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FORT SCOTT, Kan. — A political action committee registered at an Austin, Texas, address has spent more than $15,800 on mailers, text messages and digital advertising supporting two Bourbon County Commission candidates, both of whom say they never asked for the help and had never heard of the group.
Under Kansas law, that is not a violation. It is the requirement.
American Property PAC reported the spending in two Statements of Independent Expenditures, each signed July 24 and filed with the Bourbon County Clerk. One reports $8,311.50 supporting Joe Allen, the District 3 candidate. The other reports $7,497 supporting Lisa Dillon, the District 1 candidate.
Both filings list payments dated July 16 to Right Strategies LLC, a Republican campaign firm in Ankeny, Iowa. Neither lists any other vendor.
The two reports are near-copies of each other. Each shows $1,950 for digital ads and $750 for text messages — identical to the dollar. The only line that differs is direct mail: $5,611.50 for Allen and $4,797 for Dillon, a gap of $814.50.
Allen and Dillon both told the Monitor that they had recently received form endorsement letters in the mail from the group that contained no contact information.
“I have not approved any of those text or flyers that have been sent out,” Dillon wrote in a public Facebook comment. “I have no idea how they got my info and have never given them my permission to solicit for me.”
In an interview, Dillon said she had never heard of American Property PAC and had filled out no candidate survey or questionnaire that might have drawn its attention.
“Nothing at all,” she said.
Kansas defines an independent expenditure as spending that expressly advocates a candidate's election or defeat and is made without the cooperation or consent of the candidate. If a candidate consented, the spending would become an in-kind contribution — subject to state limits and reportable on that candidate's own campaign finance filings.
The rules changed last year. House Bill 2206, signed in April 2025, renamed the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission and, for the first time, wrote a definition of “cooperation or consent” into state law at K.S.A. 25-4143(g).
That definition carries a list of things that do not count as coordination. Among them: a candidate's answer to an inquiry about policy positions, information obtained from publicly available sources - and an endorsement of a candidate.
The same bill raised the threshold for filing an independent expenditure report from $100 a year to $1,000. Both Bourbon County filings are well above it.
County Clerk Susan Walker said she contacted the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission after Allen's filing arrived. Walker said staff there told her the practice is becoming more common, that groups making such expenditures frequently do not file the reports at all, and that the agency is receiving an unusual volume of filings tied to county races this year.
The Bourbon County Monitor reached out to Jenn Schneider, Local Level Campaign Finance Coordinator for the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission, and was informed that she had just left the office for vacation.
American Property PAC lists Cabell Hobbs as its Treasurer. Hobbs is a Virginia-based campaign consultant who has served as treasurer for dozens of federal committees, including super PACs supporting Ron DeSantis and John Bolton. A 2024 report from Governing.com said that Hobbs was the Treasurer for 85 different PACs at the time.
Allen said the only thing he could point to that might have drawn outside attention was his vote against the county's revised moratorium on utility-scale power generation, which commissioners reenacted in June.
"Well, this is the first I've seen it since I've been on this board, I'm not against it at all, but I just don't have a lot of experience with what you guys did a year ago that I would like to research," Allen said at that meeting.
Both Allen and Dillon told the Bourbon County Monitor they support using zoning to regulate industrial power projects—including wind and solar—as well as data centers and similar facilities.
A copy of the letter Allen received from the PAC as well as the Statements of Independent Expenditures for each candidate are linked below.
