Kansas Senate 2026: The Case for Adam Hamilton

Question: Why would anyone in Kansas, a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, support a first-time candidate who is a Methodist pastor?

Answer: Because I attended his church before COVID-19, and I know what he is capable of. Because the man running against him has spent five years voting with the president 98% of the time and answering to Washington instead of Kansas. And because this race, against every expectation, is suddenly competitive.

I. The Man I Know

I attended the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection before the pandemic, at the downtown campus. What struck me was not the size, though the size is real: roughly 25,000 people in weekly attendance across nine campuses, plus online and televised services, making it the largest United Methodist congregation in America.¹

What struck me was the composition. The congregation is roughly divided between Democratic- and Republican-leaning members.² People who would not sit at the same dinner table sat in the same pews, served in the same food pantries, taught in the same classrooms. Adam Hamilton did not preach to one side. He built a place where both sides worked side by side, and he did it for 35 years.

He founded the church in 1990, starting with a small congregation meeting in a funeral home chapel, and built it into an institution that spans the Kansas City metro.³ He has written more than 30 books, preached at the National Prayer Service during the 2013 presidential inauguration, and served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.⁴

He has never held political office. But he has spent his adult life leading a large, divided, demanding organization, and that is the temperament test for the United States Senate. It is the one test he has already passed.

II. The Case Against the Incumbent

Roger Marshall is a physician from Great Bend who delivered more than 5,000 babies and served in the Army Reserve. That is a genuinely good biography. It is not the problem.

The problem is what he has done since arriving in Washington.

Marshall has voted with President Trump’s positions 98% of the time.⁵ He was one of six Republican senators who objected to the certification of the 2020 presidential election, after disputing the results without evidence.⁶ He voted against creating the independent commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol.⁷

During the pandemic, he promoted hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic, pushed claims that the CDC was inflating COVID death numbers (Facebook removed his posts as misinformation), and opposed mask mandates.⁸

He has opposed aid to Ukraine three times, voted against the $95.3 billion package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan in 2024, encouraged the dismantling of USAID, and in April 2026 voted against a war powers resolution on the war with Iran, telling Kansans that “your national security, yes, is even more important than your pocketbook” as gas prices rose.⁹

He disputes climate change. He supports repealing the Affordable Care Act. He opposed Medicaid expansion, once suggesting that some people “just don’t want health care.”¹⁰

And then there is the residency question. Marshall owns a $1.2 million vacation home in Sarasota, Florida, and the Kansas City Star reported in 2024 that he made recurring official trips there.¹¹ He lists St. John, Kansas as his voting residence. Hamilton’s campaign has made a fair point: a senator who only pretends to live in Kansas cannot be trusted to fight for Kansas.

None of this is personal animus. It is a record. Marshall is a reliable vote for the president and the party, and an unreliable voice for the people who sent him to Washington. Hamilton’s phrase for it is “yes man.” It is accurate.

III. Why This Race Is Winnable

Kansas has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt’s coattails carried George McGill to a final term. Republicans have held both Senate seats since 1939, an 86-year run.¹²

So the honest starting point is that this is a long shot. But the race has moved.

When Hamilton won the Democratic primary on August 4, beating ten opponents with about 35% of the vote, both the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted their ratings from “safe” or “solidly” Republican to “likely” Republican.¹³ That is a small change with a large meaning: the forecasters now see a path.

The money tells the same story. Hamilton raised $1 million in his first week as a candidate. In the most recent reporting quarter he outraised the incumbent $3.7 million to $610,000.¹⁴ Total spending in the race is projected to exceed $50 million, and Washburn University political scientist Bob Beatty has called it a potential No. 1 Senate race in the country.¹⁵

The few public polls show a tight race, with Marshall’s lead in the low single digits.¹⁶

The state Republican Party has already filed an FEC complaint over Hamilton’s use of church communications to discuss a possible run; the church said the message was informational.¹⁷ Parties do not file complaints against candidates they do not fear.

