You can read it here on the original platform - https://thatguyinhutch.substack.com/p/lets-talk-about-those-videos

If you haven’t seen it, some disturbing videos show my opponent, Kyler Sweely, simulating sexual assault on an unconscious woman. I won’t post them here, but you can find them on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter/X, and likely other social media.

There’s been considerable reporting on it, and I’ll link to all of those below, before I get to some of my comments and elements I want to make sure are clearly understood.

Wichita Eagle - this is by far the most comprehensive story.

Endorsement of Jason Probst by Wichita Eagle

Topeka Capital Journal

Kansas Reflector

Harvey County Now

You are free to read through those and decide for yourselves whether you think these two people are fit for office. I, for one, do not think they are.

These videos were anonymously sent to me earlier in October, and I promptly turned them over to law enforcement.

I said from the beginning that my opponent’s entire campaign was built on a lie, and that he was a tool of the establishment and wealthy elites. The Republican leadership in Topeka and groups like the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, AFP, and another half dozen money groups that have spent untold amounts of money in an attempt to slander and ruin my name, have worked incredibly hard to prop up Sweely’s campaign.

This new reporting validates my position. In this election, I have been maliciously attacked, lied about, smeared, and had my character called into question. It has been my supporters, volunteers, and me against the full force of the Republican/Corporatist machine.

The top Republican in the Kansas House, Dan Hawkins, once told me that he despises liars. But, his office repeatedly tried to kill a story that would expose the lies of my opponent, and the lies of his friend State Rep. Avery Anderson, who is in charge of the Republican House Campaign Committee. This is the group that recruited and promoted my opponent in the first place.

Hawkins’ Chief of Staff Carrie Rahfaldt threatened reporters with a bad time if they ran the story, then claimed Hawkins had no idea what she was doing. It’s not often that leadership staff makes any substantial moves without the approval of the Speaker. An excerpt from the story…

Meanwhile, Hawkins referred to me as a “vulture” - blaming me for the distribution of the video, which I had nothing to do with. I showed the video to a few close friends and asked for their guidance. We all agreed I should alert law enforcement and wash my hands of the videos, which is precisely what I did.

Several weeks after I turned the video over to police, other people I have never met began forwarding me the videos asking me if I had seen them. That’s when I learned the videos had spread online.

I’ll post the full police report as well, which shows that Anderson and Sweely have changed their stories several times. We’ve heard that it was a double date, that it was just three people, then four people. Anderson tells police he was the voice on the video, and then calls back later - after receiving multiple media inquiries about his role - to “clarify” that he was in the other room.

This flies in the face of statements made by Sweely, who so eloquently told the Wichita Eagle, “One-hundred-thousand percent also that was not Representative Avery Anderson in the video or that took the video,” Sweely said. “He was not even there.”

At some point, I hope they’ll all get together and figure out what their final version of the truth is going to be.

I’m skeptical of all these people who doth protest too much - advising this group of people are individuals who hired an actress and stood up an out-of-state PAC to record a completely fabricated hit ad on a Wichita mayoral candidate.

Not to mention, if nothing criminal or inappropriate happened, why all the effort to cover it up? And why is Anderson so desperate to put distance between himself and the incident?

In all of this, there’s never once been an acknowledgement by Sweely or Anderson or by any of the other political operatives involved in this that they did anything wrong. Not once.

Instead, they have spent all of their energy trying to shift the blame to me. They’ve said that I’m the one who spread the video and made a political issue of it. Go through my material, and you’ll find this is the first time I’ve said anything on the matter - outside of a veiled reference in a comment and a post on Facebook after the video was widely shared in the community.

But they have failed through all of this to hold themselves to the same level of accountability they hold others.

When people in Kansas are trying to access food benefits, unemployment benefits, or ask their lawmakers to expand Medicaid and give them access to affordable healthcare - people like Anderson, Sweely, and Hawkins will scream that people need to be held accountable for their actions.

In this instance, it seems, they hope to deflect blame to everyone else.

As the Wichita Eagle Editorial Board stated in their endorsement of my candidacy…

I have friends and family who have suffered through varying degrees of sexual assault - from workplace harassment to horrific crimes that most of you likely couldn’t handle to read about. As a reporter, I’ve covered dozens of sexual abuse cases and each has one thing in common - the offender always finds someone else to blame and they never accept responsibility for what they’ve done. There’s a term for it - DARVO - an acronym for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

Sweely nor Anderson have taken any responsibility for their actions. And they have yet to make any sort of apology or statement of regret for their behavior - or for lying to the people of Kansas and specifically the people of the 102nd District in Hutchinson.

Instead, I got a threatening email from Anderson’s attorney claiming defamation. A colleague of mine, who also received the email, responded and pointed out that Avery’s claims to his attorney differed from what was in the Wichita Police Department’s police report.

Avery himself told law enforcement that he was the in the room and he was the voice on the video. Then, after realizing he messed up, called law enforcement to tell them that his first statement was all wrong and that he suddenly remembered there was someone else in the room the whole time.

We’ve yet to receive a substantive response from his attorney.

Which brings me to the police report.

https://preview.redd.it/2ztsyazmwiyd1.png?width=1224&format=png&auto=webp&s=27f721743a25c756fc7fb36b9ba0438e72214fb9

https://preview.redd.it/o3pvdfoqwiyd1.png?width=1282&format=png&auto=webp&s=7138f4cd394c42cbfecba0249b5470cf54ed76cd

https://preview.redd.it/g5toj1xrwiyd1.png?width=1700&format=png&auto=webp&s=ef7b5220f841cffd5c8f78caa6add85f8b956c43

I am sorry the alleged victim in this case has had to endure all of this. I wish that she hadn’t. In fact, I wish that the actions of Sweely and whoever else Anderson decides was or wasn’t present at the time, never happened at all. I’m glad she didn’t feel like a victim, and I hope that’s genuine. Victims throughout history have been coerced into minimizing their feelings about the abuse they’ve suffered - or been outright threatened if they dare come forward.

