DE SOTO, Kan. (AP) — The sheriff in Kansas’ most populous county faced no opposition to his reelection four years ago, extending a decades-long Republican lock on the office despite big gains locally by Democrats during the Trump era. Then he took on election fraud as a cause.

The GOP in Johnson County in the Kansas City area is deeply divided over Sheriff Calvin Hayden’s investigation for at least two years into what he has called scores of tips about potential election irregularities, with no criminal charges filed so far.

Hayden is in a contentious race ahead of Tuesday’s primary election and Democrats are bullish about their chances of winning their first sheriff’s race since 1930 in the general election in November.

Hayden’s opponents, including the former top deputy challenging him in the GOP primary, contend he has made the sheriff’s office unnecessarily political and hindered its crime-fighting.

His public doubts about the integrity of local and state elections track with the rise of like-minded leaders in GOP organizations in Kansas and other states and former President Donald Trump’s false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

But local Republican leaders who looked into allegations of election fraud in 2020 say evidence of wrongdoing was scant.

Marisel Walston, the previous chair of the county GOP and co-founder a statewide group for Hispanic Republicans, said she and other local party officers investigated allegations of election fraud after the 2020 election. While they discovered some mistakes and administrative missteps, they did not find any fraud, she said.

Hayden remains undeterred. Asked in a candidate forum whether he trusted the 2020 election results, he noted the official tally from his uncontested race was more than 260,000 votes but added, “I don’t know that that’s accurate.”

As in other suburban areas across the U.S., a pro-Trump pedigree is likely to be a political liability in November in Johnson County, a former GOP stronghold where Democratic voter registrations have grown nine times faster than Republican ones since 2016. But the GOP primary electorate in Kansas is far redder and more pro-Trump.

“We’ve had, obviously, a lot of moderates move to being independent or just stop voting in primaries,” said former state Rep. Stephanie Sharp, a moderate Republican. “I don’t think that there’s enough moderates who vote in primaries anymore to get moderates out in primaries.”

Voters are set to pick the major party nominees for Kansas’ four congressional seats, all 40 state Senate and 125 state House seats and offices in the state’s 105 counties.

Hayden is a former Army reservist who joined the sheriff’s department in 1981 and rose through the ranks until he won a seat on the county commission in 2008, serving one four-year term. He won a three-way Republican primary for sheriff in 2016, with no Democrat on the ballot.

He argues that installing a new sheriff is risky.

“We’ve kept Johnson County safe,” he said during a July candidate forum. “I’ll stand on my record.”

Hayden confirmed his voter fraud investigation in 2022, saying he had been receiving tips about problems since the previous fall. Then, in the summer of 2022, he participated in a conference for a group promoting a dubious theory that sheriffs have virtually unchecked power in their counties, though he says he is not a member.

Last month, Hayden said he suspended the investigation, blaming the county’s destruction in February of ballots from 2019, 2020 and 2021, which is at least 17 months late but in line with state law.

Hayden’s office referred questions over his work as sheriff to his campaign, which did not respond to a request for an interview.

In his primary race, Hayden faces Doug Bedford, a former U.S. Navy Seal and longtime sheriff’s officer who served as Hayden’s undersheriff from 2017 to 2021 before retiring and becoming a state liquor control officer.

Bedford suggested the sheriff has broken with a tradition of his office’s 700 employees being “silent professionals” who avoid public attention.

“Now it almost seems like that is the goal is to be in the news,” he said during an interview at the Veterans of Foreign War hall in his hometown of De Soto on the western edge of the Kansas City area.

The winner of the Republican primary will face Democrat Bryan Roberson, the police chief in the suburb of Prairie Village, whose office decor includes a cartoon portrait by “The Simpons” creator Matt Groening. The former Marine reservist would be Johnson County’s first Black sheriff if he won.

Roberson said he believes Hayden’s voter fraud investigation reflected badly on local law enforcement.

“I’m all for investigating crimes,” he said. “But if there is no information to prove a crime, you can’t keep it open.”

