Don’t forget Sheriff Hayden’s wasteful years pushing Trump’s Big Lie, Johnson County | Opinion
Johnson County’s sheriff must have finally seen the light. After years — years — of spending his time and the public dime as chief water-carrier for Donald Trump’s still-roiling temper tantrum, Calvin Hayden has finally dropped his long-running so-called “investigation” of nonexistent voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
“As with some cases,” he said in a press release, “we must put this one on the shelf and take a pause.”
Though he says it’s to get out of the saddle (for now!), Hayden has ridden this horse hard. And it’s been an embarrassment to the sheriff himself, the good people who work in his office and especially the people of the most populous county in Kansas. After all, he’s supposed to serve them in the capacity of law enforcement — not as some self-appointed rogue deputy secretary of state.
Because the secretary of state is who’s in charge of elections in Kansas, and I’ve seen no indication that the actual incumbent, Scott Schwab, has executed his duties with anything but honor and professionalism. That didn’t keep Hayden from attacking fellow Republican Schwab, accusing him of violating statutes before a state Senate committee last year. Hayden also charged that Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman, a Schwab appointee, committed “willful violations” of the law.
Hayden has long been making the rounds on the election fraud circuit, even appearing at the 2022 convention of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in Las Vegas. That group, labeled an “anti-government extremist group” by the Anti-Defamation League, argues that county sheriffs’ authority is the ultimate say in the United States, taking precedence over state or federal law when they deem it necessary. (They’re wrong, of course.)
Anti-vax ‘safe haven’
Let’s not forget that 2020 election denialism isn’t Hayden’s only foray into today’s particular brand of internet “conservative” fantasyland. In 2021, as still-spreading COVID-19 had become the leading cause of death for police officers in the U.S., the sheriff invited unvaccinated officers from across the country to the “safe haven” of his department in Johnson County. So much for putting public safety first.
So what’s behind Hayden’s sudden change of heart? It couldn’t possibly be his looming challenge in the GOP primary from Doug Bedford, could it? The Navy SEAL vet and former undersheriff’s campaign website makes his law enforcement models clear:
“I believe the Office of the Sheriff must return to its original principles of leadership and fiscal responsibility, which were created by Sheriff Fred Allenbrand and strengthened through Sheriff Frank Denning.“
Shot fired, Sheriff Hayden. It looks to me as if an actual institutionalist — the kind of Republican who used to get elected without breaking a sweat in Johnson County — is coming for your gig.
Hayden won last time while running unopposed. His predecessors cited by Bedford weren’t known for putting their politics first. After all, it’s patently ridiculous for a Kansas county sheriff to make Fox News national talking points his main platform.
But wait — 2020 election denialism isn’t even featured on Fox News anymore (at least not overtly). That’s because the network had to pay a settlement of almost $800 million it had to pay out after airing lies about Dominion Voting Systems supposedly rigging the election for President Joe Biden. And Salem Media Group, Inc. has pulled convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza’s faux-documentary “2000 Mules” about ostensible voting irregularities from circulation, and apologized to a man who filed a defamation suit against the company over the movie. And nobody needs to go back over the many court cases Trump’s lawyers filed after the election. They lost them all — just like their guy lost the White House.
Want to know why Johnson County keeps tipping further away from the R side of the ballot? It’s partly because normal, rational people are sick and tired of the ramped-up GOP attacks on public schools, minorities and personal health care choices. But most of all, it’s because they aren’t stupid — and they are way past ready for the Trump dead-enders to drop the charade.
My fellow Star editorial board colleagues and I already called on Hayden to resign as the threat to the rule of law back in 2022. He won’t do the honorable thing. But Johnson County Republicans can quit him on their own this coming primary day.
