Candidate’s 1998 Strip Club Visit Stirs Kansas Governor’s Race
Mitch Smith www.nytimes.com mitch-smith
Paul Davis, a candidate for governor, said he was not arrested or charged in the incident and accused Republicans of “a desperate smear campaign.”
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The Democratic candidate for governor in Kansas found himself on the defensive this weekend after acknowledging that he was caught up in a police raid of a strip club years ago.

The candidate, Paul Davis, said he was not arrested or charged in the incident and accused Republicans of “a desperate smear campaign.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mr. Davis said Saturday during a meeting with campaign workers. “Nobody has ever accused me of any wrongdoing.”

Recent polling shows Mr. Davis ahead of the Republican incumbent, Sam Brownback, in the governor’s race, a lead based largely on many voters’ questions about Mr. Brownback’s handling of the state budget. But word that Mr. Davis patronized a strip club in 1998, which was first reported Saturday in a small Kansas newspaper, could prove damning in a socially conservative state where there have been recent efforts to restrict or outlaw those businesses.

“There’s still a strong strain of the Kansas electorate that looks at that kind of behavior — even going to a strip club — as very inconsistent with their religious values,” said Chapman Rackaway, a political-science professor at Fort Hays State University in western Kansas.

Politico drew national attention to the report, which was published in The Coffeyville Journal, a small newspaper in southeast Kansas that publishes twice weekly. The paper has no website but the story spread over social media sites, including Twitter postings that showed the front page of The Coffeyville Journal with the headline, “Dem Governor candidate present at drug raid in 1998.” Mr. Davis, 42, a longtime state representative who is the House minority leader, declined an interview request Sunday, but in a brief statement said he was a lawyer for the owner of the Coffeyville, Kan., club and was in the building when officers arrived.

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