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LENEXA, Kan. — <\/span>The pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the U.S. launched a campaign Thursday for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas, upending the race in a normally Republican state as the GOP\u2019s small majority seems less secure than it was a year ago. <\/p>\n The Rev. Adam Hamilton enters the race as a potentially formidable candidate, though it wasn\u2019t immediately clear how many of the eight other, lesser-known Democrats who\u2019ve announced for the Aug. 4 primary would drop out. The winner will face incumbent Republican Roger Marshall, who aligned himself closely with President Donald Trump in his first run for the Senate in 2020.<\/a><\/p>\n Hamilton, 61, has a national following among mainline Protestants, and he\u2019s built his Church of the Resurrection over the past 35 years in the Kansas City-area with about 22,000 members \u2014 giving him a base from which to tap volunteers and donors.<\/p>\n He had considered running as an independent candidate, telling his congregation that he could bridge partisan divides in a highly polarized political climate, but many Democrats believed an independent candidacy would simply split the anti-Marshall vote, making it easier for Marshall to win a second term. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery week, it seemed there was another news story in the last year where I would find myself shaking my head and thinking, we have to do better,\u201d the self-described fifth-generation Kansan told his congregation.<\/p>\n While Democrats and Republicans have traded off the Kansas governor\u2019s office for the past 60 years, Republicans haven\u2019t lost a U.S. Senate race in the state since 1932. Democrats gave Marshall a vigorous challenge in 2020, but he still prevailed by more than 11 percentage points, even as Democrat Joe Biden ousted Trump and his party won control of both houses of Congress.<\/p>\n In some ways, Hamilton\u2019s candidacy would be similar to that of the Democratic nominee in Texas, state Rep. James Talarico,<\/a> a Presbyterian minister in training who speaks often of his faith and how it guides his positions, though Hamilton, is a generation older. <\/p>\n The best known of the other Democratic candidates in Kansas is state Sen. Patrick Schmidt, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022. <\/p>\n Hamilton, who lives in the town of Stillwell on the edge of the Kansas City metro, has never had trouble with attracting followers. After graduating from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa and then Southern Methodist University in Dallas, his denomination tapped him at age 25 to start a church in suburban Kansas City for nonchurchgoers. <\/p>\n Worshippers initially met in the small chapel of a local funeral home and now gather at nine campuses. The main one, on 76 acres in an affluent suburb, resembles a small college. The Christmas Eve offering \u2014 devoted to mission work \u2014 sometimes tops $2 million.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve raised a lot money over the years and I\u2019m not afraid to do that,\u201d Hamilton said on the eve of his announcement.<\/p>\n He\u2019s written and published dozens of books and his video-based lessons are popular for Sunday school classes in churches across the country. In 2013, he preached at the National Prayer Service.<\/p>\n His entry comes during what promises to be a challenging midterm<\/a> election year for Republicans. Polling<\/a> shows most Americans believe the U.S. military action against Iran<\/a> has gone too far and voters are more and more worried about Trump\u2019s failure to address affordability issues. <\/p>\n Hamilton\u2019s home of Johnson County is the state\u2019s most populous, with 643,000 people, more than one in every five Kansas residents. Once overwhelming Republican, it has grown increasingly blue, voting against Trump in the last two presidential elections. <\/p>\n The county is a key reason why a state with an overwhelmingly GOP Legislature has a Democratic governor. <\/p>\n How voters view Hamilton\u2019s politics is a key question, because he\u2019ll need to win over disaffected Republicans as well as unaffiliated voters \u2014 the formula for Democrat Laura Kelly\u2019s successful bid for governor in 2018 and narrow reelection win in 2022. <\/p>\n Hamilton\u2019s congregation is a nearly equal mix of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, and he describes himself as \u201ca liberal conservative and a conservative liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Hamilton hasn\u2019t run for public office before, he isn\u2019t a blank slate, with decades of sermons, and more recently podcasts and Facebook videos.<\/p>\n Following a surge of federal law enforcement<\/a> in Minneapolis, for instance, Hamilton cited<\/a> an Old Testament verse that commands Israelites to treat foreigners with love and fairness. <\/p>\n On abortion, the father of two married to his high school sweetheart said during the final stop of a listening tour earlier this month that he voted against<\/a> a state constitutional amendment that would have cleared the way for tougher abortion restrictions or a ban in Kansas. <\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t think that our state legislators should be the ethicists and the spiritual guides for all of the women of the state of Kansas,\u201d he said while tearfully describing that while he has counseled rape victims, his mother considered an abortion when she got pregnant with him as a teenager. \u201cI feel both of these things at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n His church also applied financial pressure<\/a> before the United Methodist Church conference struck down<\/a> longstanding anti-LGBTQ policies. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost a thousand people over the years because this was our commitment, and so I want to say that I will take that commitment with me to Washington D.C.,” he said during his listening tour. <\/p>\n Hamilton said that if he wins, he would remain pastor but would scale back his preaching to around 12 to 18 times a year. <\/p>\n \u201cCan you imagine a future,\u201d he asked, \u201cwhere Republicans and Democrats and Independents work together to actually solve problems?\u201d<\/p>\n ___ Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n