By Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — A pair of Washington political analysts traveled to the Lawrence building honoring the legacy of Republican Robert Dole — undefeated in nine consecutive campaigns for Congress — to explain the stunning reality of Kansas joining the list of states with competitive U.S. Senate races.
Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections, and Kirk Bado, editor of The Hotline published by National Journal, told a crowd Wednesday at the Dole Institute of Politics that midterm elections often hinged on status of the national economy, approval ratings of the sitting president and personal abilities of candidates nominated to run for U.S. House or U.S. Senate.
Despite President Donald Trump carrying Kansas three times since 2016 by 14-20 percentage points, Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall’s reelection campaign was transformed into a cliffhanger with emergence of Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton, the founder of a Methodist megachurch.
“This is one of the ones where candidate quality matters most,” Bado said. “This is a rescue operation for Republicans on Roger Marshall, who seems to wake up and find every available rake to step on right now. Adam Hamilton had been thinking about running potentially as an independent. He’s got the profile though to make Kansas very competitive. I think this one is really going to come down to the wire and national Republicans are incredibly, incredibly concerned about it.”
Rubashkin included Kansas among nine states where Democrats had a shot at flipping a Senate seat, but he appeared less bullish on Kansas than Bado.
Marshall would have to squander the 11.4-point margin he achieved in 2020 against Democrat Barbara Bollier in the same state Trump carried in 2024 by 16.1 points against Democrat Kamala Harris.
An Oct. 9-10 poll of 1,200 likely voters by InsiderAdvantage, which doesn’t meet the New York Times criteria for select pollsters, showed Hamilton at 47.5% to Marshall’s 46.7%, which was within the 2.8% margin of error.
Rubashkin said the path to a Democratic majority in the Senate started with retention of all seats held by Democrats up for grabs in November, including Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire. Democrats would need to claim four seats from Republicans to create a 51-49 majority. A 50-50 tie would leave the GOP in charge, because Vice President JD Vance would break ties.
Both North Carolina and Maine were “low-hanging fruit” for Senate Democrats on Nov. 3, Rubashkin said.
“There’s a big gap between the next tranche of states,” he said. “We’re talking about Ohio and Alaska, which are both states Donald Trump won essentially by double digits in all three of the last presidential elections, as well as Texas and Iowa, which similarly are very Republican states at the presidential level. That’s before we even get to places like Kansas and South Carolina.”
Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932. That’s the year national unemployment hit 33%, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was new and Babe Ruth famously flicked his hand to telegraph a home run in the World Series.
In terms of Republicans retaining majority control of the U.S. House, Rubashkin said Democrats were “heavily favored” to retake that chamber.
“As we’ve seen the cycle play out, Democrats are starting to encroach further and further into heavily Republican territory,” Rubashkin said. “You’ve got south Texas seats that look competitive now because Hispanic voters have moved so much away from their 2024 voting margin. You have these rural districts that are being hit hard by agricultural policy — by the tariffs, by the spike in diesel prices due to the war in Iran — that are coming online for Democrats in a major way.”
Bado offered a blunt assessment of the GOP’s prospect of holding the U.S. House: “The Republican case is prayer. It’s so much more difficult to find a viable path to a majority for them.”
He said congressional redistricting championed by Trump was unlikely to deliver the number of Republican seats the tactic was designed to claim. Early in the mid-decade redistricting fight, there were predictions the GOP could gain more than a dozen House seats in 2026.
“There are very, very few slam dunks for them in redistricted races,” Bado said. “It might net them two, three, maybe four seats.”
