Rebekah Chung
·4 min read
TOPEKA (KSNT)- A man accused of fraudulently representing himself as a party chair in Kansas is speaking out.
Kris Van Meteren defended himself, doubling down on his status as chair of No Labels’ Kansas on Friday. Nexstar’s Kansas Capitol Bureau first reported Wednesday that the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) invalidated two candidates that Van Meteren filed to represent the party on the General Election ballot this year.
Van Meteren claims his filings are valid, after he registered as party chair, and provided notice of a nominating convention he held for himself.
“As the new incorporator and director of No Labels Kansas Party, Inc., I issued a call to convention, called that convention Monday morning, elected myself as Chairman, and nominated two candidates for the Kansas Senate: Marci Francisco and Echo. I was careful to document all of this and made sure I did everything in the right order.”
“Following Kansas law, I then drove to Topeka, Certificates of Nomination in hand, and filed those nominations with the Kansas Secretary of State. Bryan Caskey, of the Elections Division, kindly gave me certified, time-stamped copies of the filings and, voila, No Labels Kansas now has real nominees in a real election following real Kansas law.”
Van Meteren posted on social media
Van Meteren sent documents to Nexstar’s Kansas Capitol Bureau showing that he filed the “Formation of a Domestic Not for-Profit corporation” with the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office. One of the corporation’s – No Labels Party of Kansas, Inc. – was formed on June 3, the filing deadline for candidates, at 4:30 a.m. The other corporation he formed – No Labels Kansas Party, Inc. – was filed Thursday at 10:39 a.m. The filings can also be found on the Kansas Secretary of State’s website under business records.
Van Meteren also said in his post that the original party chair, Glenda Reynolds, is in hospice. Nexstar’s Kansas Capitol Bureau spoke with Trisha Macy, who said she’s Reynolds’ daughter, after calling the number found on the ‘No Labels Kansas’ Facebook page on Friday. Macy confirmed that Reynolds is in hospice and is not lucid.
A spokeswoman from the SOS said Friday, June 7 that they have no further comment at this time.
Meanwhile, national No Labels party officials sent a statement Friday, blasting Van Meteren’s move as a sham.
“No Labels Kansas did everything it was supposed to do according to state law: party leadership was designated and adopted; bylaws were submitted to the Secretary of State at the outset along with petition signatures. Unfortunately, this person now appears to be shamefully impersonating a No Labels official.
We don’t know him, have no affiliation with him and we hope Kansas state election officials hold him fully accountable for any violations he has committed. This is the kind of nonsense that undermines voters’ faith in our democracy and it has to stop.”
No Labels Chief Strategist Ryan Clancy
Van Meteren claims the national party is making “wild-eyed claims without understanding Kansas law.”
One of the candidates Van Meteren filed to nominate was Echo Van Meteren, his wife. The other candidate was long-time democratic Senator Marci Francisco, who said she was nominated as a third-party candidate “without her knowledge”.
“To be perfectly clear, neither Echo, Senator Francisco, nor anyone else had any foreknowledge or participation in my decision to switch my own party registration, file the necessary paperwork to legally own the No Labels Kansas Party name, call a convention for the purpose of selecting No Labels nominees, and file those nominees with the Secretary of State,” Van Meteren said on social media.
In his post, Van Meteren is also asking the SOS to reinstate his filings.
“Meanwhile, I’m calling on Secretary of State Schwab to reverse course once again and immediately reinstate these filings to avoid the appearance that he is, himself, engaging in election interference by disqualifying the No Labels Kansas Party’s nominations of Senator Francisco and Echo,” he stated.
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