Chris Mann is the Democratic candidate for Attorney General of Kansas in the general election November 3, running against the incumbent Republican Kris Kobach. He is interviewed by Spencer Graves and Craig Lubow. Mann started professional life as a police officer. That career ended when he was hit by a drunk driver during a routine traffic stop. After years of physical therapy, he got a law degree from Washburn and joined the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office. He has been in private practice since 2016, first providing legal representation to those who could not afford an attorney, then expanding his law practice, primarily representing victims of drunk driving and their families. He got 49.2 percent of the vote against Kris Kobach for Kansas Attorney General in 2022. Mann said that after law school, "I became a prosecutor handling violent crime cases in Wyandotte County and then moved to the state, where I prosecuted white collar fraudsters and scam artists throughout the state. Now I have my own firm where I represent victims of drunk driving. I've also been the national board chair for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, where I've traveled the country talking to law enforcement and victims, helping to pass laws nationally and here locally that have made our roads a little bit safer. And what I want to do as Attorney General is bring this office back to public service. I want to make sure that this office isn't about Team Red or Team Blue, but about Team Kansas. It's time to take the office away from one man's political agenda and bring it back to the people of Kansas." Lubow noted that, "In your ad on TV, you mentioned that you were a security prosecutor at one time. What does that mean?" Mann replied, "That means I was taking on scam artists and white collar fraudsters throughout the entire state. In fact, one of the cases I worked was down in Sedgwick County, where I secured a decades long prison sentence against the offender who stole the life savings of a widow down in Sedgwick County. It was a terrible case where all of the money was taken, and this offender had worked to gain trust and then scammed the person out of money. So I did that work across the state, helping to protect victims." Graves noted that, "Kris Kobach, as Attorney General, has reportedly prosecuted four immigrants for illegal voting.2 Your comment." Mann replied, "This is a guy who in 2016 as part of the National Election Integrity Committee said that there were 3 million illegal votes that occurred in the United States, and he found none there. Just this year he told the people of Kansas that he would be prosecuting thousands of illegal voter cases, and he's prosecuted four. So either Kobach continues to lie to the people of Kansas, or he's really bad at his job." Graves then asked, "What's your understanding about the integrity of elections in the United States?" Mann replied, "Right here in Kansas what I know is that our elections have been deemed safe and secure for years now. Even our own Republican Secretary of State has said the same that our elections are in fact safe and secure. But we currently have an attorney general who is attacking eligible voters' right to vote in the state of Kansas. Just this year he has attacked mail-in voting, trying to stop that. He has attacked drop boxes. He is trying to make it more difficult for eligible voters to vote. The attorney general's job is actually to make sure that eligible voters' right to vote is protected. That's what I will do when I'm attorney general."1 Graves then asked about the integrity of prosecutions with police officers like Roger Golubsk and prosecutors like Tera Moorhead, who reportedly framed defendants to get convictions. Mann replied, "No one is above the law. We need to hold bad actors accountable wherever they are. My job as attorney general is to make sure that wherever someone is violating the law, we're holding them accountable. For me, it doesn't matter how wealthy or powerful they are. If folks are hurting the people of Kansas, we hold them accountable." When asked for his top priorities, Mann mentioned the following: "First supporting law enforcement and prosecutors around the state when they have complex litigation and investigations. I've been traveling the state for the past year. I've been to more than 70 counties now, traveled over 40,000 miles. I've talked to law enforcement in every corner of this state. What I continue to hear is that they're not getting the help they need from the attorney general's office. 70% of law enforcement agencies in the state have 10 or fewer officers, and the majority of those have five or fewer. If they catch a complex investigation or crime, it can take out an entire law enforcement agency. They need the backstop of the attorney general to help them fill that gap and to help them investigate and prosecute those crimes. That's number one." "Number two is consumer fraud. Just this year, the state is on track for victims to lose nearly $100 million in scams and frauds across the state. As I talk to law enforcement across the state, every city, every agency has a story about a crypto scam or online scam where someone's lost $100 or $100,000. One that I remember specifically is out in western Kansas. I was talking to a farmer out there who had put a down payment on a tractor on an online magazine. It turns out that five other people put a similar down payment down, and there never was a tractor. That farmer tried to call the attorney general's office to get help, but he was told there wasn't any help to have. We need to make sure that the attorney general's office is there for victims of fraud, making sure that we're able to investigate and prosecute those cases." "And number three, lastly, the kind of top three things we need to work on: Domestic violence across the state. Lethality in domestic violence is increasing. We lost two police officers in the past year on domestic violence calls, and shelters across the state are overcrowded and underfunded. We have to work with agencies and nonprofits to help bolster that gap. Help make sure the victims, often women and children, have a place to go. They need to be able to escape the violence so it doesn't continue ratcheting up." "Those are the top three things that I'll do when I get into office." Lubow asked what the AG's office would do under his direction to investigate and rectify wrongful convictions. Mann replied, "That falls on local district attorneys' offices to handle those cases. We would work with any district attorney's office that's dealing with cases where someone has been wrongfully convicted. No one wants that to occur. We don't want innocent people behind bars, so we would certainly help folks where those cases come up." Lubow continued, "If a local prosecutor, which has happened in the last couple years, a couple of times in Missouri, if they came to you and said they believe there's a wrongful conviction, and they file something court to get that person released based on the wrongful conviction, would you support that release and not block it, as the attorney general of Missouri has tried to do?" Mann replied, "All of those are on a case-by-case basis. I can't answer in the generic. I'd have to see the facts of any specific case, but certainly no one wants someone who's innocent behind bars." Lubow then asked, "What position would your office take on the death penalty and the use of it?" Man replied, "The attorney general's job is to follow the law that's on the books, and that law is the death penalty. To the extent that there's a case that comes across my desk, we would pursue the death penalty in that case because it's on the books. I know that there's been a lot of talk in the legislature and in communities, but that is up to our legislature to make that decision on how we proceed in our community. For me, the job of the attorney general isn't to write laws and to push a political agenda. It is to uphold the laws that are in the state of Kansas right now, and it's critical that we do that because we have an attorney general right now that picks and chooses what he wants to support. In fact, just this year, he didn't stand up for the people of Kansas when a law was challenged-a decades-old law that had been in place that didn't fit his political agenda. He chose not to defend the law against the Department of Justice, and that's not the role of the Attorney General." Graves then asked about optimal response to drunk driving. Mann replied, "This is something obviously I've worked on for a lot of my life. After I was hit by a drunk driver, it took a long time to recover. It was a painful time in my life, but I learned how to turn that pain into purpose. I learned that I could still help victims of crime in the courtroom instead of on the street, which is why I went back to law school. But also at that time, I started working with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and became the National Board Chair. We have worked through a number of programs and technologies that we think can help here in Kansas. One of the laws that I helped pass early on was all offender ignition interlock devices on vehicles of convicted drunk drivers. Since the implementation of that, we've actually seen a significant reduction in DUI fatalities. So that's just one piece. It's going to take far more than that. It's going to take more education. It's going to take more technology. There's some legislation in the federal government right now to equip vehicles with alcohol detection, passive systems, sort of like wearing a seatbelt, but making sure that you're sober to drive the car in a way that we can help folks make the right decision and stay off the road." Graves continued, "What do you know about alcohol treatment programs or requiring restitution" Mann replied, "We can talk about rehabilitation programs,
