Davis was at a strip club when cops raided it in search of drugs. Davis addresses strip club incident

In the late 1990s the Democratic candidate for governor of Kansas was getting a lap dance at a strip club when cops raided it in search of drugs, a situation Paul Davis on Saturday described as being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Davis was not charged with any crime, but a police chief involved in the raid wrote afterward that he had been drinking and was found “in a somewhat compromising position … in a back room of the club.”


According to police reports, he was alone with a topless stripper who was wearing only a G-string.

Davis, who was unmarried at the time, identified himself as an attorney for the owner of the strip club after an officer ordered him at gunpoint to lie on the floor during the raid for methamphetamine.

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The Coffeyville Journal, a twice-weekly local paper with no website, first revealed the 1998 incident in its Saturday edition, with no response from the Davis campaign.

In his first comments on the bust, Davis released a statement to POLITICO Saturday afternoon.

“When I was 26 years old, I was taken to a club by my boss - the club owner was one of our legal clients,” said Davis, a state representative. “While we were in the building, the police showed up. I was never accused of having done anything wrong, but rather I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

This news comes amid recent polling that shows Davis with a slight lead over Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, the former U.S. senator who is seeking a second term.

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The raid took place 16 years ago at a club called “Secrets,” also referred to as Club 169, just north of the town of Coffeyville, which has a population of about 10,000 and is near the border with Oklahoma in southeastern Kansas.

A few minutes after midnight on Aug. 5, 1998, a group of officers executed a search warrant after an informant said he bought drugs from the owner of the club.

The informant relayed that the transaction went down in a car outside the establishment, and that the owner was in a hurry because he was keeping his lawyers waiting at the bar, according to the police reports.

Davis was traveling with a partner at his law firm named James Chappell. There is nothing in the police records to suggest that Davis or Chappell knew drugs were being dealt or had drugs on them.

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An after-action report from one of the nine cops involved in the raid, identified as Officer Leakey, recounted what happened next.

“My designated area to secure was the back room of the club,” Leakey wrote. “I was advised that it would not have a door but had beads in [the] doorway … The room was dark. I turned the flashlight that was on my weapon on and scanned the room. I yelled, ‘police, search warrant.’

“I noticed a white male sitting in a couch with a white female standing over him,” the officer continued. “She did not have her top on and was only wearing a G-string. I told them to get on the floor and to keep their hands where I could see them. They got on the floor, but the white male was still in a sitting position. I told him again to lay on his stomach and to keep his hands where I could see them. At this time he did so. When he got on the floor he advised that he was the attorney for the owner of the club and he wanted to see him. I told him that he would have to wait until things were secured.”

Davis was wearing a pair of shorts and a pullover shirt. A few minutes later, a Detective Smith entered “the V.I.P. room.” Davis again announced that he was the club owner’s lawyer.

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“Det. Smith told him to get against the wall and he was searched,” Leakey wrote. “After he was searched both the male and female were told to go out into the main part of the club and have a seat. All of the people in the club were secured and taken to a location to be watched by officers.

“I later found out the name of the attorney I found in the back room with the female,” Leakey concludes. “They told me that he was a Paul Davis out of Lawrence, Kansas.”

The owner of the club would be charged with sale of methamphetamine and for not having a proper tax stamp, the Coffeyville Journal reported, and the county commission voted to put locks on the door of the business after the raid.

Davis would continue to practice law in Lawrence. He worked under Kathleen Sebelius when she was Kansas Insurance Commissioner (she later became governor and Secretary of Health and Human Services). He won a seat in the state House in 2002 and became the Minority Leader in 2008. He is now a partner at the firm of Fagan, Emert & Davis.

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Davis and his wife, Stephanie, now have a three-year-old daughter, Caroline.

Responding to the strip club story Saturday, Davis pointed to press reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating whether confidants of Brownback were involved in an influence-peddling scheme around the governor’s attempt to privatize the state’s Medicaid program.

Brownback has denied any wrongdoing, and his team questions the political motivations behind leaks to the Topeka Capital-Journal this spring. The governor declined to say in a July interview whether he’s been in contact with the FBI.

The Coffeyville paper attributed its report to “an official open records document obtained from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office,” but Davis accused Brownback and his allies of “digging up all they can to distract Kansans from the fact they remain down in the polls – despite spending millions of dollars.”

“Kansans deserve better than a desperate smear campaign,” Davis said in his statement. “What they need is answers about what the governor knows about the unethical conduct of his chief political advisor and the ongoing FBI investigation into corruption in his administration.”