WICHITA, Kan. — Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., knows that he’s running for his political life, even in deep-red Kansas, where a Democrat hasn’t won since the Great Depression.
It’s a Senate race that, until just a few months ago, was not on national Republicans’ radar. But Adam Hamilton, a well-known megachurch pastor styling himself as a moderate, has made the race uncomfortably close for Marshall and the GOP and pushed what was once a safe bet into toss-up territory.
In an interview with Fox News Digital in Wichita, Kan., hours before President Donald Trump was set to rally behind the embattled incumbent, Marshall acknowledged that if he falls, Democrats may very well gain control of the Senate.
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“I think that, you know, I’m not a political expert, I’m a physician, but if we lose Kansas, I don’t see how we keep control of the Senate,” Marshall said. “And that’s why a vote for Adam Hamilton is a vote for Chuck Schumer and Democrat control of the Senate. It’s that simple.”
Republicans are trying to maintain, and even grow, their slim, 53-seat majority in the upper chamber. Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in nearly a century, wasn’t supposed to be a problem.
But political experts on the ground contend that Hamilton’s uniqueness as a candidate — he’s been a prominent figure in Kansas for roughly three decades leading the massive Church of the Resurrection — and the political headwinds associated with Trump have created an ideal environment for Marshall to lose.
“I can’t imagine how factors could be any better for Democrats than they are this election cycle,” Don Haider-Markel, a professor of political science at the University of Kansas, told Fox News Digital. “The last time it seemed to be close at all was 2020, and that race ended up not being as close.”
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That was Marshall’s first race for the Senate, where he won by nearly 12 points with Trump at the top of the ticket.
But as Haider-Markel and others have pointed out, midterm elections are typically a check on the party in power, and Trump is not on the ballot this year, though that’s a reality he implored Kansans to ignore during his rally in Park City, Kansas.
“In this election, I’m asking you to pretend please that I’m on the ballot,” Trump said. “Just pretend.”
Still, voters in Kansas are dealing with affordability issues and high fuel prices, a point that Marshall admitted was why his race was much closer than outside observers initially predicted.
“Look, it’s the price of gas, and I do feel people’s pain,” Marshall said. “Every year I go to all 105 counties, finish up the 105 counties in June, and as that price of gas went up, I felt more and more frustration.”
“So maybe we’re up 12 points before the Iran war, and as the price went up our poll numbers went down, so I think it’s the price of gas,” he continued.
Along the asphalt and concrete arteries that connect Hamilton’s home base of Overland Park, Kansas, to what would be, for a brief moment, the center of the MAGA universe in Wichita, neon signs sprouting from gas stations almost all showed fuel prices that hovered just below $4 for gas and well over $6 for diesel.
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Nathaniel Birkhead, a professor of political science at Kansas State University, argued that high gas and diesel prices were certainly a contributing factor to Marshall’s struggles, but not the only one.
Birkhead told Fox News Digital that it was Marshall’s tight connection to Trump at a time when the “Trump Brand is not particularly popular” has left an opening for a Democrat like Hamilton to enter the fray.
“So we have this kind of contrast of Hamilton benefiting from kind of a down year for Republicans. But then also, again, the fact that Marshall is really kind of tying himself to Trump rather than trying to kind of separate himself,” Birkhead said. “I think if this had been Jerry Moran running instead of Roger Marshall, I think it’d be far less competitive.”
Therein lies the conundrum for Marshall and Republicans — they know that they need Trump’s support and his loyal base of voters, but they have to walk a fine line to capture other Republican voters and independents that might sit this election out or vote the other way.
And that’s the crux of Marshall’s argument: without MAGA voters, he can’t win.
“Look, I’m the doctor always weighing the benefits and risks of everything. And I’m telling you, we don’t win this election without Trump voters getting out and voting,” Marshall said. “The majority of the undecideds are Trump supporters. And they need to hear from him, ‘Here’s the plan, and this is how we’re going to bring those prices back down, that if we leave Democrats in control, the price of the gas will never go down.'”