The Kansas Republican Party is sending mailers out in legislative races around the state depicting ISIS fighters and explosions from terrorist attacks.
A mailer going to homes in Wichita’s House District 88 shows an ISIS fighter holding a machine gun with a message that reads: “Have you met the new neighbors?”
The other side of the mailer, which was paid for by the state party, touts incumbent Republican Rep. Joseph Scapa’s support for funding for training Kansas law enforcement officers to “recognize and deal with foreign and domestic threats to our state, from those who support ideologies that are in conflict with the U.S. Constitution and our Kansas values.”
Clay Barker, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, said similar mailers are being sent out in districts around the state.
“We did polling and focus groups and the one issue that got overwhelming positive response and was associated with Republicans was safety,” Barker said. “You know, Gitmo, that article that came out back in August that ISIS had named soldiers for assassinations, police being shot and those knuckleheads in Garden City, it all kind of added up to a security issue…the whole feeling that’s there violence out there. And it’s a positive issue for Republicans.”
The FBI thwarted a terror plot earlier this month in Garden City. A group of white nationalists allegedly planned to detonate a bomb at an apartment complex that houses Somali Muslim refugees and serves as a mosque.
