A Democrat unseating an incumbent Republican senator in Kansas sounds unbelievable at first.
It’s been 94 years since Kansas has sent a Democrat (George McGill) to Washington, and to date, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats 907,000 to 507,000. Kansas joined the union as a “free state"—a Republican free state—and since its founding in 1861, it’s largely voted accordingly.
Yet somehow this cycle, Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton finds himself in a statistical tie with Republican Senator Roger Marshall despite running with a "D" next to his name. Even with three heel clicks, many Republicans still won't feel like Kansas at home. And neither a tornado nor a wicked witch is to blame for the reality.
First, the obvious stuff: the party in the White House has historically fared poorly in the midterms, especially when the president has a 37 percent approval rating like Donald Trump. Marshall is a vulnerable candidate, having been exposed by The New York Times for suing over 700 former patients as an OB-GYN for unpaid bills that sometimes totaled just a few hundred dollars. But mainly, Hamilton has been touted as a top-tier candidate, someone who’s cut through partisan gridlock to inspire voters while running a well-oiled campaign.
Those three things can be true, but they don't tell the whole story. Kansas didn’t just become competitive suddenly because Hamilton took the scene.
After all, Kansas already has a statewide elected Democrat in Governor Laura Kelly. She’s played a tremendous role in building up the Kansas Democratic Party’s infrastructure to meet the moment. And as this Newsweek reporter has covered this Midterm cycle, grassroots organizing is bucking longtime conventional wisdom that money and ads win elections.
“In the first conversation we had about me taking the position, her exact words were, ‘I am very disappointed in the state of the party. Can you do better?’” Kansas Democratic Party Chair Jeanna Repass told Newsweek. “We didn't have infrastructure. Democrats were flailing all over the state, didn't feel like they had a party that they could rely on, and she understood that that was not the way to move forward if we were ever going or elect her replacement, if we were ever going to build.”
Repass came from a community organizing and marketing background before mounting a 2022 bid for Kansas secretary of state. She lost the general election 58 percent to 39 percent but won Kelly's respect in the process. Repass said Kelly was concerned the party wasn't headed in the right direction and believed her director-level experience could help professionalize the institution.
When she joined, the chair was an uncompensated role, the party was losing county chapters, and the executive director had just been fired. They were also working out of an old Ramada hotel in Topeka. As Repass recalls, apartments were combined into office space, the bathroom was on the floor below, and the elevator didn’t work.
“I had just been elected and the governor looked at me and I said, ‘Ma'am, what can I do for you?’ And she said, ‘Never bring us back here’.”
Today, the party has a new office and employs a full-time executive director, media director, political director, operations director, and organizer. It’s grown from being in 57 counties to 68 counties where year-round organizing is conducted.
“As a former statewide candidate myself, I understand kind of the sexy allure of the candidate,” Repass said. “But none of that happens in a vacuum and what you have to have is a structure and an infrastructure that those candidates can run on.”
In a prior interview with Newsweek, former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, said that when he was challenging Republican Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, there was virtually no state party infrastructure.
“We just had to do that all from scratch,” O’Rourke said.
Instead of having local Democrats open doors during campaign stops and help plan events, O’Rourke’s campaign had to do the work itself. He came within three points of beating Cruz.
Under the leadership of Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder, Democrats now have a presence on every state and federal ballot line for the first time since 1972. They’ve also opened five offices.
In turn, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico leads Republican Ken Paxton by three points in the polling average. By doing this, Texas Democrats have made races competitive up and down the ticket. If Kansas can keep building, leaders hope they can do the same.
The investment in state parties is part of Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin’s strategy to “getting the DNC out of D.C.” and bolster person-to-person campaigning between Democrats and the voters they’re trying to win. Under the DNC’s State Partnership Program, each party receives $17,500 a month, with Republican-controlled states like Kansas receiving an additional $5,000 through the DNC’s Red State Fund.
The Kansas Democratic Party has used the funds to hire their year-round organizer, hold more candidate events, and send targeted grants to county parties and young democrats.
“Kansas Democrats are organizing everywhere across the state, continuing to gain momentum and proving why it's so important to invest in state parties,” Martin told Newsweek in a statement. “Kansas Democrats are harnessing grassroots power to win races up and down the ballot. Democrats will continue to channel this on-the-ground energy to fight for every vote.”
Organizing doesn’t happen immediately, though, and Democrats still face the hurdle of their 43 percent approval rating, even as Republicans face a 35 percent approval rating, per Gallup. This means in red states, candidates are inclined to distance themselves from the two-party system, as Hamilton—previously registered as a Republican and independent—has done in this race.
“Republicans, Democrats, and Independents across Kansas are supporting Adam Hamilton’s message of leading from the middle to lower costs and solve our nation’s biggest problems,” campaign spokesperson Glynnis Harvey told Newsweek in a statement. “Kansans are ready for change.”
The struggle of being a Democrat in Texas can be felt in the gubernatorial race, where state Senator Cindy Holscher trails Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson by nearly six points in the RealClear Polling average. While Democrats are eager to elect Hamilton to the Senate, the governor’s seat can often make a bigger difference for state Democrats in party-building at home, given their proximity. As Holscher seeks to narrow the polling gap as November 3 draws near, her campaign has made clear that reaching people where they are is a strategic priority.
"Organizing and showing up across the state is how you earn people's trust in Kansas,” Hans Torgerson, a spokesperson for the Holscher Campaign, told Newsweek in a statement. “You have to go out and earn every vote, and that has been the priority of our campaign from day one. Voters want to see candidates in their own communities and have a real conversation about the issues facing their families, and meeting people where they are is the most important work any campaign can do."
Hamilton will have to prove he can win voters at the margins to push the race’s statistical tie in his favor. The same holds true for Democrats across the country from Texas to Alaska. Control of the Senate runs through red America, which means Democrats must persuade Republicans they’re running to represent the state, not D.C. insiders. A functional state Democratic Party helps address both that and the branding problems their candidates must confront.