By Grace Hills

Kansans are sending Democrat Adam Hamilton to the U.S. Senate, the first time they’ve elected a Democrat to the chamber since 1932.

Hamilton, the pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country with seven campuses across the Kansas City metro, preached a moderate approach, and emphasized listening to both sides.

“We are better together, Republicans and Democrats,” Hamilton told a crowd of supporters after the Associated Press called the race. “Thoughtful Republicans and thoughtful Democrats coming together to solve problems.”

President Trump won Kansas with a double-digit margin in each presidential election since 2016, and he made two visits to the state to support Marshall. Vice President JD Vance also arrived twice to rally for Marshall.

But even that full-court press wasn’t enough to overcome headwinds that Republicans faced in the midterm election.

Marshall called the defeat “humbling.”

“I don’t have any answers,” Marshall told a crowd in Wichita. “It’s been the great honor of my life to serve the state of Kansas for 10 years, and just love this state. Love this country.“

While Trump has easily won Kansas three times, Kansans also elected moderate Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to the governor’s office, then reelected her in that same time period.

Kelly and Kathleen Sebelius, the Democratic governor elected before her, endorsed Hamilton — as did most living former governors except for Sam Brownback, who endorsed Marshall.

Prior Senate elections in the state were sleepier. Marshall coasted to Washington with a more than 11-percentage-point margin of victory in 2020, despite some predictions for a more competitive race.

The polls showed Hamilton being tied or slightly ahead of Marshall. Marshall frequently pointed to his 2020 race against Democrat Barbara Bollier, which flip-flopped between Marshall and Bollier winning, as a defense against the polls.

Both Hamilton and Bollier set fundraising records, but this year’s contest ended up being the most expensive in Kansas history, with Hamilton breaking multiple records.

Hamilton flirted with running as an independent, but decided to run as an “independent-minded Democrat” after his statewide listening tour. Supporters worried if he ran as an independent, he’d split the votes with the Democrat and ultimately send Marshall back to Washington.

Andi Welch, from Johnson County, Kansas, doesn’t always vote for the Democrat on the ballot, but she voted for Hamilton on Election Day.

“I think he’s going to be fair,” Welch said. “I think he’s running as a Democrat for the reasons he states, and I think he really is going to be looking out for Kansas citizens.”

Hamilton’s call for term limits, critiques of the national Democratic party and endorsements from prominent Kansas Republicans resonated with Kansans.

But the race also delved into personal attacks.

A major bombshell in the race was the New York Times reporting that Marshall, who worked as an OB-GYN before going to the U.S. House in 2016, sued 700 of his former patients for medical debt.

Marshall repeatedly redirected attention on the lawsuits to say he gave hundreds of patients free care, but the day before the election he produced a video — apparently without his top advisor’s support — addressing the lawsuits. He defended sending people to collections as a necessary part of business.

“We did have to keep the lights on,” Marshall said in the video.

Hamilton’s campaign used one of those former patients in an attack ad, and five days before Election Day that patient sued Marshall for allegedly charging a predatory interest rate.

Marshall’s campaign, for its part, bet heavily on an attack ad surrounding claims that Hamilton protected a pedophile. A church camp volunteer reportedly attempted to sexually abuse boys at one of Hamilton’s church camps, and returned the following year where he did so again.

Court records show the church’s initial investigation into the boys’ report was inconclusive, and Hamilton later said in a debate he was not involved in the decision to allow the volunteer to return. Church leaders called the authorities after the second report, but Hamilton said they should’ve called police after the first.

National Republicans also turned their focus to the state, betting that the remaining undecided voters — which made up about 8% of the electorate in September, according to an Emerson College poll — were Trump voters who just needed encouragement to get out and vote. The president and vice president each visited the state twice this election season.

Still, polls trended in Hamilton’s favor — Emmerson’s by a wider margin than before their visits.

Hamilton notably avoided association with national Democrats. Though his campaign took $5 million from a political action committee associated with U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Hamilton said he wouldn’t support Schumer in another leadership position.

In their final debate before Election Day, Marshall sought to tie Hamilton to Schumer 15 times.

Hamilton, meanwhile, leaned into a Kansas-first approach, a message that appealed to voters.

Grace Hills reports on politics for the Kansas News Service.

After one of the ugliest battles of the 2026 cycle, Democrat Dr. Amy Acton is projected to prevail over Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in her bid to be Ohio’s first woman elected governor, according to Decision Desk HQ.

For months, the contest between Acton, a former public health director for outgoing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, and Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and failed GOP presidential candidate, was notably personal, with ads suggesting that Acton was a “drunk” and that Ramaswamy was a fraud consuming the Buckeye State’s commercial breaks. 

