Adam Hamilton, a liberal megachurch pastor, is challenging incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall in this year’s midterm election
In one of the first ads of his campaign to represent Kansas in the US Senate, the Democrat Adam Hamilton stands grilling steaks at a barbecue and attacks his opponent, Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican, for supporting “tariffs and war”.
If history is any guide, it is Hamilton who is set to get cooked. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, and more than half a century has passed since one of their nominees even came close. But he and his supporters believe circumstances have conspired to end this streak – and potentially deliver Democrats control of the Senate.
“When it comes to tariffs, healthcare, immigration, when it comes to the war in Iran, these are all things that are having a negative impact on people in Kansas,” Hamilton, 62, said in an interview. “That makes this a particularly vulnerable time for Roger Marshall. Then, I think I’m a particularly strong candidate. I wouldn’t have got in the race if I didn’t.”
The founder of the largest Methodist denomination in the US, Hamilton won 35% of the vote in the 11-candidate Democratic primary earlier this month. His campaign recently announced he had broken a quarterly fundraising record in the state, and two major election forecasters say the Senate race has grown more competitive since Hamilton won his party’s primary, though Marshall is still favored to win.
For national Democratic leaders, the possibility of a close Senate race in Kansas is enticing. Their path to retaking Congress’s upper chamber involves winning at least three seats in states that Donald Trump carried two years ago, and they’ve named Alaska, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Iowa as among their best bets to do so.
The US president’s slumping approval ratings and the Iran war’s impact on prices for gasoline and other staples are seen as boosting Democrats’ chances in those states, but Kansas is a bit redder. Trump carried it two years ago by a 16 percentage point margin.
This week, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told Punchbowl News that if the November elections wind up producing a “blue wave” of Democratic victories, Hamilton may well win.
Asked what he thought of Schumer’s prediction, Hamilton said: “I don’t agree with that. I think there will be a blue wave, but I’m telling you, here in Kansas, we have a real chance to win. I don’t care what else happens across the country.”
No Kansas Democrat has won a full term in the US Senate since attorney George McGill in 1932, the longest streak of any state. In 1974, Senator Bob Dole, who would go on to become the chamber’s Republican leader and run unsuccessfully against President Bill Clinton in 1996, nearly lost his bid for a second term, but Republicans have wiped out their opponents ever since.
Democrats and their causes have had better luck at the state level. The governor’s mansion has seesawed between the two parties since the late 1950s, and the race this year to replace outgoing Democratic governor Laura Kelly is viewed as a toss-up. After the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Kansans have on two occasions rejected Republican-backed attempts to curb abortion access in the state.
“Kansas voters, the majority anyway, there’s something about the Senate where, especially those moderate Republicans, still won’t pull the trigger in terms of enough of them voting for a Democrat, where they will for governor,” said Bob Beatty, a longtime state politics watcher who chairs the political science department at Washburn University in Topeka.
But Hamilton’s experience in leading a church gives him a unique skill set that Beatty predicts will make for “a very competitive race” against Marshall. “What Hamilton has going for him is the communication side. He’s been giving sermons, AKA speeches, to crowds of thousands for years,” he said.
Marshall is an OB/GYN who represented western Kansas in the US House of Representatives, then won election to the Senate in 2020 and embraced Trump’s debunked claims of fraud in that year’s presidential vote. He has been an ally of Trump in Congress, and last year left a town hall early after attendees pressed him about the Trump administration’s funding cuts and layoffs of federal employees. A spokesperson for the senator did not respond to a request for comment.
Hamilton said he decided to jump into the Senate race ahead of Easter, as he prepared to preach the sermon on the mount at his Church of the Resurrection outside Kansas City, which boasts around 24,000 congregants. He mulled running as an independent, but ultimately filed as a Democrat, saying he was concerned that he’d split the vote if he wasn’t in a party and agreed with its views on “healthcare, education [and] social safety nets”.
