In Kansas, a 94-year Republican Senate streak faces its toughest test yet

For 94 years, no Democrat has won a United States Senate election in Kansas. On the eve of Tuesday's midterm vote, that streak is no longer a safe bet. Incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall is locked in a genuine toss-up with Democrat Adam Hamilton, a suburban Kansas City pastor who has never held elected office, and on Sunday Fox News became the latest major forecaster to move the race out of the Republican column and into its toss-up list.

The shift caps a race that began the year as an afterthought on national handicappers' boards and has ended it as one of a small number of contests that will decide control of the Senate. Polling averages tracked by 270toWin put Hamilton ahead by roughly four points heading into Election Day, with surveys from YouGov, Emerson College and The Washington Post all showing him leading, while an InsiderAdvantage poll taken in mid-October had Marshall narrowly on top. Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, NBC News and The Economist's model all rate the seat a toss-up; Sabato's Crystal Ball and the forecasting site Silver Bulletin go further, projecting a Democratic pickup.

A seat Republicans assumed was safe

Marshall, an obstetrician-gynecologist before he entered politics, won his first Senate term in 2020 by more than 11 points. He cruised to renomination in Kansas's August 4 primary, where the Kansas Secretary of State's certified vote totals show he took 79.9 percent against businessman Arch Naramore. Hamilton, the founder of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, one of the country's largest congregations, won a crowded 11-way Democratic primary with just 34.6 percent of the vote.

Money has since poured into the race at a pace few in either party anticipated. Through mid-October, Hamilton had raised more than $19.1 million and spent nearly $16.3 million, according to his Federal Election Commission filings. Marshall's authorized committee, Kansans for Marshall, reported raising about $7.5 million and spending nearly $6.9 million over the same period, leaving it with just over $800,000 in the bank entering the final weeks. National Republican groups, including the Senate Leadership Fund, have since redirected money that had been earmarked for North Carolina toward shoring up Marshall.

A doctor's debt-collection record becomes a liability

The race turned sharply after a Sept. 8 New York Times investigation, cited extensively in follow-up reporting including a Boston Globe account of the findings, documented that Marshall's medical practice sued more than 700 patients over unpaid bills during his more than two decades practicing obstetrics in Great Bend. The Times found the practice routinely charged 18 percent annual interest and that courts issued arrest warrants against 81 patients who missed related court dates. Marshall's attorney told the Times the senator was not personally involved in decisions to pursue warrants or garnishments, though he had set the interest rate by contract. His campaign has called the coverage an attempt to turn a rural doctor's effort to keep his practice's "lights on" into a scandal; Hamilton has run television ads built around the account of a former patient arrested over a $50 debt, which the Marshall campaign has called defamatory.

The dispute escalated further on Oct. 19, when President Trump, campaigning for Marshall at a rally in Park City, near Wichita, defended the senator's record by invoking a term widely regarded as an antisemitic slur.

"You have to, by law, go after those people, and they made it like he was some kind of a Shylock-type guy," Trump told the crowd, according to reporting from Kansas City member station KCUR.

The Anti-Defamation League posted a response the next day that did not name the president but said "the term 'Shylock' is rooted in a longstanding antisemitic stereotype" and that "regardless of intent, its use can reinforce harmful tropes about Jews." The remark echoed one Trump made at an Iowa rally in July 2025, after which he said he had not understood the term's history; the ADL's more pointed naming of Trump at that time, compared with its unnamed reference this time, drew its own round of criticism from commentators across the political spectrum.

Crossing party lines

The controversy has coincided with a string of defections from Marshall's own party. Two former Republican governors of Kansas, Bill Graves and Mike Hayden, have endorsed Hamilton, as has Naramore, Marshall's primary opponent. Hamilton's campaign has promoted the backing of more than 100 self-identified Kansas Republicans under a banner it calls "Republicans for Hamilton," a group that includes a former Republican state House majority leader and a former chief of staff to the late Sen. Pat Roberts. Marshall has responded by casting Hamilton, whose policy positions are closer to the party's moderate wing, as a "radical Democrat" who would import national Democratic priorities into a conservative state. His own endorsement list includes Trump, Vice President JD Vance, former Gov. Sam Brownback, the Teamsters union and the National Rifle Association's political arm.

The two candidates met twice, at a raucous Kansas State Fair debate in September that drew a crowd Kansas Radio Networks described as more vocal in its opposition to Marshall than to his challenger, and again on Oct. 21 in a Fox4 Kansas City debate covering tariffs, inflation and the ongoing military operations against Iran, over which Marshall backed continued U.S. involvement and Hamilton called for withdrawal.

What comes next

Kansas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, a run that has survived closer calls before, including Democrat Barbara Bollier's roughly 11-point loss to Marshall in 2020 after a similarly expensive late push. Whether that streak extends through a 95th year will be decided Tuesday alongside contests in roughly half a dozen other states that will determine which party controls the chamber for the back half of President Trump's term. Kansas counties begin reporting results as polls close at 7 p.m. local time Tuesday; because the state does not use ranked-choice voting and has no equivalent of the count delays seen in some other battlegrounds this cycle, officials expect a relatively fast tally, though a margin as tight as polling suggests could still trigger a provisional-ballot count before a winner is clear.