Republican Sen. Roger Marshall used the final debate of Kansas’s unexpectedly competitive U.S. Senate race on Wednesday to paint his Democratic challenger, Adam Hamilton, as a liberal unfit for the historically red state, while Hamilton depicted the Republican as an ineffective lawmaker unable to stand up to President Donald Trump.
Kansas voters have not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, but the contest between Marshall, an OB/GYN, and Hamilton, a Methodist minister, appears to be almost even, with most forecasters declaring their battle a “toss-up.”
The race has spotlighted some of the political complexities in a state that has long been solidly conservative at the national level.
Hamilton, a former registered Republican who initially ran as an independent, has sought to rally the growing number of unaffiliated voters, particularly in the Kansas City suburbs, where he leads the largest United Methodist congregation in the country.
His strong showing in polls and fundraising has rung alarm bells among GOP leaders, who have rushed into the state in recent weeks. President Donald Trump rallied with Marshall outside Wichita last week as the party has been seeking to turn out the rural, conservative voters it needs to win the election.
The debate, hosted at the studios of Fox 4 Kansas City affiliate WDAF, was their only televised debate following their first exchange last month at the Kansas State Fair. David Graham, a Libertarian candidate also on the ballot, did not participate in either event.
Here are our takeaways:
Which war is to blame for high diesel prices? They can’t agree.
Kansas is heavily reliant on diesel to fuel its agriculture and cattle industries, but both candidates pinned its rising costs on separate wars — in Ukraine and Iran — and on policies advanced by the other’s party.
Hamilton called to end the Iran war as a way to lower the cost of diesel, as well as other imports such as feed and fertilizer. Marshall, echoing Trump, said the cause was actually the war in Ukraine and Democrats’ push for the Green New Deal and a failure to build more refineries. (Hamilton said he supports only parts of the Green New Deal.)
The clash was the first of several tense exchanges over both conflicts, as Hamilton went after Marshall for failing to support ending the Iran war, which is unpopular in Kansas and has helped turn the state into a battleground this year.
Marshall defended his stance as necessary to achieve the Reagan principle of “peace through strength” and presented himself as the more experienced of the two on foreign policy.
His decade serving in Washington gave him a leg up over Hamilton, who has never served in elected office, he said. “Even to start making national security policy without all the details, I think it’s really hard to do that.”
Marshall says a vote for Hamilton is a vote for Schumer
Marshall spent much of the debate characterizing a vote for Hamilton as a key vote for Democratic control in Washington more broadly, saying twice that “control of the U.S. Senate runs through Kansas.”
Hamilton has pledged to “lead from the middle” in appeals to this conservative-leaning state, but Marshall said Kansas could be decisive in elevating Democratic senators into committee chairs and putting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) — whom he named more than a dozen times — in the chamber’s top job. Hamilton is “funded by Chuck Schumer,” he said, and “he’ll be beholden to Chuck Schumer forever.”
Hamilton initially considered running for the seat as an independent but switched to the Democratic Party following a statewide “listening tour.” He said he would not support Schumer as his party’s leader, instead opting for younger, more moderate figures like Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Michigan) or Sen. Mark Kelly (Arizona).
Hamilton: Marshall hasn’t done enough to fix Washington
Hamilton tried to present himself as an alternative to the “unpredictability, chaos and corruption in Washington” that he pinned upon Marshall — and Trump and the GOP more broadly.
They both said they would keep Social Security solvent by eliminating a cap on income tax. Hamilton said: “So far Roger Marshall’s been in Congress for 10 years. He hasn’t got the job done on this.”
Bringing up record-high diesel prices and tariffs, Hamilton repeatedly said it would be more effective for Kansas to have one senator from each party — himself and the state’s senior member, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), to push for the state’s priorities on both sides of the aisle in Washington.
Marshall compared his relationship to Trump to his marriage of more than four decades. “I have a relationship where I can pick up the phone and discuss with him the pros and cons of what he’s contemplating.” But “my wife is always right,” he said, “and President Trump is not always right.”
Candidates on the defensive about professional scandals
The attack ads that have flooded airwaves with accusations about each candidates’ professional record were largely confined to the very start of the debate, as both Marshall and Hamilton went on the defensive.
Marshall has faced scrutiny since a New York Times report revealed that the senator or his former medical practice filed lawsuits against more than 700 former patients over unpaid medical bills.
He called that a “common business practice,” including in the previous debate, and said ads by the Hamilton campaign seizing on the controversy included “blatant lies” and a “gross mischaracterization” suggesting that his office put one former patient in jail.
Hamilton has faced his own ads from Marshall over a scandal at the challenger’s megachurch, where a camp counselor who allegedly molested children in 2004 and 2005 was allowed to return to that post.
Hamilton denied covering up any sexual misconduct, but said during the debate that it was “a mistake on my part” not to ensure the counselor would not be allowed back and said he helped find accountability. “Ultimately, we helped get/put this man behind bars,” he said.
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