Sen. Roger Marshall acknowledged in a debate Wednesday that his Kansas seat, typically a lock for Republicans, could end up swinging control of the Senate.
Marshall is in a surprisingly tough reelection campaign against Democrat Adam Hamilton, with polls indicating a tight race. The state voted for Trump in 2024 by 16 percentage points and hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, yet Republicans — including President Donald Trump, who traveled to the state on Monday — have launched an all-out rescue mission for Marshall.
“Control of the Senate comes through Kansas,” Marshall said at the debate.
Marshall balanced a call for President Donald Trump’s voters to rally around him with critiques about the administration’s policies.
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“I’ve had multiple times when I’ve objected to the president before,” Marshall said. “But I do want to emphasize, we need the Trump voters to come out, and that would be my appeal tonight.”
Pressed on areas of disagreement with Trump, Marshall said he called Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin after September immigration raids in southwest Kansas to say, “I don’t think this is quite right, what’s going on?”
He also cited his opposition to Trump opening up beef imports.
“Just like with my wife, I can disagree with her,” Marshall said. “Now, my wife is always right, and President Trump is not always right. But I do think it’s great that I have a relationship, that I can pick up the phone and discuss with him the pros and cons of what he’s contemplating.”
Marshall invoked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer 17 times in the hour-long debate, pleading with his state’s conservative electorate to turn out and prevent the Senate from falling into Democratic control.
“Every Democrat stands up, and when Schumer tells them to jump, they say, ‘How high?’” Marshall said. “So why is [Hamilton] going to be any different once he gets to Washington?”
Hamilton, who considered running as an independent, is pitching himself as a moderate and trying to distance himself from the national Democratic brand. In the debate, he called former President Joe Biden’s border policies “a terrible disaster,” reminded viewers that he has said he wouldn’t support Schumer for majority leader and said he has “a lot of Trump supporters who are supporting me as well, which has been very exciting.”
“I just want to say, I’m not running against President Trump,” Hamilton said after criticizing the president’s decision to go to war with Iran. “I’m running against [Marshall], and he supported it again and again and again.”
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