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Who says the Midwest is boring? On this election eve, the two most bizarre stories in politics are both coming out of Senate races in what’s sometimes derided as “flyover country.” But as those of us from the region know, low topography doesn’t mean low drama.
In Michigan, Democratic Representative Haley Stevens—the runner-up in this summer’s primary for a U.S. Senate seat—went literally overnight from grudgingly backing the Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed to endorsing the Republican Mike Rogers, as my colleague Jonathan Chait reported. Here we’d customarily explain the reason for her abrupt shift, but Stevens herself couldn’t or wouldn’t articulate that during an excruciating 15-minute interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. (A follow-up with The Free Press wasn’t clarifying either.)
If El-Sayed loses and Democrats fail to capture a Senate majority, the commotion over Stevens’s flip will appear pivotal. If, however, Republicans lose control of the Senate, then the eye-popping closing ad by Roger Marshall of Kansas, a GOP incumbent, will be a good symbol of where things went wrong for Republicans.
A key issue in the race has been reporting about how Marshall sued more than 700 patients over medical bills. Some paid interest rates as high as 18 percent; 81 arrests were made in relation to medical debt, according to The New York Times. Experts told the paper that such suits are very rare. In an election in which the affordability of basic services is a key issue, these cases have been a millstone around Marshall’s neck, and some polls show him trailing the Democrat Adam Hamilton. Saturday evening, a Kansas City radio host posted a new Marshall ad, featuring the candidate speaking directly to the camera, that apparently aims to turn that around.
“When I practiced as a small-town OB doc, often practicing as the only OB in the middle of 40,000 people, my wife and I decided to take care of everyone, regardless of their ability to pay,” he says. “Now to ensure that 40,000 Kansans would still have access to care, we did have to keep the lights on, so we occasionally handed some accounts over to collection agencies.”
An old political maxim says that “if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” pointing to the importance of not being on the defensive. If that’s true, what does it mean if you’re explaining that you sent hundreds of your constituents to debt collectors over medical bills? The desire to defend oneself against attacks is understandable—though a disciplined candidate doesn’t take bait—but Marshall isn’t even disputing the crux of the attack against him. He’s affirming it. The idea that a candidate would use his final message of the campaign to broadcast these facts to voters is shocking.
His own aides agreed, according to the Times. The paper reported that the senator proposed the ad about two weeks ago, but advisers said it was a bad idea, and that Marshall should “contrast his record with Adam Hamilton, his Democratic rival, especially on immigration.” Instead, Marshall hired a film crew and taped the spot himself, not telling some of his staff. When they found out, they again opposed spending any campaign funds to air it, so Marshall personally started sending it to people outside the campaign. “I would have been glad to put it out much, much sooner,” Marshall told The Wall Street Journal.
Determining what effect it has on the outcome of the race will probably be impossible, but the debacle shows what makes Marshall such a weak candidate. He should be a shoo-in for reelection: He’s a doctor, he’s got a good head of hair, and he’s a Republican in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. When his colleague Jerry Moran ran for reelection, in an underwhelming year for Republicans, he won by 23 percentage points. But Marshall is battling for his career in a race considered a toss-up. The latest Times poll shows Hamilton up 5 percentage points. A Washington Post poll was even more dramatic, showing the Democrat leading by 9 points.
The Kansas race demonstrates some of the reasons this election has been so difficult for the GOP. First, Republicans have some weak candidates. Marshall is not very dynamic, is vulnerable to attacks, and evidently has bad political instincts. Second, Democrats have several unusually strong candidates. Hamilton is a charismatic megachurch pastor. Third, GOP voters—such as the ones who have made Kansas a rock-ribbed Republican state for so long—are unenthusiastic and demotivated. An Emerson College poll found the state’s approval of President Trump underwater, at 45–51, and other polls have similar results. High fuel prices have been a big issue in Kansas, a heavily agricultural state.
Even with all of this, Marshall could win. If he does, it will be a testament to the power of a state’s long record of GOP allegiance to outweigh even an awful campaign. And if he doesn’t win and returns to practicing medicine, prospective patients have been warned about how he handles billing. You can take his word for it.
Related:
Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
- The states where Democrats have the most to gain
- DOJ’s try-anything approach
- Adam Serwer on the racism scam
- The backlash to corruption is going global.
Today’s News
- President Trump asked the Supreme Court to require California to set aside roughly 20,000 mail-in ballots that his administration claims may have been cast by noncitizens. The emergency request followed a federal appeals-court ruling that barred the administration from intervening in California’s ballot-counting procedures.
- Iran said that it could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the United States agrees to lift sanctions and release billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets. The announcement came amid renewed negotiations facilitated by Qatari mediators to avert further fighting, though Iran said it was not yet prepared to hold direct talks with U.S. officials.
- Democratic Representative Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race yesterday, withdrawing her support for the Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who narrowly defeated her in the August primary. Stevens said that El-Sayed had excluded her from his campaign, and many Democrats criticized her decision just two days before the election.
Dispatches
-
The Wonder Reader: A holiday devoted to costumes and candy offers grown-ups a chance to embrace their silly side, Rafaela Jinich writes.
Explore all of our newsletters here.
Evening Read
The Push to Lead the Working Class Without Workers
By Rose Horowitch
One day over the summer, Morris Katz slouched into our booth at a diner in Brooklyn Heights, removed his backwards baseball cap, and stuffed a Zyn pouch into his mouth. He took out his iPhone (no case, gaping crack down the back) and put it face down on the table. Then, while claiming, “I never do this,” he plunked a Hershey’s Kiss into his espresso. The 27-year-old political strategist and Zohran Mamdani confidant was ready to speak.
Katz believes that the Democratic Party is beholden to billionaire oligarchs and is out of touch with the economic issues that working people care about. The world has worsened for most Americans, and he thinks Democrats are afraid to name the culprits. “You can’t tell someone they’re getting fucked and not tell them who’s fucking them,” Katz said. He loathes politicians who seek incremental change. The party, he says, needs to run outsiders who promise to blow up a corrupt system.
More From The Atlantic
- The time is right for a “great books” revival.
- Jemele Hill: The Protect College Sports Act isn’t enough.
- America can’t afford an AI recession.
- Haley Stevens is sending the wrong message.
- Trump searches for a fall guy to blame for Iran.
Culture Break
Take a look. With his sly, vacant images, Roy Lichtenstein explored the distance that technology created between us and reality, Sebastian Smee writes.
Bottoms up. Tallboys, which contain a third more beer than your standard 12-ounce can, are ascendant in American culture—and are a tidy metaphor for the times, Megan Garber writes.
PS
The Senate race in Kansas has one more X factor that’s of special interest to me. Roger Marshall isn’t just facing Adam Hamilton—he’s also being challenged by the libertarian candidate David Graham, who’s drawing 4 percent of the vote in the latest Times/Siena poll, enough to make the difference in a close race. He is not related to me, and I don’t endorse candidates, but I do endorse his name. He should not be confused with David Graham, the Republican nominee for attorney general in Delaware, nor with Mayor David Graham of Princeton, West Virginia, who is not on the ballot this fall. (Neither is any relation to me.) If either candidate wins, they could celebrate with some high-octane honky-tonk from David Graham and the Eskimo Brothers. If things don’t turn out as well for them, I might recommend some slower blues from the late, great British guitarist Davey Graham. They are both—you guessed it—no relation.
— David
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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