In red-state Kansas, the contest between a Methodist pastor and a staunchly pro-Trump senator is neck and neck

With less than a week to go before the mid-term elections, polls suggest the Senate race in Kansas is deadlocked. This is a wake-up call for the Republicans, given that this is a state Donald Trump won by a margin of 16 percentage points in 2024, and which has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932.

The Democratic candidate, Adam Hamilton, is the founder and pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, the largest congregation of the United Methodist Church in the country, with 24,000 members spread across three states. He quotes the Bible from memory and speaks of voting as “an act of Christian discipline”; he is a very familiar face in the state, as his sermons are often broadcast on television. His political trajectory is unusual: registered as a Republican until the start of the year, he considered running as an independent before choosing the Democrats. In August, he comfortably won the party’s primary. He attacks the Republicans on issues close to the hearts of Kansas voters: the ever-rising cost of healthcare – on which he has said he would reverse the cuts made by the Trump administration – and the cost of fuel and fertilisers, which are particularly important in a heavily agricultural state. The church led by Hamilton describes itself as ‘LGBTQ-friendly’, supports same-sex marriage and also allows gay people to serve as members of the clergy. His opponent, the outgoing Senator Roger Marshall, attacks him for holding views that are “too woke for Kansas”, and shows clips from his sermons to prove his point: in one of these, the pastor is seen railing against excessive meat consumption.

However, these attacks appear to have little impact on the electorate, as the state’s population is deeply concerned about the high cost of living, and Marshall continues to defend the president’s policies tooth and nail. While Republican candidates from states facing similar issues to Kansas—such as Iowa and Michigan—are calling on Trump to end the war in Iran, the main cause of rising fuel prices, Marshall remains steadfast: the conflict is necessary to implement the Reagan-era doctrine of ‘peace through strength’, and prices are, in reality, rising because of the war in Ukraine. When Trump proposed increasing beef imports from Argentina to tackle rising meat prices – a move that angered cattle farmers – Marshall once again chose to defend him: he said the impact was minimal and argued that anyone concerned about prices could switch to eating chicken or pork. Some Republican strategists believe that Marshall felt his seat was secure, given that the Democrats have not won it for almost a century, and that he had underestimated the challenge for far too long.

Marshall’s problem, however, is not only his closeness to the president, but also a series of scandals that have erupted during the election campaign: an investigation by the New York Times revealed that, during his ten-year career as a gynaecologist prior to entering politics, he took around 700 patients to court over unpaid bills, and some of them were arrested after failing to appear in court. He was subsequently accused of illegally using taxpayers’ money to pay his campaign staff, and it was alleged that he spends more time in Florida, where he owns a house, than in Kansas: he counters that it is his wife who mainly uses that property.

The Republicans have scrambled to take action, not least because Marshall has shown little skill at fundraising: despite being the incumbent senator, he raised just 800,000 dollars in the third quarter of the year, whilst his opponent raised a full 10 million. This is why the Senate Leadership Fund – the lobby group that finances Republican senators’ campaigns – has stepped in, investing $14 million in him: the money is now there, but it remains to be seen whether it will be enough.