That’s the only apology I’ll offer here.

I owe no apology to reckless men who treat women like they’re less than human, or make light of sexual abuse.

I owe no apology to a political machine that thought it could lie to my community about the integrity of their sham of a candidate.

I owe no apology to an overgrown corporate lobbying apparatus that feels entitled to ruin reputations and divide strong communities so they can financially gain.

And I owe no apology for standing up for myself, for my community, or for my state.

But I will be eagerly awaiting for an apology from them for the harm they’ve caused, for giving the public more reason not to trust public servants, and for their continued abuse of voters and the integrity of our democratic systems and ideals.

I'm not asking or saying political affiliation. This is mearly just a thought. I've been semi parusing thru this sub and noticed a lot of people posting their pictures or just stating that they've voted "blue". I'm wondering is that because more people are actually voting blue, or is it that more people that vote blue are more likely to post it on Internet? I've always considered Kansas mid range conservative so I would expect a little blue and red, but haven't noticed any red comments on the Internet, mostly blue. Just thought it's interesting and can't wait till the election is over. And make sure to get out and vote, EVERYONE!

Looks like an interesting election so I want to learn more

2020 election number for votes in Kingman County was around 3900.

[edit: the last FULL DAY of early voting is today, or Sunday, depending on if your early voting location is open weekends.]

Most rural ones are closed weekends, most city sites are open this weekend, but there's exceptions I'm sure. Check the SOS website to find your early voting location and it's hours.

And you can NOT vote early on Monday [afternoon]! All early voting sites are closed that day [afternoon] so they can collect the ballots and deliver them.

And if you applied to vote by mail but you want to vote in person, then you'll be given a provisional ballot, which will be counted last if at all. So I recommend filling out the ballot that was mailed to you and turning that in by hand. Do not use USPS.

Kansas entered the Union in January 1861, a little over two months prior to the start of the Civil War and seven years after it became a territory under the aptly named Kansas-Nebraska Act. The state is strongly Republican in presidential elections; it hasn’t voted for a Democrat since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson won the presidency in a landslide. In 2020, Donald Trump won by 56% to 42% over Joe Biden

Apologies if this isn’t the right sub for the topic, but I mostly just wanted to vent. I’ve lived in various Midwest states my whole life and have never had to worry if I’m registered by Election Day or not due to same day registration. This is my first election living in KS and bc I didn’t even think to research what the registration deadline was I’ve missed it and I’m frankly very upset about this. Has there been any sort of momentum towards KS legislation passing same day registration?

I’m ashamed that I didn’t do my own due diligence to prevent this, but it would be wonderful to feel like I’m on a level field w/ my previous home states.

Anyways, for those of you who are registered please exercise your right to vote! At this point all I can do is encourage others 🙃

Hey everyone. I just moved to Wichita this year. Are there any cool haunted places that aren’t Theorosa’s Bridge or Rest Haven Cemetery? Everything I find on google is burned to a crisp or not publicly accessible. Thank you in advance!

I, like millions of others, are extremely worried and anxious about this upcoming election. Please vote! Vote like your lives are at stake! Vote like your livelihood is at stake. Vote like your freedoms and rights are at stake. Please vote! Trump scares me and the fact he has so many supporters terrifies me.

I’ve received 5 campaign flyers from him and the ONLY thing it touts is that he has signed a pledge for congressional term limits. As if that’s some kinda gotcha coming from a state senator.

I finally figured out why he’s for term limits for Congress: he wants to run, but knows Sharice would beat the snot out of him in a general election. Plus, he’s too old to run more than a few times anyway, so term limits don’t hurt him.

But really, you’ve got nothing else to run on, Mike?

Been checking the status of my mail in ballot and just saw that it was rejected due to “signature missing or not voter’s signature”. I signed it but it probably didn’t match my other signatures in the past. How do I go about getting that fixed and making sure I vote in time?

EDIT: thank you everyone!! will definitely not be voting by mail anymore lol

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-abortion-vote-in-kansas-looks-like-its-going-to-be-close/

Pro Choice 43% polls, 59% election results

Let's play with this.

Here is the latest data from Election Lab:

• Democrat: 120,568
• Republican: 170,537
• Unaffiliated/None: 48,997

Gender is unclear, but Republicans better hope there's not a huge gender gap favoring women. Moving on...

Combing unaffiliated and Democrat, assuming 100% vote for Harris and 100% of Republicans vote for Trump, these are the numbers now:

• Republican: 170,573
• Democrat + Unaffiliated/None: 169,545

Keeping the rules the same as before, except 2% of all Kansas republicans reported so far vote for Harris, we get these numbers:

• Republican -2%: 167,162
• Democrat + Unaffiliated/None + 2% R voting Dem: 172,956

But let's be real, not all unaffiliated and Democrat are going to vote for Harris. I would imagine 3% of those voting Democrats go to Trump, and probably 4 - 5% of the unaffiliated go to Trump, too.

Either way, the fact that the numbers are so close right now... is kind of crazy.

1. There are two possibilities for election day: as usual, more Republicans turn out in person, Kansas stays red, etc.
2. The other option: Republicans that are voting for Trump took Trump's advice and voted early... cannibalizing their election day vote.

If I were MAGA right now, though, I would be extremely worried. It would take less than 7% or so of Republicans to vote for Harris and the state turns blue.

Buckle up, Kansas. We're going on a ride.

Links: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/2024-general-election-early-vote-kansas/