Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the US Senate since 1932
Hamilton, 62, leads the Church of the Resurrection, a United Methodist congregation outside Kansas City that draws about 24,000 congregants, and founded the largest Methodist denomination in the United States, according to the Guardian. Earlier this month he won 35% of the vote in an 11-candidate Democratic primary to claim the party’s Senate nomination.
His campaign announced he had broken a quarterly fundraising record in Kansas. Two major election forecasters have moved the race toward more competitive since his primary win, though Marshall remains favored, the Guardian reported.
No Kansas Democrat has won a full Senate term since attorney George McGill in 1932, the longest streak of any state. In 1974, Republican Senator Bob Dole, who went on to become the chamber’s GOP leader and the 1996 presidential nominee, nearly lost his bid for a second term, but Republicans have swept the state’s Senate races since.
The race carries implications beyond Kansas. National Democrats need to net at least three seats in states that Donald Trump carried two years ago to retake the Senate, and party leaders have named Alaska, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Iowa as their most promising pickup opportunities. Kansas is a step redder — Trump carried it by a 16-percentage-point margin two years ago — making it a more ambitious target.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Punchbowl News that if November produces a “blue wave” of Democratic victories, Hamilton could win. Hamilton, however, said the contest depends on Kansas-specific conditions rather than national tides. “I’m telling you, here in Kansas, we have a real chance to win,” he said. “I don’t care what else happens across the country.”
Democrats have had more success at the state level. The governorship has seesawed between the parties since the late 1950s, and this year’s race to replace outgoing Democratic Governor Laura Kelly is viewed as a toss-up. Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Kansans have twice rejected Republican-backed efforts to curb abortion access.
Bob Beatty, a longtime state politics watcher who chairs the political science department at Washburn University in Topeka, said Kansas’s pattern of moderate Republican crossover at the statehouse does not extend to federal races. “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,” Beatty said. He predicted a “very competitive race” for Hamilton, citing his experience speaking to large crowds from years of preaching.
Marshall is an obstetrician-gynecologist who represented western Kansas in the US House before winning his Senate seat in 2020. He has embraced Trump’s debunked claims of fraud in that year’s presidential election and remained a Trump ally in Congress, the Guardian reported. Last year he left a town hall early after attendees pressed him on Trump administration funding cuts and federal employee layoffs. A spokesperson for Marshall did not respond to a request for comment.
Hamilton said he decided to run ahead of Easter, while preparing to preach the Sermon on the Mount at his church. He considered running as an independent, he said, but filed as a Democrat, citing the party’s positions on “healthcare, education [and] social safety nets.” “Those are things that matter a lot to me, and my faith leads in that direction,” Hamilton said. He has described himself as a “moderate or independent-minded Democrat.”
Hamilton has criticized Marshall for being “a spokesperson for Washington and Donald Trump instead of representing the people of Kansas” and accused the senator of spending most of his time in Florida. Marshall acknowledged owning property there, telling reporters it had been destroyed by a hurricane; the Topeka Capital-Journal reported earlier this month that he had listed the Sarasota property for sale at $1.45 million.
Marshall called Hamilton “a megachurch pastor that’s too woke for Kansas,” the Capital-Journal reported. Main Street Fund, a Massachusetts-based super PAC that lists a consultant who has worked for Republican campaigns as its treasurer, has spent more than $600,000 this month on Kansas ads attacking Hamilton; the Kansas City Star found that the ads relied on snippets from his sermons that were taken out of context.
Jim Slattery, a Democratic former congressman from Kansas who supports Hamilton, described the pastor as “a known quantity in the Methodist world in Kansas” and among Christians in the Kansas City area who might win over right-leaning Catholic voters opposed to the war with Iran. “The reason Hamilton is a compelling candidate is because he can, and he has the ability to, dramatically expand the audience for a Democrat candidate in Kansas,” Slattery said.