Dems

TOPEKA, Kan. — At 94 years, the Kansas GOP’s streak of one-party dominance in Senate races is the nation’s longest because even in the toughest years, disaffected Republican-leaning voters have reliably drifted back to the party’s fold before Election Day.

But Republicans fear this year could be different, setting the race between Republican Sen. Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton on track to be the most expensive in state history.

Hamilton, founder and senior pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist church, has raised significantly more money than Marshall, who is seeking his second term. Hamilton’s candidacy — and voters’ disapproval of President Trump’s handling of the economy — have upended GOP hopes of seeing Marshall coast to victory as the GOP tries to hold its Senate majority.

Kansas, which Trump carried in three presidential races, is an unlikely Senate battleground. Republicans redirected money from the North Carolina Senate race to help Marshall, and Trump flew to Kansas this week to hold a rally for him, calling Marshall “one of the greatest senators in our country”.

Stalwart GOP voters sensed a serious threat even before Trump announced his rally.

In Topeka, 81-year-old Julie Adamson has been praying about the election, but she’s also knocked on doors for Marshall, about 200 by her count. She said if Hamilton wins and Democrats control the Senate, “We’ll see, ‘impeach, impeach Trump.’”

“And nothing will get done for our country,” she added.

A formidable candidate emerged in a tough year for the GOP

Before entering the race, Hamilton already had a public profile in vote-rich suburbs through building his Kansas City-area Church of the Resurrection into a 25,000 member congregation. Churchgoing Protestants also knew him as the author of several dozen books, and he’s honed his speaking skills through weekly sermons.

Hamilton has positioned himself as a moderate and made rising prices, particularly for fuel, a key issue. During a debate Wednesday, both he and Marshall endorsed barring transgender girls and women from female sports teams. Hamilton called for local officials to make such decisions but suggested Marshall and other Republicans have been bullying transgender people by making the issue prominent in campaigns.

Marshall, a mostly retired doctor, portrays Hamilton as too liberal — radical, even — for a state where less than 26% of the 2 million registered voters are Democrats, while more than 44% are Republicans.

During Wednesday’s debate, Marshall repeatedly said a Hamilton victory would put Democrats in charge of the Senate and that Hamilton would vote with liberal Democrats.

“We need to remind everybody that control the Senate goes through Kansas,” he said.

There are signs that voter enthusiasm is with the Democrats as advance voting has surged across the U.S. compared to the last midterm. In Kansas, it has more than doubled for the same period.

Amanda Chavez Thomson, who is part owner of a small home-restoration business, said she believes change has been needed “for quite some time.”

“I think we finally have a candidate that can give us that energy and that surge that we need from people who may be on the fence or may not have voted in the past,” she said.

Fundraising emerges as a key concern for Republicans

Since the state’s August primary, Republican groups have committed to spending more than $26 million on television and digital advertising to boost Marshall, more than what they spent in his first race in 2020, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Including Marshall’s campaign, total GOP ad spending would exceed $32 million.

But Hamilton and Democratic groups together have committed to spending more than $38 million, according to AdImpact. Total ad spending — involving more than 40 groups outside the campaigns — would be about $71 million, a record for Kansas.

One of the reasons the GOP is pushing money towards Marshall may be that the incumbent has proven a lackluster fundraiser. Between the state’s August primary and Thursday, Hamilton has collected more than 10,000 contributions from Kansas residents, while raising $8 million from across the U.S., online campaign finance reports show. Marshall has about 200 contributions from Kansans while raising $905,000 total.

“People are crying out, saying, ‘Come on, Roger Marshall, speak up for us,’” Hamilton said during Wednesday night’s debate.

Marshall talking about liberal Democrats and ‘wokeness’

Marshall’s campaign and GOP groups have tried to knock any shine off Hamilton’s public image by attacking how he’s led his church and using snippets of his own sermons to portray him as too “woke.” During Trump’s rally, Marshall called Hamilton “the most radical liberal Democrat to ever get through a Senate primary in the history of Kansas.”

But such attacks aren’t resonating with at least a few disaffected Republicans. Don Hineman, a western Kansas rancher and former GOP state House majority leader, said he’s tired of “woke” being as an insult.

Hineman, who has signed on to the Republicans for Hamilton group, added that no one “was more ‘woke’ than Jesus Christ.”

Democrats have countered with television ads over Marshall’s pursuit of unpaid patient bills from the practice as an obstetrician that he gave up a decade ago. State court records online show that from 1996 through 2016, Marshall or his practice filed at least 700 debt-collection lawsuits, occasionally 10 or more a day.

