The Rev. Adam Hamilton, the pastor of the largest United Methodist congregation in the country, won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Kansas on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, setting up a long-shot challenge to Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican, in the general election.
The state has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in nearly 100 years, and Kansas is not a serious factor in Democrats’ hopes to try to retake the Senate. Democrats would need an extraordinarily strong political environment for the race to even be competitive this year.
But Kansas is not as right-wing as some of its neighbors. Its popular two-term governor, Laura Kelly, is a Democrat, as is one of its four representatives in the U.S. House, Representative Sharice Davids. In 2022, voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution. And more recently, Kansas farmers were hit hard by the Trump administration’s tariffs.
Mr. Hamilton, for his part, is a credible fund-raiser and a longtime community leader from a populous part of the state. He founded and leads a roughly 24,000-person congregation based in the suburbs of Kansas City, Mo., right across the state line in Kansas.
It’s an area that once favored center-right Republicans, but shifted sharply away from the party during the Trump era, and has since become a crucial source of Democratic turnout.
“In a world that feels more and more divided, our congregation has managed to bring all sorts of people together,” Mr. Hamilton said in his announcement video. “We’re roughly equal parts Republican, Democrat and independent, and we’ve learned to love and appreciate each other precisely because of our differences.”
If that message of moderation plays in the upscale, highly educated suburbs, it could be a different story across the many more conservative pockets of the state. Some voters there tend to look askance at the Kansas City-area suburbs, which they do not regard as “real Kansas.”
Mr. Hamilton, who has been campaigning across the state, will face Mr. Marshall, who comes from a more rural part of Kansas. Mr. Marshall, seeking his second term, has been a strong supporter of President Trump’s.
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