Well, the Kansas race for U.S. Senate just got a lot more interesting.
The Rev. Adam Hamilton, pastor of the largest church in Kansas, has now officially announced he’ll challenge incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall.
And Hamilton’s decided to run as a Democrat — instantly emerging as the most prominent name on the ballot for the August Democratic primary.
A centrist by nature, Hamilton originally set out to explore an independent campaign. But he ended up confronting the reality of the two-party system during a listening tour around the state.
“I went to 18 towns across Kansas in listening sessions, and in every one of them, the first question out of the chute was, ‘Why don’t you run as a Democrat? We’re worried that if you run as an independent, you won’t win, and you know, you’re going to give Roger Marshall the victory,’” Hamilton said.
Hamilton is the senior pastor at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, which he started in 1990 and nurtured from a small startup to a megachurch.
With 24,000 active members and about 22,000 in weekly attendance at nine locations on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri border, Resurrection is the largest church in the Kansas City area and the largest United Methodist Church in the country.
That’s a pretty good base to run off of.
Republicans love love love to paint their opponents as hostile to Christianity.
Good luck making that charge stick against Hamilton, who’s been more successful at spreading the Gospel of Jesus than anybody else in this state.
Republicans act worried
Kansas Democrats haven’t won a Senate election since 1932, but the Republicans are looking a bit scared right now.
The “tell” is when they turn away from their issues and start arguing rules of the game.
Last week, the Kansas Republican Party filed a Federal Election Commission complaint claiming Hamilton violated campaign finance laws by posting a February YouTube video announcing to his parishioners that he would be exploring a run for Senate.
Of course, everyone who lives here knows of the longtime symbiotic relationship between Kansas Republican candidates and the many conservative churches that support them. Voter guides, anyone? Available at the church door.
But even if that didn’t exist, Hamilton obviously would need to tell his congregants if he’s considering a career change.
In normal times, a complaint like this wouldn’t go anywhere. But these days, we live under a government that just charged a former FBI director with illegally arranging seashells, so anything’s possible.
The best part is this is the absolute first time I’ve ever heard the Kansas Republican Party argue for the separation of church and state (as regular readers know, I’m a big fan of irony). I’m surprised they can keep a straight face while doing it, but when one of your most prominent politicians is in trouble, needs must when the devil drives, I guess.