The New York Times first reported the extent of the litigation. It said that in 81 cases, patients were arrested for missing court dates and quoted two experts who called Marshall’s tactics extreme. During Wednesday’s debate, Marshall said he’s faced a “gross mischaracterization” of his actions.

History and loyalty have been key assets for the Kansas GOP

Democrats can hold out hope for a Hamilton victory because the state has sizable blocs of moderate Republican and independent voters who’ve regularly swung elections to their candidates for governor and who protected abortion rights in a statewide vote in 2022.

Yet Republicans still have two key assets: Kansas’ political history and the loyalty that even unhappy Republican-leaning voters show to the party.

Not only have Democrats lost every Senate race in Kansas since 1932, no Democrat has come within 10 points of winning since 1974. In both 2014 and 2020, races considered tossups in mid-October fizzled, and Marshall’s predecessor, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, won.

Leroy Towns, a former Roberts chief of staff, said many Republicans in 2014 who considered voting against Roberts “just couldn’t do it.” Towns — who switched parties because of Trump — is backing Hamilton.

Towns believes Hamilton will win, but added, “That Republican pull at the end of an election is really, really strong in this state.”

Hanna and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press. Cappelletti reported from Washington. AP writer Nicholas Ingram in Topeka, Kan., contributed to this report.

The Liberal Democrats don’t tend to go for rhetorical fireworks or verbal kneecappings when grumbling about their leader.

But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been grumbling going on. In the last week, two members of Sir Ed Davey’s frontbench have resigned because they were unhappy with him, the party’s direction and how policy is decided.

It meant the prospect of a lengthy and potentially testy meeting for Sir Ed with his MPs on Tuesday evening.

The Liberal Democrat leader arrived smiling, flanked by several loyal MPs, but made no comment as he entered the room.

Nearly four hours later, when the meeting broke up, his deputy Daisy Cooper said: “There is overwhelming support for Ed in the parliamentary party and a real sense that we need to come together as a group.”

Earlier, behind closed doors, we understand Sir Ed told his MPs: “We have made changes. I am happy to embrace more changes. I want us to work as a united front.” Another tacit nod to things being less than united recently.

In recent months he has appointed a new chief of staff, Ruth Younger, and James Holt, a veteran of the party’s years in coalition government, as political director.

Last week’s resignations were described to the BBC by one party figure as a rather Lib Dem insurrection – dissent expressed modestly.

Neither Charlie Maynard, a former Treasury spokesman and Alison Bennett, a former care and carers spokeswoman, have been publicly explicit about the reasons for their departures and both sought to express their concerns to Sir Ed privately and discreetly.

And, it is understood, there was no coordination between them in the timing of their resignations. They were departures that led to fury among some of their colleagues, irritated that it made the party look divided.

The resignations were the most clear indicators yet of an anxiety that has been bubbling away for over a year among some Liberal Democrat MPs. The essence of that anxiety is a fear they are not making enough of an impression and impact for the 72 MPs they have in parliament.

“The big frustration is the lack of cut through, being noticed. We are the biggest third party in the Commons in a century. But parliament doesn’t shape things as much as it used to. It’s about algorithms now,” is how one figure put it.

They added: “In the world of social media there is an incentive, even a financial incentive, to be divisive and extreme. That’s a sandpit we refuse to play in.”

Nonetheless, the party is planning to up its social media game, but do so in line with what it sees as its authentic temperament and values.

Those around Sir Ed Davey privately acknowledge there is what they claim to be a “small group” of Lib Dem MPs who are not happy with his leadership. It is suggested that number isn’t greater than “half a dozen” – a phrase used by several people we have spoken to.

But the anxiety about a perceived lack of impact involves far more MPs than that.

Some previous private critics have been won over by the recent changes to Sir Ed’s team and are pleased to see the government talk about issues they care about: the European Union, changing the voting system for Westminster elections and social care in England, for instance.

They also hope the scale of their local campaigning, rather than poor national opinion poll ratings, will be more significant come the next general election.

Al Pinkerton, the party’s Europe spokesman, told the BBC there had been a frank exchange of views during the meeting, but Sir Ed’s willingness to make changes had been “very well received.”

“It is a slog in the middle of a parliament, it’s hard being the third party and it’s such an enormous leap going from 15 MPs to 72,” another party figure present told us. “But we’re getting there putting in place the structures to better deal with that and keep MPs happy.”

“Why would we get rid of our leader when no one else is pitching to be our leader? We need to let Ed get on with it,” said another MP.

But they all know the underlying concern about impact – the challenge of being noticed – is real and not going away.