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Republicans are spending millions on key battleground races
Senate Majority Leader John Thune discusses the upcoming midterm elections. Thune analyzes the Senate power rankings, Republican advertising spending and the battleground races that will decide control of Congress. Thune also highlights crucial battleground races in states like Georgia.
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Republicans fully recognize that they face political headwinds heading into the November midterm elections, and those winds are swirling in a race that has become quietly competitive as Election Day nears.
Kansas has, for nearly a century, consistently elected Republicans to the Senate. But in a midterm election year when voters are unhappy with the Trump administration’s actions and their impact on the economy, the race between Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton pushed harder than some in the GOP would like.
Sen. Tim Scott, RS.C., the Senate GOP campaign chief, acknowledged the race is close but remained confident Marshall would hold on.
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Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., accused House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., of being “hurt in the butt” over the Trump-Schumer deal to fund the government. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Listen, I think when you look at Kansas, it’s a very competitive state, more competitive than I’d like it to be, but the fact is we’re winning in Kansas,” Scott said.
Republicans are trying to maintain and grow their 53-seat majority, but face many toss-up contests across the map, and voters frustrated with high fuel prices, tariffs and the war in Iran could threaten that hold on power.
Kansas isn’t in that toss-up category, but it was recently downgraded from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican” by the Cook Political Report and in the Fox News voting power rankings.
“No one should be surprised that Adam’s message of leading from the middle and working together is resonating across Kansas,” Tyson Brody, a spokesman for Hamilton, told Fox News Digital.
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“Roger Marshall has spent the last 18 months hiding from his constituents, voting to cut health care and supporting endless war that has led to skyrocketing gas and grocery prices,” he continued. “Kansans are ready for something different, and that’s why we’re voting to elect Adam in November.”
Still, Scott gave Marshall and others some advice that could be the recipe for success, even in close contests.
“I told Roger Marshall the same thing I told all the candidates almost two years ago: ‘You do one of two things, you either run scared or you run unopposed,'” Scott said. “And, frankly, it’s not unopposed.”
“And so, you can’t run to the tape, you have to run through the tape. I believe that Kansas is a competitive state,” he continued. “However, I will say that when I look at all the data, it tells me that Roger Marshall will be successful.”
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The Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, smiles as he speaks to a reporter after delivering remarks his race for the U.S. Senate at Harmon Park on Thursday, April 30, 2026, in Prairie Village, Kan. (TNS)
He has already received reinforcements in the form of Vice President JD Vance, who earlier this month called for the legislature and called voters that Marshall, a former obstetrician, was a man who dedicated his life to delivering babies and making sure that mothers and children from all walks of life were safe and got the health care they needed.
“Let’s stand up for Doc Marshall and pack the crazy people, ladies and gentlemen,” Vance said.
He will be back soon too. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, RSD, told Fox News Digital as he left the Senate late Wednesday night that he planned to travel to Kansas. When asked if Republicans will retain the majority, Thune said “of course we are.”
Marshall is eyeing a second term in the Senate against Hamilton, a political newcomer who was previously registered as a Republican, now running a centrist-aligned campaign. Marshall was first elected to the upper chamber in 2020, cruising to an 11-point victory while Republicans across the country took hits as Trump’s first term came to an end.
Since then, he has aligned himself with Trump, as did many Republicans during their time in total control of Washington.
But in recent weeks and months, Marshall began to distance himself from the administration – like pushing ICE to coordinate with local law enforcement as agents descended on southern Kansas or promising to fight for jobs at Bombardier, a Canadian aircraft maintenance facility that employs nearly 1,500 Kansans as Trump’s trade.
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Hamilton also has his own headaches. Marshall has consistently painted him as a “woke” pastor, where he has delivered to Kansas’ largest United Methodist congregation on Black Lives Matter and climate change, among other issues.
“As voters continue to learn more about Democrat Adam Hamilton, they realize that his views are just a carbon copy of every other woke liberal in Washington,” Brent Robertson, a longtime senior adviser to Marshall, told Fox News Digital.
“Voters turn this guy faster than cider,” he continued.
And during a sermon six years ago, he called on his congregation to repent of eating and producing beef. Notably, Kansas is the third largest cattle producer in the country.
“Some of the things we grow because we like to eat them, like cattle, end up producing more carbon dioxide than other crops we could grow, other forms of food we could have,” Hamilton said. “And so, in all these ways, we create or add to the amount of greenhouse gases in our world.”