None of this means Hamilton will win. Kansas is a red state, and Hamilton lost Wichita and nearly every rural county in the primary.¹⁸ But it means the race is real, and that is more than Kansas Democrats have had in a generation.

IV. The Primary, County by County

The August 4 primary results are the clearest map of Hamilton’s coalition, and the county-by-county numbers are worth studying.

He won 56 of the state’s 105 counties. But the geography of those wins tells the real story.

Johnson County is the engine. Hamilton took 40,291 votes in his home county, 51% of the vote there, and more than half of his entire statewide total. No other county came close. The Kansas City suburbs are his base, and it is a formidable one: organized, wealthy, and accustomed to being asked to show up.

The other big counties split against him. He won Douglas County (Lawrence) with 33%, Leavenworth with 33%, and Miami with 45%. But he lost the state’s second- and third-largest counties. Sedgwick (Wichita) went to Noah Taylor, 7,747 to 6,674. Shawnee (Topeka) went to Patrick Schmidt, 4,486 to 4,406. Wyandotte (Kansas City, Kansas) went to Erik Murray, 5,108 to 3,088.

The rural map went to his rivals. Taylor, the Army veteran from Kechi, swept 33 counties across western and south-central Kansas, including the meatpacking towns of the southwest, where Hamilton took 14 to 15% in Finney (Garden City), Ford (Dodge City), and Seward (Liberal). Davis, the former USDA rural development director, swept 14 counties in the southeast and north-central, including Lyon (Emporia) and Geary (Junction City).

What it means for November. The primary shows a real base and a narrow one. Hamilton won counties that cast 62% of the primary vote, but his average share in those counties was 31%, in a field of eleven. The general election math is different: he does not need to win rural Kansas, but he cannot lose Wichita and Topeka the way he did in August, and he needs to narrow the rural gap. The Marshall campaign’s line that Hamilton is “too woke for Kansas” is a distortion, but it is built on a real map: a metro-anchored Democrat in a state where the metro is a minority of the vote.¹⁹

V. The Honest Case

I want to be clear about the weaknesses, because a supportive post that pretends they do not exist is not worth writing.

Hamilton has never held political office. He is a pastor, not a legislator, and the Senate is a body that runs on procedure and seniority. There is a real risk that a first-term senator from the minority party spends six years being ignored.

He is also running as a Democrat in a state where that is a structural disadvantage, and his primary coalition was concentrated in eastern Kansas. Rural voters, who decide Kansas elections, did not choose him in August.

And yet. The Senate’s most valuable commodity is not seniority. It is the ability to find agreement, and that is precisely what Hamilton has spent 35 years doing. His congregation is a proof of concept: a large, politically divided organization that functions, that serves, that holds together. He did not do that by being a pushover. He did it by listening, by telling the truth, and by insisting that people who disagree can still work together.

His platform is kitchen-table economics: affordability, rural health care, the cost of living, the tariffs that are squeezing Kansas farmers and ranchers. On primary night he said the average American family is paying $200 a month more for the same things than a year ago.²⁰ That is the message that can reach a Kansas voter who has never once voted for a Democrat.

He is pro-choice and supportive of LGBTQ rights, and he does not hide it. But he is not a culture warrior. He runs from the center, and he means it.

I believe he would be a good senator, and I say that as someone who watched him lead for years, not as someone who read his website. The Senate needs people who can hold a divided room together. He has done that, at scale, for longer than most senators have been in public life.

VI. What You Can Do

If you live in Kansas, vote on November 3. If you live in Johnson County, where his church has been a presence for 35 years, talk to your neighbors. The race is close enough that a few thousand conversations could matter.

If you do not live in Kansas, this race is still worth your attention. It is a test of whether a candidate who runs from the center, who treats opponents as neighbors rather than enemies, can still win in America. I hope it can. I believe Hamilton would prove it.