By JOHN HANNA

AP Political Writer

OVERLAND PARK - About 150 of Kris Kobach's fellow Republicans cheered loudly for him at a unity breakfast the morning after Kansas' primary election. Within a week, his two former GOP rivals endorsed him for secretary of state.

Still, Republican moderates could doom the former Kansas GOP chairman's bid for statewide office. If they do, a big reason will be the work on immigration issues that has brought national attention to Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor.

Kobach helped draft Arizona's new law on illegal immigration, and he advises city officials and state legislators across the nation on how to crack down. His campaign has tapped into voters' frustrations about the issue.

But the key question for him and Republicans hoping for a "clean sweep" of statewide offices is whether Kobach's national prominence repels as many voters as it attracts. He has had problems in the past keeping GOP moderates in his political fold.

"I expect that many moderate Republicans will not be able to support Kobach," said former Kansas Senate President Dick Bond, an Overland Park moderate. "He seems to have gone farther and farther to the right."

Kobach remains confident that he'll win. He said after the unity breakfast that critics call him an extremist to avoid talking about specific policies he proposes.

"I think Republicans are unusually united," Kobach added during an interview last week.

He hopes to unseat Secretary of State Chris Biggs in the Nov. 2 general election. Biggs was appointed in March by Gov. Mark Parkinson, a fellow Democrat, after four-term Republican Ron Thornburgh resigned to take a private-sector job.

Kobach received 51 percent of the vote in the GOP primary against Shawnee County Election Commissioner Elizabeth Ensley and J.R. Claeys, a former chief executive officer for the National Association of Government Contractors.

Kobach emphasizes voter fraud as an issue, linking it to immigration by suggesting state laws are lax enough to allow illegal immigrants to register to vote.

He wants to require voters to show a photo ID at the polls and to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, when they register for the first time.

Biggs opposes those measures, arguing they'll suppress voter turnout and represent an overreaction to the relative handful of voter fraud cases over the past two decades. He said the real problem with voter fraud is that cases are rare enough in Kansas that county officials don't know how to handle them when they crop up.

As for Kobach, Biggs said, "In a lot of ways, he has expressed that he has total command of imaginary issues."

Yet voter ID proposals have widespread support among Republican legislators, who pushed bills to passage in 2003 and 2008, only to see them vetoed by then-Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

"It is not an issue that divides moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans," Kobach said. "We are 100 percent together on that."

But at least a few Kansans who voted for Kobach in the GOP primary didn't appear to focus on voter fraud as much as illegal immigration, supporting Kobach because of his work on that issue.

Doug McClure, an Olathe grocer, said after voting for Kobach that he wants the nation to take a "much harsher" stance on illegal immigration. He liked Kobach's record.

"I think that the American electorate is very electrified on the topic of illegal immigration," he said.

Kobach has been a regular guest on cable and network television shows. He's also become a legal adviser of choice to officials who want their cities or states to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants, or even block landlords from renting apartments and homes to them.

The new Arizona law requires local law enforcement officers to ask about people's legal status upon stopping them for other purposes, if there's a reasonable suspicion that they're illegal immigrants. President Barack Obama's administration is challenging the law in court, saying it usurps federal authority.

"I'm getting calls from all over the country," Kobach said. "It's clear that the national sentiment is that Arizona is right and the Obama administration is wrong."

But support for Kobach clearly isn't universal among Kansas Republicans, particularly moderates.

Outside her Topeka polling place on primary Election Day, Marge Ryan, a retired nurse and moderate Republican, reacted to the possibility of Kobach's election with, "Oh, my goodness."

"That'd just be disastrous, I think," she said.

Kobach also has lost past races.

In 2000, he finished third in a four-person primary for a state Senate seat in Johnson County.

Four years later, he was the Republican nominee in the 3rd Congressional District, which includes the state's portion of the Kansas City metro area. Kobach made immigration a big issue, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore ran up his biggest margin to that point in winning re-election.

"I know there's a lot of support out there from moderate Republicans for my campaign," Biggs said.

Kobach's prominence on immigration issues and uncertainty about how many GOP moderates will defect to Biggs make the secretary of state's race perhaps the most interesting political contest in Kansas this fall.

Political Writer John Hanna has covered state government and politics since 1987.