Ninety-four years ago. That was the last time Kansans elected a Democrat to the Senate. This year’s race is neck and neck, according to polls, and Senator Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent, aims to keep his party’s streak going.
But increasing displeasure with President Trump’s economic policies as well as a strong Democratic opponent have Republicans in the state scrambling to shore up Mr. Marshall.
He was elected to the Senate in 2020, after spending decades running an OB-GYN medical practice in rural central Kansas. He comfortably won that election by 11 points.
Here are five things to know about Mr. Marshall’s candidacy.
1. He has the support of the president and vice president. It’s less clear how he feels about them.
On Monday night, Mr. Trump stumped for Mr. Marshall near Wichita. The president sought to credit him with being the driving force behind a new pledge to offer $8 billion in economic aid to farmers hurt by high diesel fuel prices. Mr. Marshall also campaigned with Vice President JD Vance last month.
During Mr. Trump’s rambling speech on Monday, he invoked an antisemitic trope while defending Mr. Marshall’s aggressive approach to collecting debts as a doctor. Mr. Trump said that Mr. Marshall had been cast as “some kind of a Shylock-type guy,” referring to the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” whose name has become shorthand for antisemitic representations of avarice and usury.
Mr. Marshall has had to tiptoe around his support for some of the Trump administration’s policies. He has criticized its immigration enforcement actions, which have often targeted farm workers. A Times/Siena poll last month found that 55 percent of Kansans disapprove of the way Mr. Trump is handling his job as president, and that half said they thought Mr. Marshall would support Mr. Trump too much.
2. Trade policy and fuel costs, especially for farmers, are challenging issues for his campaign.
As elsewhere, the economy is center stage in Kansas. Amid disruptions caused by the war in Iran, Kansas’ agricultural economy has been hit particularly hard by the rising price of diesel, which is used in equipment from combine harvesters to irrigation pumps. Fertilizer costs have skyrocketed as well.
The state’s cattle ranchers were hurt by the Trump administration’s decision earlier this year to allow a flood of cheap beef imports into the United States, which lowered prices for consumers at the expense of domestic producers.
Those challenges added to the woes of farmers and ranchers who were already contending with a drought that has reduced yields of mainstay crops like corn, soybeans and wheat.
3. He has lagged behind his opponent in fund-raising.
Mr. Marshall raised $2.5 million in individual campaign contributions by early October, compared with more than $4 million for Mr. Hamilton.
Since then, millions more have poured into the race on both sides from super PACs and outside donors. Even as Republicans have sought to divert campaign cash from other states to Kansas in recent weeks, Mr. Hamilton has continued to eclipse Mr. Marshall’s fund-raising.
4. The medical practice he ran has come under scrutiny for arrests linked to unpaid bills.
Mr. Marshall, either personally or through his practice, filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, according to a New York Times analysis of Kansas court records. Patients were arrested in 81 of those cases for missing court dates. The unpaid bills ranged from several thousand dollars to as little as $101, and patients were routinely charged an 18 percent annual interest rate.
Mr. Marshall responded to The Times’s investigation last month, calling it “an absolute lie” and telling Fox News that he would “never want anyone to be arrested because of money that they owe myself or the hospital.” He said the lawsuits were a result of “standard practices.”
5. Two former Republican governors have endorsed his opponent. Two have stayed neutral.
Of the state’s four living Republican former governors, none have endorsed Mr. Marshall. Two — Bill Graves and Mike Hayden — have endorsed Mr. Hamilton, while the other two, Sam Brownback and Jeff Colyer, have stayed neutral. The current governor of Kansas, Laura Kelly, endorsed her fellow Democrat.
In his endorsement, Mr. Graves wrote that Mr. Marshall had “turned his back” on Kansas and that Mr. Hamilton knew how to “disagree without being disagreeable.” Mr. Hayden’s message was much the same, accusing Mr. Marshall of putting “party and politics ahead of the people.” Regarding the Trump administration’s economic policies, he argued that Mr. Hamilton would be more “willing to stand up and say, ‘This isn’t working.’”
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