Kansas Republicans appear to have thumbed their noses at the party establishment on Tuesday in the primary for governor, failing to persuasively back the sitting governor, Jeff Colyer, and instead leaving room to elect Kris Kobach, the state’s secretary of state — and quite possibly the most pernicious public official in America.

This distinction is not conferred lightly. Mr. Kobach has labored for it long and hard, notably in the areas of voter suppression and nativism. He is best known for having been the vice chairman of President Trump’s ugly voter fraud commission, spawned in 2017 to root out the millions of illegal voters who Mr. Trump’s ego pathetically, and falsely, claimed had cost him the popular vote in 2016. The commission was dissolved this January, having failed to find any evidence of widespread fraud, but having succeeded in raising Mr. Kobach’s national profile and cementing his reputation as a master purveyor of Trumpism.

Mr. Kobach on Wednesday declared victory at a noon news conference, acknowledging that only 191 votes separated him from Mr. Colyer and that the election result may change as provisional and other ballots are counted. Awkwardly, as the state's top election official, Mr. Kobach would be the person charged with overseeing any recount of votes. Unless he recused himself, which he has said he would not.

Mr. Kobach is running for governor on a promise to “Make Kansas Great Again.” (#MKGA!) If it holds up, his primary election win, bolstered by a last-minute endorsement by Mr. Trump, will be another reminder that the political currents that delivered us this president still rage within the Republican base.