For at least two decades, Johnson County’s rate for violent crimes — murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — has remained well below the state’s, according to data in annual Kansas Bureau of Investigation reports. The murder rate has ticked up since Hayden took office from 1 to 2.2 per 100,000 residents, but all of the county’s 14 reported murders in 2023 were in areas outside his jurisdiction.

The county population’s has grown 75% over the past 30 years to more than 620,000. It’s also more diverse: previously 94% white and non-Hispanic, now 77%.

The GOP gap in voter registration once was nearly 26 percentage points and is now 8.5 points. In an August 2022 statewide referendum, 69% voted to affirm abortion rights.

“You look at what used to be this mighty, dominant Republican base in Johnson County, and it’s just hemorrhaging voters that either unaffiliate or flip Democrat or they just start voting for Democrats,” said Cole Robinson, executive director of the county Democratic Party.

While Trump is expected to carry Kansas comfortably again this year, he’s likely to lose Johnson County after losing it by about 8 percentage points in 2020. He was the first GOP presidential candidate to fail there since 1916.

Hayden has said he took it for granted that local elections ran smoothly until Trump’s showing in 2020. He said in the recent candidate forum that his office is still receiving tips and complaints about election problems “every day.”

Hayden’s supporters see the criticism of his efforts on election fraud as an unwarranted campaign to discredit him.

“I believe election integrity is the absolute root cause of all of the maladies in our country right now,” said Kay Shirley, a GOP volunteer in Johnson County backing Hayden. ”It got my attention when I saw that he was willing to stick his head out and his neck out, and he just listened and he paid attention.”

But even some longtime conservative Republican activists have broken with Hayden after backing him previously.

Watson, the former county GOP chair, said she believes Hayden’s actions and public comments have eroded confidence in local elections and discouraged people from voting.

“I was very disappointed in him,” she said. “I was totally surprised that he was lending himself to that sort of thing.”

A man in attendance at Morgan Wallen’s Friday night concert in Missouri has been arrested after allegedly making a “terrorist threat” against two Kansas City Chiefs players, Fox News Digital can confirm.

Wallen, who is currently on his One Night At A Time World Tour, was playing a show at the reigning Super Bowl champions’ field, Arrowhead Stadium. In video shared on social media, the country singer can be seen walking out alongside the Chiefs’ quarterback Patrik Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones.

According to court documents, an intelligence analyst screening for potential threats at the concert was concerned by a post made to X (formerly Twitter). 

MORGAN WALLEN HAS UNDERWEAR THROWN AT HIS FACE DURING CONCERT

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Aaron Brown, 23, of Winchester, Illinois, was arrested and charged with a Class E felony of Making a Terrorist Threat in the 2nd Degree.

The alleged post, in redacted form, was released in the documents.

“Mr. [redacted] at Arrowhead with the wife. If he brings out [redacted] or [redacted] I’ll take the f—in shot. F— em! Also f— you b—-!!” the tweet read.

Travis Kelce, Chris Jones and Patrick Mahomes are pictured celebrating in January 2024 after winning the AFC championship. (Emily Curiel/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

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The report clarifies that the intended victims were at the event when the alleged post was shared.

Mahomes was accompanied by his pregnant wife, Brittany, to the concert. The couple recently announced that they were expecting their third child together.

Brittany Mahomes posted photos of her and husband Patrick at the Morgan Wallen concert. (Brittany Mahomes Instagram)

The user’s contact information was extracted by law enforcement, who were able to reach Brown directly. After initially not cooperating, Brown allegedly told officers what part of the stadium he was seated in. Law enforcement discovered Brown and his girlfriend “walking away from the section to the main hallway of the floor level,” before placing Brown on an “investigative hold for terroristic events.” 

According to the report written by Detective Sarah Lewey of the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department, Brown was read his Miranda Rights before he allegedly told officers that the situation “was a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake,” and that he was “freaked out” by law enforcement’s interest in him. 

Morgan Wallen is currently on his One Night At A Time tour. His next show will be in Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium. (John Shearer/Getty Images  for Morgan Wallen’s One Night At A Time 2024)

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Brown does not have a previous legal record. He was charged on Saturday with a $15,000/10 percent bond set.

