In the summer of 2010, Tracey Mann was a 33-year-old real estate man from Salina running his first campaign for Congress. Six Republicans were fighting for the Big First — the huge western Kansas district he holds today. He needed a way to stand out.

He found one. He started telling Kansas voters that the President of the United States should have to prove he was an American.

The Hutchinson News took its endorsement back in three days

The Hutchinson News editorial board had a hard time picking in that race. As they put it, "all six candidates sound mostly the same." In their Sunday edition, they went with Mann — writing that he "at least shows the ability to be reasonable and straightforward with voters."

Three days later, on July 21, 2010, they published a second editorial taking it back.

"We were wrong. And we withdraw that endorsement.

Quite simply, the reason is that it turns out Mann is what is known as a birther. He questions the citizenship of President Barack Obama despite evidence that is irrefutable to most objective, rational people — including a birth certificate released by the Hawaii secretary of state and birth announcements printed in Honolulu's two major newspapers."

They weren't done. The board said the whole thing was "appalling," and that they hadn't even thought to ask the candidates about it because no serious person should have needed to be asked. Then they got to the part that still stings sixteen years later:

"Whether Mann truly doubts the president's citizenship or is just saying so in another effort to appeal to the far-right extremists of his party and get elected we don't know. Either way, it is unflattering and doesn't demonstrate the kind of intellect we want representing us in Congress."

The editorial closed by listing all five of Mann's opponents by name and adding: "We do not recommend a vote for Tracey Mann in this race."

The Hutchinson News wasn't alone. The Salina Journal — the paper in the city where Mann lives — withdrew its endorsement too.

His campaign said he "misspoke." He said it twice, a month apart.

Mann's spokesman told the Salina paper that Mann had "misspoke" on the radio and didn't actually doubt Obama's citizenship.

That excuse falls apart the moment you look at the timeline.

The Associated Press reported that Mann said it at a June 21 candidate forum in Elkhart, in the far southwest corner of the state — where an attendee caught it on film. Mann said Obama should show his birth certificate to "resolve it one way or another."

Then, roughly a month later, on a program on Salina radio station KSAL, he said it again:

"I think the president of the United States needs to come forth with his papers and show everyone that he's an American citizen and put this issue to bed once and for all."

A slip of the tongue happens once. This was a talking point. He used it in June at a public forum, and he used it again in July on the radio in his own hometown. The only thing that changed in between was that people started paying attention.

And notice what the "misspoke" statement did not include: an apology, a correction to voters, or any explanation of where he'd gotten the idea. It was cleanup, not honesty.

The other leading Republicans in the race said no

This is the part that kills the "everybody was saying it" defense.

The AP counted four candidates as having a real shot at the nomination. Mann was one. It asked the other three — state Sens. Jim Barnett and Tim Huelskamp, and former congressional aide Rob Wasinger. All three said the same thing: they don't question Obama's citizenship, they question his policies.

So in a Republican primary in one of the most conservative districts in America, in 2010, Mann was the only serious contender who went there.

Kansas voters noticed. On August 3, 2010, Mann finished third — 21.1% of the vote, behind Huelskamp's 34.8% and Barnett's 25%. Huelskamp went to Congress. It would be another decade before Mann won a seat there.

What "show us your papers" actually meant

Let's be clear about what Mann was pushing, because "birther" has faded into a punchline and it shouldn't.

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961. Hawaii officials confirmed it repeatedly. His certificate had been public since the 2008 campaign. Two Honolulu newspapers ran his birth announcement in 1961. A federal judge had already thrown out a lawsuit on the question as a waste of the court's time. There was never a real dispute — only a demand, aimed at one particular president, that he keep producing documents until the people demanding them were satisfied. They never were. Obama eventually released the long-form certificate in April 2011, and it changed nothing.

The research on who believed this is not ambiguous. Political scientists Ashley Jardina and Michael Traugott studied it for the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics and found that among white Americans, "birther beliefs are uniquely associated with racial animus" — and that the people most likely to hold them were white Republicans who were both racially conservative and highly informed about politics. In other words: not people who were confused. People who knew better.

The first Black president was asked for his papers. That was the whole point.

"I've moved on from that"

Mann got a second life in politics in February 2018, when Gov. Jeff Colyer picked him as lieutenant governor. At the announcement, a reporter asked him about the birther comments.

Here is his entire answer:

"I had a football coach one time that said, 'when you make a mistake you don't make excuses and you move on.' I've moved on from that and I can't wait to serve our state as lieutenant governor and really talk about the issues that matter."

Read that again. It is a very smooth way of saying nothing.

He never says what the mistake was. He never says the claim was false. He never says he was sorry, or who he'd hurt, or why a grown man running for Congress had repeated a racist conspiracy theory on the radio. He borrows a football coach's line about not making excuses — and uses it as an excuse to skip the question. Then he pivots to "the issues that matter," as though the thing he'd done wasn't one of them.

Eight years, and that's what he had.

Ten years later, he did it again — with a different election

Mann finally made it to Congress in the 2020 election. He was sworn in on January 3, 2021.

Three days later, a mob stormed the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes. That night, after the building was cleared, Mann voted to sustain the objections to Arizona's and Pennsylvania's electoral votes — refusing to certify a result that had been counted, recounted, certified by state officials, and rejected in court after court. Both objections failed, 121 to 303 and 138 to 282.

He then voted against impeaching Trump for inciting the attack, voted against creating an independent commission to investigate it, voted against the House select committee, and voted against holding Steve Bannon in contempt for defying that committee's subpoena. The Republican Accountability Project grades that record an F — "Very Poor".

It is the same move. Take an election result that is documented beyond serious dispute, refuse to accept the documents, and call it just asking questions. In 2010 the demand was for a birth certificate. In 2021 it was for a state's electors. Both times, the answer had already been given. Both times, Mann's job was to accept it. Both times, he didn't.

What it adds up to

The Hutchinson News put the question better in 2010 than anyone has since: does he actually believe this stuff, or is he just saying it to win a Republican primary?

Sixteen years later, we still don't know — and that's the problem. Either he believed a racist conspiracy theory about the first Black president, or he was willing to repeat one because he thought it would get him votes. The paper's verdict holds up: "Either way, it is unflattering and doesn't demonstrate the kind of intellect we want representing us in Congress."

He never explained it. He never took it back in any real way. He just waited eight years and said he'd moved on.

Then he got to Congress and did the same thing to a bigger election.

We deserve better.

Sources

The withdrawal editorial is from The Hutchinson News, July 21, 2010 (archived). Mann's KSAL quote, the Elkhart forum, the Salina Journal's withdrawal, his rivals' responses, and the "misspoke" statement are from an Associated Press report by John Hanna, July 23, 2010. His 2018 comments are from KCUR, Feb. 13, 2018. Roll call votes are from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House. Photo: U.S. House official portrait, via Wikimedia Commons.