A former GOP governor has doubled down on a campaign to persuade Kansas voters to shun Donald Trump’s Senate candidate in the ruby-red state.
Bill Graves, who spent eight years as Kansas’ secretary of state before serving two terms as governor, has thrown his weight behind Democrat Adam Hamilton, the pastor taking on incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall on Nov. 3. Trump has backed Marshall.
Graves, 73, said in a Thursday interview with CNN that he knows the move is unorthodox in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. Still, he said Kansans should look past party lines and vote with their gut.
“My point is to reach out to Republicans and unaffiliated voters and make sure they know in our state it’s OK to cross party lines,” he told the network. “It’s OK to vote Democrat in this Senate race.”
“Kansas has a history, as you probably know, of doing some very unusual things politically,” he said. “We’ve elected Democratic governors over and over again. And so I don’t put much credence in the whole thing about, well, we haven’t done it for 100 years. There’s always a first time.”
Graves announced his endorsement of Hamilton, 62, in a shock opinion piece for the Kansas City Star last Wednesday. He slammed Sen. Marshall as someone who “has turned his back on Kansas,” while the Democratic hopeful “understands what it means to be compassionate in lifting up those in need.”
Marshall, a 66-year-old former obstetrician, faces a tough sell on the campaign trail after The New York Times reported last week that, before taking office, he sued more than 700 of his patients over unpaid bills. Those lawsuits led to 81 arrests.
Graves also made a thinly veiled jab at the president, 80, and other political actors in D.C. whom the former governor accuses of putting party interests above the good of the country.
“My way might be viewed as ‘old school,’ but the current way of doing things isn’t working, and it’s driving our nation into the ditch,” he wrote. “The gridlock occurring in Washington is the result of both political parties refusing to stop the politicking and understand their public service role.”
A 94-year history of sending Republicans to the Senate means the Kansas race between Marshall and Hamilton ought not to even be a contest at all. The Cook Political Report currently has the election pinned as a “likely” victory for the Republican incumbent, down from a “solid” GOP outlook earlier this summer. Other pollsters have forecast wins for either candidate within a 1-point margin.
Trump carried Kansas in 2024 by about 16 points. His second-term performance has since seen the president’s overall approval ratings sink to historic lows, helping Democrats gain a roughly 7-point lead on the generic congressional ballot going into the November midterms.
Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since George McGill in 1932. He first won his seat in 1930 to fill the vacancy left when Charles Curtis became Herbert Hoover’s vice president. He then won a full six-year term two years later and served until January 1939, when he lost to Republican Clyde Reed.
The Daily Beast has contacted Hamilton and Marshall’s representatives for comment on this story.
