Chris Mann has declared victory in the Kansas Attorney General's race. He holds a 13,000-vote lead with 99% of the votes counted, according to the Associated Press, a margin of just over 1%.
The incumbent, Republican Kris Kobach, has not yet conceded and has not issued a statement on the election.
"We see every day that our lead continues to increase with the mail-in ballots and provisional ballots coming. It's a mathematical impossibility at this point for Kobach to catch up. So, we're confident," Mann told Up To Date at a live broadcast Thursday from Crows Coffee-Red Bridge.
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Should the results to this point hold, Mann says he plans to focus the office "back on the basics."
"70% of all law enforcement agencies have 10 or fewer officers in Kansas, and majority have five or fewer. So they count on the attorney general's office and the KBI to be that backstop," Mann said. "And I'm already having conversations, continuing those conversations that I had on the campaign trail with law enforcement across the state to make sure that we're providing those resources."
Mann also says he would want consumer fraud to be a major policy priority during his time as attorney general.
"We have seen it skyrocket over the past couple of years. In the first six months of this year, victims lost $30 million just in the state of Kansas," he explained. "We have to do more to educate, and we have to do more to work with other state and federal partners to go after the bad actors."
On KCUR's Up To Date, Mann also reinforced the idea that he wants to take political agendas out of the attorney general position. Under Kobach, the Kansas attorney general's office frequently led lawsuits against the Biden administration, and joined with the Trump administration to challenge gender policies in Kansas public schools.
"The office is going to be focused squarely on public service. That's what the people of Kansas want. That's what they deserve. They deserve someone who's just going to get in and do the work, make sure that the the hard work (gets done) of going around the state and listening to communities and finding out what the issues are and how the attorney general can plug in and help out."
- Chris Mann, Democratic nominee for Kansas Attorney General