Then, in the closing weeks of the race, Ramaswamy upped the ante by airing an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, suggesting that her daughter had lied about childhood sexual abuse and neglect. Court records confirm that Arthur lost custody of Acton and her younger brother in 1978 after her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested, charged and indicted for raping then 12-year-old Acton. The Arthurs stayed together and fled the state.

The ad landed like a bomb in the race. Ohio Republicans largely denounced it but President Donald Trump praised it and Vice President JD Vance, an Ohioan, said Republican candidates needed to do whatever it took to win. DeWine, who endorsed Ramaswamy as his successor early in the race, called the ad “deeply troubling” and said it should be taken off the air. Trump likened it to “hitting pay dirt” and said other campaigns should use it as a model. Vance told Republicans upset about it to “stop whining.”

Paul Beck, a political scientist at The Ohio State University, predicted it would be a “turning point” in the race, telling The 19th that he “really felt, the first time I saw the ad, that Ramaswamy was digging his grave.” Beck also believed the ad could potentially have a negative impact on down-ballot Republican candidates in competitive races throughout the state.  

Though Ohio had not elected a Democrat to lead the state for 20 years, polls had for months shown Ramaswamy, who founded Roivant Sciences and initially co-led Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, trailing Acton, who led Ohio’s public health department in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Polls out the week after the ad was released showed that using Acton’s estranged mother against her likely only hurt Ramaswamy’s chances to close the gap. Though competitive statewide races often tighten in their closing days, a subsequent New York Times/Siena University poll conducted from October 26 to November 1 instead showed that Acton’s lead had grown to 6 points from 4 points the month before, with Ramaswamy losing support and more voters saying they did not know who they would back in the gubernatorial contest. 

Acton said during her final weekend of campaigning that she had received “such an incredible amount of love and support” since the ad aired, and that “many people have been coming up at the rallies, at the rope lines, sharing their stories.”

“I’ve always said that I am not the only one who has seen a thing or two in my childhood, and that’s why I do what I do,” Acton told reporters Friday. 

Acton was born and raised in Youngstown, a manufacturing area in the northeast corner of the state that fell on tough economic times after the collapse of the U.S. steel industry. She often said during campaign stops there and throughout the state that growing up, you were far more likely to know what union someone belonged to than their political party. Securing local union endorsements, particularly in the skilled trades and manufacturing areas, was a key part of Acton’s campaign strategy.

Acton graduated from Youngstown’s Liberty High School with honors and was homecoming queen her senior year. She worked her way through college, then medical school at Northeast Ohio Medical University, a joint program of three public universities in the state. She completed residencies in pediatrics and preventative medicine before earning a master’s degree in public health from Ohio State.

When DeWine named Acton his public health director in 2019, she became Ohio’s first woman in the role. A year later, in the early months of the pandemic, Acton was a fixture on Ohioans’ television screens during daily briefings alongside DeWine. The updates about reported cases and virus spread were similar to those conducted on a national level by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The name recognition that Acton earned as public health director positioned her as one of the only Democrats with the potential to win a statewide gubernatorial contest. Ohio is an intensely gerrymandered state that favors Republicans; the Democratic Party’s pipeline of talent had all but dried up, and the party itself has struggled to raise money. Acton’s campaign repeatedly noted that it was trying to win in a state where Trump prevailed in 2024 by 11 points. At times, the campaign’s tactics intended to appeal to Republican crossover voters put them at odds with the Democratic base. 

Acton approached her time in the public health department as a positive, saying it had created an enduring bond with voters. Ramaswamy saw it as a negative that would energize his Republican base. In one campaign ad, Ramaswamy featured a longtime GOP activist who said she was unable to visit her mother at a nursing home during the pandemic, and that she died alone as a result. However, the mother’s obituary showed that she’d died at a hospice facility in Kentucky, not Ohio, more than two months after Ohio lifted its stay-at-home order and after Acton had resigned as health director. Further, DeWine said repeatedly during the contest that the calls to shutter schools and postpone a primary election were ultimately his.

One reason that the Acton-Ramaswamy contest remained so intensely personal from beginning to end is that both candidates offered little in terms of detailed policy. Though they staked out different positions on everything from reproductive rights to data centers to healthcare access, neither candidate faced a competitive primary that compelled them to outline their policies in detail. Neither served previously as a legislator with a voting record to scrutinize. Acton tightly controlled media access at her events and declined to debate Ramaswamy in the general election. Neither answered newspaper editorial board questions about policies like improving childcare affordability that they spoke about generally during campaign stops. 

So the ads that blanketed the battleground state were largely personal attacks. Acton suggested Ramaswamy is an out-of-touch billionaire and a biotech fraud. Ramaswamy and others in his orbit portrayed Acton as unfit to lead Ohio. The personal attacks culminated with Ramaswamy’s ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother.

