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As I noted on Thursday, Chad Taylor, the putative Democratic nominee for US Senate in Kansas announced his intention to drop out of the race, setting up the potential of a two-way race between Republican Sen. Pat Roberts and upstart independent candidate Greg Orman. When he announced his resignation yesterday, Mr. Taylor relied on a Kansas statute that allows a candidate to remove him or herself from the ballot, provided proper notice is given to the secretary of state before the deadline. Later today, Kris Kobach, the Republican secretary of state, announced that Taylor鈥檚 notice was not legally sufficient and that his name would stay on the ballot:

The statute that controls this issue is KSA 25-306b(b), which states as follows:

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The issue here, of course, is that Taylor鈥檚 letter to the secretary of state doesn鈥檛 specifically declare that they are 鈥渋ncapable of fulfilling the duties of the office, if elected. Kobach鈥檚 argument is that since the letter doesn鈥檛 include language to that effect, it is not sufficient under the law. One potential counterargument to that statement is that the statute does not specifically say that the notice to the secretary of state must specifically state that the person in question is incapable of fulfilling the duties of office. Taylor, meanwhile appears to be making an estoppel argument in that he is saying that a representative of the office told him that his letter was sufficient and that he relief upon that argument in proceeding forward with the letter as is. Of course, it鈥檚 common knowledge that government employees are not supposed to be giving people who use government offices legal advice, so I鈥檓 not certain that a court would hold that Taylor was justified in relying on these alleged comments from Kobach鈥檚 deputy. In any case, Taylor is saying that he intends to fight Kobach鈥檚 decision, so it would appear that this matter isn鈥檛 completely resolved.

On some level, I have to wonder if keeping Taylor鈥檚 name on the ballot will really have as big an impact on the race as Republicans seem to think. If Taylor doesn鈥檛 campaign and endorses Ordman, and if state and national Democrats do the same then it seems likely that most of the people who were going to vote for Taylor will end up switching to Orman anyway. So, while it still seems unlikely that a Republican can actually lose a Senate race in Kansas, something that hasn鈥檛 happened for about 80 years at this point, Roberts may not be out of the woods quite yet. This is likely the reason that the national Republican Party has essentially taken over Roberts鈥檚 campaign, in no small part because Roberts himself hasn鈥檛 seemed to be very interested in campaigning since he won the primary last month. With the challenge from Orman now potentially becoming far more serious, the national GOP obviously sees this is as a problem.

So, it remains unclear how all of this will pan out, but it does appear as though Kansas is going to be the unlikely site of an interesting campaign in 2014.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.