For the first time in nearly a century, Kansas is sending a Democrat to Washington.
Adam Hamilton, the Methodist pastor of a Kansas City-area megachurch, is projected to beat Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, an upset that will make him the first Democrat from Kansas elected to the U.S. Senate since 1932 — the year Franklin D. Roosevelt won his first term as president.
Marshall ran on his previous experience as an OB-GYN. But that career came to haunt him as his lawsuits against patients to recover medical debts, which in some cases led to them being arrested, became a major campaign issue. Marshall also lacked a robust ground game and reported poor fundraising numbers. A last-minute intervention by national Republicans wasn’t enough to rescue him.
David Kensinger, a lobbyist and veteran Kansas GOP operative, called Marshall’s campaign a “failure to launch,” pointing to factors like his third-quarter fundraising haul, a measly $800,000.
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“I think everyone expected that an incumbent senator under threat, in the third quarter of his election year … was going to raise a significant amount of cash,” Kensinger said. “And $800,000 is an astonishing shortfall.”
Marshall also faced criticism over how much time he spent at his second home in Florida.
By the time of the final Senate debate on Oct. 21, Marshall acknowledged that it was a competitive race and pleaded for “Trump voters to come out.”
“Control of the Senate comes through Kansas,” he said onstage.
Bob Beatty, a political scientist at Washburn University in Topeka, said the medical debt storyline and associated attack ads undermined the image of a senator who styled himself as “Doc Marshall.”
“Your local, friendly country doctor is charging you 18% interest on your new baby. And it’s had legs,” Beatty said of the storyline, adding that the line of attack the Hamilton campaign picked up was “effective.”
Marshall cut a video late in the campaign trying to respond to the medical debt issue, reportedly against the wishes of his advisers.
The senator’s campaign also faced questions about whether he violated ethics rules by using official Senate staff as an extension of his campaign. His most recent fundraising reports lacked any indication that he employed full-time campaign staff. It also added to a perception that he wasn’t taking his reelection campaign seriously.
Congressional staffers can work on campaigns, but only if they follow strict guidelines.
“But you also need people who are setting up literature drops and organizing get-out-the-vote efforts and raising money, and that takes real people who do real work,” Kensinger said. “And if you don’t have them, there’s a danger the work doesn’t get done.”
President Donald Trump, who visited the state the weekend before Election Day, also created headaches for Marshall, who sought to rally the president’s base while acknowledging how the administration’s policies were felt on the ground.
The Iran war drove up diesel prices for farmers, while immigration raids and Trump’s move to open up beef markets hurt ranchers. Amid the trade war with Canada, Trump threatened Bombardier, a Montreal-based aerospace company with a major presence in Wichita.
Marshall did not separate himself far from Trump, telling voters last month that “this is one of the best economies I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.”
Hamilton outraised Marshall, entering October with a 3-to-1 cash advantage.
The soft-spoken pastor distanced himself from national Democrats, saying he wouldn’t support Sen. Chuck Schumer for majority leader and that he didn’t want former Vice President Kamala Harris to campaign for him in Kansas.
Hamilton, a onetime Republican who considered running for Senate as an independent, promised to serve Kansas the same way he serves the nation’s largest Methodist congregation — by “leading from the middle.”
Beatty said Hamilton smartly hammered his moderate message and communicated it well.
“Not all pastors are great communicators, but many are, and [Hamilton] certainly is,” Beatty said. “He knows how to talk to people and talk to the camera and address groups right out the bat.”
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