Democratic candidates know they’re winning when President Donald Trump shows up to attack them. Consider Adam Hamilton, the Kansas pastor and Democrat whose challenge to Republican Sen. Roger Marshall threatens the status quo and the GOP’s hold on the U.S. Senate.
The contest has drawn national attention because Kansas hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century. As of Wednesday, RealClearPolitics had ranked the race a toss-up.
Much has changed since I spoke to Hamilton in August shortly after he won the Democratic nomination. Back then, Hamilton was a political newcomer who surprised himself with his candidacy. He told me his job was to lift people up to run for office, not to run himself. But he was called, as it were, to put his faith to the secular test of serving in government.
His head-spinning success has Republicans worried and the president in a tizzy. Rushing to rescue Marshall at a Kansas rally this week, Trump stumped with his usual flair and might have helped Hamilton. Suffice to say, his shtick is getting old. His tropes are stale.
He’s still anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and, when he’s in a certain mood, antisemitic. Marshall, he told the crowd, would hold the line against “hostile third-world migrants,” “jihadists” and “communists.” Presumably, we are to infer that Hamilton would do otherwise, though there’s no reason to think so. Throughout a debate between the two candidates on Wednesday, Marshall repeatedly invoked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) — 19 times! — as the bogeyman to whom Hamilton, if elected, would be beholden. Hamilton has said he wouldn’t support Schumer as the party’s leader.
Perhaps for Halloween season Trump was trying to spook people with some classic anti-American scare tactics. At least he mixed things up with an anti-Christian flourish aimed at Hamilton, whom he described as a “bad person,” “a disgrace,” who is “pretending to be a moderate.”
Vice President JD Vance, a proud Catholic convert, stooped even lower during a rally last month in Olathe, Kansas, saying that Hamilton “supported a drag group called Our Ladies of Perpetual Indulgence.” Vance described that group as anti-Christian and made up of devil worshipers. He also accused Hamilton of teaching that White privilege is a sin and that people should repent for eating meat.
These accusations are utter nonsense, concocted from distortions, half-truths and lies. Not a good look for a man who aspires to be the next president, not that lying interfered with Trump’s aspirations.
Hamilton may be Trump’s worst nightmare. Not only are they polar opposites, but Hamilton seems unflappable. Trump can’t get under his skin. A president who thinks he’s God-sent to the Oval Office, and who posts images of himself as Christlike, might be threatened by Hamilton’s humility and his message of love, empathy and compassion.
Contrary to Trump’s understanding of leadership, empathy doesn’t equate to weakness but to strength. Compassion doesn’t mean that presidents or other public officials should bow to enemies or surrender common sense in tackling the world’s harsh realities. But Americans have always expected basic decency from candidates seeking to represent their interests. We’ve seen little of that lately, and Hamilton, who seems poised to usher grace into Washington’s lawmaking chambers, is a threat to the dark lords of chaos.
Marshall, an obstetrician-gynecologist, also comes across as a decent guy, despite voting to challenge the certification of the 2020 election results and toeing the MAGA line in most instances. He has come under scrutiny after the New York Times recently reported that he sued more than 700 patients for not paying their bills and routinely charged an 18 percent annual interest rate. His attorneys also sought arrest warrants in cases involving patients who missed court dates.
Marshall held his own at the debate, though I confess to feeling sorry for him during the Trump rally. As a practicing Christian and former board chair of First Christian Church, it can’t have been easy to participate in the sliming of a good man by a president whose lack of moral clarity is legendary. Marshall’s best punch against his adversary during the campaign was calling Hamilton too “woke.” An ad from a super PAC also described him as a “megachurch CEO.” (Do you suppose he meant as in the pope and the Vatican?) On the woke charges, the preacher delivered a quick sermon: “I just want to know, when did it become ‘woke’ to care for your neighbor?”
More to the moment, Marshall carries Trump’s baggage, which includes record-low approval ratings, into the election. Thanks largely to Trump’s war in Iran, his high tariffs and soaring fuel prices, it’s not the best time to be a MAGA Republican in agricultural Kansas. And it’s never a good idea to attack a popular pastor for practicing his faith.
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