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Kansas Gubernatorial Candidate Addresses 1998 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.”

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.
 
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.
 
Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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