Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton, who has unexpectedly turned deep red Kansas into a toss-up, has drawn high-profile Republican supporters as he tries to pull off one of the biggest upsets of the midterms.
Two former GOP governors in Kansas, Mike Hayden and Bill Graves, endorsed Hamilton, writing op-eds, giving interviews and appearing in campaign videos in which they say his opponent, incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, is no longer the right fit for the state.
“I’ve just been terribly disappointed and alarmed at the congressional level in the Republicans’ willingness to yield so easily, so readily, to this executive branch and yielding to actions that a lot of Americans don’t think make a lot of sense,” Graves said in an interview on Friday.
Hayden, who served a single term ending in 1991 and supported Marshall’s first Senate bid, said he couldn’t do so again after the senator backed the Iran war and the Trump administration’s tariffs “despite the consequences for Kansans.”
“It’s time for a change,” Hayden said in a video released by the Hamilton campaign Thursday. “Kansas needs a senator willing to stand up and say ‘This isn’t working.’”
Hamilton is running as a centrist rather than a hyper-partisan in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century. He needs Republican voters to win in a state that Donald Trump carried by 16 percentage points in the 2024 presidential race. Marshall won his first term in 2020 by 11 points.
Hamilton has made support from the opposing party a key part of his campaign, and even got the endorsement of Marshall’s Republican primary challenger, Arch Naramore. This week, the Democrat’s campaign launched a “Republicans for Hamilton” group and touted the endorsements of more than 100 Kansas Republicans as evidence that he knows how to work across the aisle. He has traversed the state on a tour titled “Leading from the Middle” to convey that same message.
GOP voters have shown up, sometimes in large numbers, to those tour stops, said Glynnis Harvey, a spokesperson for Hamilton. She said their attendance is a sign that Kansans, including longtime conservatives, are looking for a fresh face.
Marshall’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
To offset the growing support for Hamilton, national Republicans have pivoted their attention to it. Vice President JD Vance campaigned for Marshall there last month, and the top GOP-aligned super PAC for Senate began spending on the race Friday.
Kansas is now among seven Senate seats that are toss-ups, according to the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election prognosticator. Cook downgraded the race from “Lean Republican” on Tuesday. The Democratic Party needs to net four seats to take the chamber back from the Republicans, including at least two in states that Trump won in 2024 by double digits.
Democrats have become more bullish on the Kansas race. On Friday, Senate Majority PAC, Democrats’ spending arm for the chamber, announced a $5 million ad campaign in Kansas that will start Saturday. The group said it decided to invest after realizing the race was growing more competitive.
Hamilton’s background as a prominent pastor has appealed to some Kansas conservatives. He was a founding pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, the largest United Methodist congregation in the country. On the trail, he has noted that his flock has a roughly even split of Republicans, Democrats and independent worshipers.
Graves, who was Kansas’s governor from 1995 to 2003, said he began considering endorsing Hamilton at the suggestion of conservative friends who belong to the candidate’s church.
Graves later talked to Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, one of a handful of other Democrats he has endorsed in his political career, about Hamilton’s candidacy. Kelly has endorsed Hamilton alongside other former Democratic governors of the state. Her two immediate Republican predecessors — Jeff Colyer and Sam Brownback — have not endorsed in the Senate race.
Graves, also a practicing Methodist, said his conversations, coupled with his “concerns about the direction” of the Republican Party, sealed his support for Hamilton. The former governor said Hamilton was “doing the legwork” by meeting with voters across Kansas, while Marshall has kept his trail appearances more limited.
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