At the outset of the midterm cycle, I will admit, I did not expect to find myself in Kansas, a ruby red state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.
And I really did not expect to find myself as I did this morning: in Kansas, wearing a hard hat, squeezed in a dark and rattly elevator as it dropped 650 feet below ground into a salt mine.
Politics: Full of surprises!
I was in Hutchinson, a city of grain, metal and salt, to write about how Kansas’ Senate election has become so competitive. The race between Senator Roger Marshall, a first-term Republican, and Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor who has thrilled the state’s Democrats, was in a dead heat in the most recent Times/Siena poll.
Outside groups on both sides are plowing money into the race — including $5 million from Senate Democrats’ top super PAC, The Times learned today. The Republican counterpart has promised $14 million to save the seat.
Part of the reason it’s close is Hamilton himself, who is not your typical Democratic recruit. For one thing, he was a registered Republican until earlier this year. He is the founding pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, a United Methodist congregation with 24,000 members. He speaks in the quick, deep, extemporaneous cadence of a pastor with a podcast, which is what he is (or was — the podcast went on hiatus just before he began running for Senate).
And he was really excited about visiting this salt mine. I jumped at the chance to join his tour, unsure exactly where the mine fit into his campaign but eager for a chance to spend a little bit more time with a figure who is suddenly commanding national attention.
Down we go
Hamilton, his wife, LaVon, his pastor friend and a handful of campaign staff met Jeff Ollenburger, the president of a company called UV&S that has turned the empty chambers, far below the ground, into storage space. The mine sits in a salt vein that, Ollenburger explained, is part of a salt cavity that runs from Kansas City to New Mexico.
Hamilton pulled a chunk of salt out of his pocket — salt that he said came from these mines. He told me he always carries it with him and marveled at its age: 270 million years old.
“I’ve been praying that I could be salt and light for years,” Hamilton said, referencing the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus delivers in the Gospel of Matthew.
When we got out of the elevator, I realized, to my surprise, that we had no cellphone service. We were in a warren of rooms the size of football fields, carved out of salt that had been mined here since the 1920s. There were no attack ads down here, no digital streaming wars. What there were, interestingly, were movies — UV&S has become a mecca for storing the reels of Hollywood’s greatest films.
“Where is the ark of the covenant?” joked Hamilton.
We toured the mines, taking in the vinegary scent of aging film. (Some film was stored in chilled space to help preserve it.) Hamilton seemed to lose himself in curiosity. At one point, he even licked a wall. “You know,” he said, “this tastes just like salt.”
There was, of course, a video to shoot for social media. Hamilton asked one of his aides to film him talking to the camera about the salt he carries, the Sermon on the Mount, and the history of the mines here.
“My prayer is just, ‘Lord, as I feel in my pocket, Lord, help me to be a blessing to other people. Help me to enhance their lives, whoever I’m speaking to, whatever I’m doing, as I’m seeking to run for the Senate,’” Hamilton said, and he urged anyone watching to come visit Hutchinson themselves.
Then he headed back into the elevator, back into the light, and back to the campaign trail.
Debate Week
A busy week of Senate battleground debates culminated in some fiery exchanges last night, with candidates getting personal as they went at each other.
In Georgia
Senator Jon Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent, hammered the Republican challenger Mike Collins over his history of employing aides who have espoused white nationalist and antisemitic views. “You’ve hired half the Third Reich,” Ossoff said. He later added, “If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.”
Collins, for his part, called Ossoff a “trust fund kid who’s never had a job in his life.”
In Michigan
When the topic of Flock cameras that monitor traffic and read license plates came up, Mike Rogers, the Republican, wondered aloud why Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat, would oppose technology that could catch people suspected of being terrorists. “Well, if you have someone in your family that might be on the, on the watch list …”
“Go ahead and say it,” responded Dr. El-Sayed, an Egyptian American who would be the country’s first Muslim senator. “You’ve been tiptoeing around it the whole time.”
In Maine
Troy Jackson, the Democratic challenger, accused the Republican incumbent, Senator Susan Collins, of profiting off the war in Iran. “Senator Collins and her husband are making money — more — off this war, and so are a whole bunch of other people,” Jackson claimed. “And that’s why this doesn’t stop.”
“That is absolutely outrageous,” Collins said, pointing a finger at Jackson. “And you owe me an apology.”
Jackson replied, “No, you owe me an apology.”
For more: Read takeaways from all three debates.
Get Caught Up
In Washington
-
Democratic lawmakers, and a handful of Republicans, decried the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the execution of the gunman who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009.
-
Vice President JD Vance said he would not watch the execution and cast doubt on whether the Pentagon’s plan would go forward at all.
-
The county board in Arlington, Va., sued to block the construction of Trump’s proposed 250-foot triumphal arch.
-
Trump has begun sending $500 “refund” checks, along with a signed letter taking credit for the payments, to nearly a million Americans who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
-
Katie Zacharia, a conservative commentator who briefly worked at the Department of Homeland Security, has been chosen as the next White House press secretary.
On the campaign trail
-
James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, returned to the campaign trail after a nearly 10-day absence. He said he had been recovering from a bad case of the flu.
-
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan group that assesses elections, shifted its ratings on 18 House races today, all in Democrats’ favor.
-
Trump again referred to El-Sayed as “Mohammed,” explaining he was doing so because “I feel like it.”
In One Graphic
Trump has attacked the integrity of U.S. elections on more than 70 percent of the days since he returned to office. On social media and in speeches, the president repeats a litany of false claims: that he actually won the 2020 election, that Democrats use undocumented immigrants to “cheat” in elections, that mail-in ballots produce fraudulent results.
Karen Yourish and Arfa Momin looked back at every day of Trump’s second term and documented all of the instances where he cast doubt on elections. By their count, it has happened on 440 days.
What We’re Watching
-
Trump is headed to Syracuse, N.Y., tonight to rally for Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for governor. It is Trump’s third rally this year in his home state, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one.
-
The left’s biggest surrogates are hitting the trail: Bernie Sanders will be in Maine this weekend with Troy Jackson, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will campaign next week in Michigan with El-Sayed.
-
Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, will travel to Bucks County, Pa., where Democrats are hoping to flip the First District. Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, campaigned in the district earlier this week.
-
In South Carolina’s Senate race, Darline Graham and Annie Andrews will face off in a debate on Sunday night.
Build your own Senate map
Do you think Democrats have a shot in Iowa? Will Republicans hold their seat in Maine? Our new interactive tool lets you decide how the Senate battleground races will turn out.
Give it a try →
ONE LAST THING
Scroll with us …
… to see the dueling narratives on TikTok about Talarico.
The Times analyzed all the posts about the Texas Senate race over one 24-hour span in September, using a collection of keywords and hashtags about the candidates. We found that about 70 percent of videos about the race focused on Talarico — both positive and negative — compared with about 30 percent that focused on his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton.
This laser focus on Talarico, Republican strategists say, is partly by design.
“If I can make this a referendum on my opponent, that’s always a good place to be,” Vinny Minchillo, a Texas-based Republican consultant, said. “It is a back alley knife fight with rusty knives.”
Taylor Robinson contributed to this newsletter.
Read past editions of the newsletter here.
If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here.
Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].
The post On the Ground — Well, in the Ground — in Kansas appeared first on New York Times.