Wallen’s concert was delayed 40 minutes as a result. The “Last Night” singer’s next show is at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on August 8.

Representatives for Wallen, Kelce and Mahomes did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

TOPEKA — The magistrate who authorized last year’s police raid on the Marion County Record escaped discipline from a state panel by making claims that contradict statements in federal lawsuits about how the search warrants arrived in front of her and whether the police chief swore they were true before she signed them.

Magistrate Judge Laura Viar’s secret explanation, obtained by Kansas Reflector, adds a new layer of confusion and mystery to how law enforcement were able to carry out the search and seizure of journalists’ computers and cellphones without regard for state and federal laws that prohibit such police action. It also raises concerns about the low standards set for judges by the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody prepared search warrant applications with the assistance of a sheriff’s deputy that accused newspaper reporter Phyllis Zorn of committing identity theft by looking up a driving record in a Kansas Department of Revenue public database. Publisher and editor Eric Meyer and Councilwoman Ruth Herbel were targeted for having a copy of the record.

In court documents, Cody said he emailed the search warrant applications to County Attorney Joel Ensey, whose office delivered them to the judge. Ensey, in an email he sent to himself a day after the Aug. 11, 2023, raid, said he printed off the applications without reading them and had an office manager deliver them to the judge. That email has been attached to court filings.

A Topeka woman in April filed a complaint against Viar with the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct after reading Meyer’s lawsuit against Cody and others. The lawsuit questions whether the search warrants were legal if Cody never appeared before the judge.

In Viar’s response to the disciplinary panel, she wrote that District Judge Susan Robson approached her with an unknown law enforcement officer on the morning of the raid. According to Viar, Robson introduced the officer as Cody and said she couldn’t sign the warrants “because of her history with the city,” which isn’t explained. Cody led the judges to believe that Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents, who had assisted Cody in the investigation, were prepared to join the raid, even though they weren’t, Viar wrote.

“I can say with 100% certainty that I did not approve the search warrants and return them to Chief Cody until I had verified under oath his signature and the truthfulness of the statements in the supporting affidavits,” Viar wrote.

The disciplinary panel dismissed the complaint against Viar after receiving her response, according to a letter obtained by Kansas Reflector. It isn’t clear whether the panel, which operates in secrecy by Kansas Supreme Court rule, independently investigated the accuracy of Viar’s account.

The panel members who dismissed the complaint against Viar were Grant County District Judge Bradley Ambrosier; Kansas City, Kansas, attorney Tonda Jones Hill; Rosemary Kolich, of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth; Kansas Court of Appeals Judge Thomas Malone; and Johnson County Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan.

Viar didn’t respond to an email inquiry asking her to reconcile her account with the ones provided by Cody and Ensey.

The commission directed questions to Lisa Taylor, spokeswoman for the Office of Judicial Administration, who said, “I have no information related to this matter.”

Jared McClain, an attorney with the Virginia-based Institute for Justice who represents Herbel in her federal lawsuit over the raid, said he was surprised that Viar’s account differs “so drastically” from the police chief and county attorney.

“Those are completely different versions of the truth,” McClain said. “And I don’t see what Cody or Ensey could have to gain by telling their version of the story, because their version of the story is worse for them. But Viar’s is better for everyone. So if that were the truth, why did the other guys spend a year saying something different?”

McClain also said it was “obvious” there was no probable cause for the searches, because the police theory of a crime dealt with accessing a public record on a public website.

The same disciplinary panel previously dismissed a complaint against Viar that was based on the lack of evidence to support a crime, the federal and state laws that should have prevented the judge from signing the documents, and the violation of constitutional freedoms.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said she was disappointed the disciplinary panel had let Viar off the hook.

“It’s another level of accountability that will never happen,” Bradbury said.

Zorn, the reporter whose work became a pretext for the raid, said she was upset that police “came in with such a lousy excuse for a warrant.”

“This thing was political. And I wasn’t the target. I was actually the pawn,” Zorn said. “They seized upon something and used that as their excuse. And I will say this: I was raised by a small town cop who spent 18 and three-quarters years with highway patrol. He has been dead for four years. There’s no doubt in my mind he is still spinning in his grave.”