Megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton has defeated Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas’ Senate race, becoming the first Democrat elected to the position in the state in almost 100 years.
The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday evening for Hamilton, who earned 51.9% of the vote with 91% of votes counted. Marshall earned 45.2% of the vote, AP reported. The result delivers a major blow to the GOP as the party seeks to maintain control of Congress.
The race emerged as a surprisingly close battle in the lead up to Election Day, despite the fact that President Donald Trump won the state by 16 points just two years earlier in his 2024 reelection bid. For months, the Cook Political Report had categorized the contest as “Likely Republican.”
But in recent weeks the election forecaster twice shifted the race toward Democrats as polls showed Hamilton narrowing the gap with Marshall, moving it first to “Lean Republican” on September 23 and then to a true “Toss Up” on Oct. 6.
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Republicans took notice in the past two months, diverting resources from swing-state Senate battles like that in North Carolina to defend Marshall’s seat. According to AdImpact, the Republican Senate Leadership Fund reserved $8.2 million for Kansas, the kind of funds usually allocated for traditional battleground states.
AdImpact found that overall, the Kansas Senate race saw a 3,332% increase in ad spending over the 2022 Kansas Senate general election.
Marshall, a former OB-GYN and military officer who represented Kansas in the House before being elected to the Senate in 2020, has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump and received Trump’s endorsement as one of the President’s “favorite senators.”
But while the President’s backing may once have served Marshall, experts told TIME leading up to the election that the senator’s closeness to Trump, whose approval rating has dropped to a new low, could pose a challenge for his reelection bid in the current political climate.
Voters have put blame on the Trump Administration for economic issues, experts said, including the war in Iran hiking up fuel prices and Trump’s tariff regime affecting the agriculture, aerospace, and other industries. Agriculture is the largest economic driver in Kansas, contributing $62 billion and close to 150,000 jobs, so retaliatory tariffs impacting Kansas’ grown commodities have had a ballooning effect in recent months.
“The agricultural industry is suffering right now,” Alexandra Middlewood, an associate professor of political science at Wichita State University, told TIME in October. “At the same time, it is harvest season, and diesel prices have gone up, and so farmers and ranchers are really struggling in the state.”
Trump stopped in Salina, Kansas, on Sunday in an effort to boost Marshall's campaign in the final weekend before the midterms, telling supporters to “pretend I'm on the ballot.”
“I'm closing it down tonight. This is it. I had to come here to make sure that Roger got elected. I had to do it,” Trump said on Sunday.
Hamilton, the founding and senior pastor for one of the largest United Methodist churches in the U.S., meanwhile positioned himself during the campaign as a centrist, willing to work with Republican lawmakers and the President.
“I’m somebody who stands in the middle,” Hamilton said in the race’s second debate in October. “I’m going to try to work for all Kansans, Republicans, independents and Democrats.”