James Talarico will be the first Democrat to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate since 1994, Decision Desk HQ projects — a stunning upset in a race that hinged on conversations about masculinity and anti-transgender attacks.

Talarico, a seminarian and representative in the Texas legislature, defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton, a hardline conservative endorsed by President Donald Trump who is known as one of the anti-abortion movement’s staunchest warriors.

In what became the most expensive Senate race in state history, Paxton attacked Talarico on questions of manliness, characterizing the Democrat as “low-T” — a reference to testosterone levels that influencers in the manosphere often use. 

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Trump, called Talarico the “first transgender Senate candidate.” Talarico is cisgender and in a relationship with a woman. Republicans also falsely accused Talarico of being vegan, a notion that manosphere commentators argue can make someone less of a man.

Paxton’s campaign also focused on Talarico’s previous support of transgender rights, including through an array of AI-generated ads broadcast across the state and highlighting a 2021 remark in which he said, “God is nonbinary.” 

During the campaign, Talarico walked back his previous support of trans people participating in sports,  telling Fox News he would oppose allowing transgender student-athletes to participate in girls’ sports if “it endangers safety or fairness.” He also softened his support of keeping healthcare available for trans minors, telling Fox News he would vote for a national law banning gender-affirming surgeries for kids, which are rarely performed. 

Though Talarico focused his campaign on questions of costs and corruption, the Democrat leveraged his religious background when talking about issues such as LGBTQ+ rights and abortion. 

“We’re both Christians, and the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion. It means you and I both have to look at different scriptures to try to come to a conclusion,” Talarico said at an October CNN event. “But what I think we can do is actually come together on reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies and the number of abortions. Because if we treat this issue as a public health problem and not a culture war problem, then we can actually make progress together.”

In the final weeks of the campaign, Paxton’s campaign was heavily financed by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent almost $200 million in an attempt to secure a Republican victory. 

This is a breaking news story. The Post will update it as we get more information and reaction. 

Rep. Sharice Davids coasted to reelection Tuesday night, securing her fifth term in Congress, according to the Associated Press.

Davids defeated Republican Eric Jenkins, a former Shawnee city councilmember, and Libertarian Steve Hohe.

“Tonight, Kansans sent a clear message that they want pragmatic leadership focused on fighting corruption, finding common ground, and lowering costs for hardworking families,” Davids said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Traveling across our district throughout this campaign reaffirmed that when we reject partisanship and extremism, we can deliver real, common-sense progress together,” she said.

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Davids was first elected to Congress in 2018, when she unseated four-term Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder by nearly 10 percentage points.

She was the first Native American woman and first openly LGBTQ person to represent Kansas in Washington, D.C. A one-time mixed martial arts fighter and White House fellow in the Obama administration, she has cast herself as a bipartisan centrist during her eight years in office.

She faced criticism from the left earlier this year for her stances on issues like immigration and Israel’s war in Gaza, and she had to overcome her first-ever primary challenge in August. She ended up defeating Sarah Preu of Fairway with more than 80% of the vote.

Jenkins, a Republican, served on the Shawnee City Council from 2015 until losing his reelection bid in 2023. He also previously ran unsuccessfully for U.S. House in 2016 and 2018.

An Army veteran with more than three decades of active duty and reserve service, Jenkins also worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He pitched himself as a veteran and not a career politician.

But the race never seemed competitive.

Before last month’s final campaign finance reports, Davids held an eye-popping fundraising advantage over Eric Jenkins: roughly $3.7 million to $19,000.

Kansas’ Third Congressional District, centered around Johnson County, has been a recurring target for Republicans.

In 2022, lawmakers overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto and approved a new map splitting up the district by moving northern Wyandotte County out and adding three rural counties, Anderson, Franklin and Miami.

Still, Davids won reelection that year over former health care executive Amanda Adkins by 12 percentage points. Davids has won each of her reelection bids by double-digit percentage points.

Last year, GOP lawmakers in Topeka pushed for a special session to draw new Congressional maps again following President Trump’s calls for mid-decade redistricting to favor Republicans, but legislative leaders could not gather enough lawmakers’ signatures to call the session.

OVERLAND PARK — Democratic pastor Adam Hamilton led the Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall in early vote counts that included one of Kansas’ most populous counties.

With more than 125,000 votes counted as of 7:17 p.m. in eight counties, Hamilton led with more than 73,000 votes compared with Marshall’s 50,000 votes, according to unofficial results from the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office. The Libertarian candidate, David Graham, trailed around 2,000 votes.

Marshall, a former OB-GYN in central Kansas and first-term U.S. senator, has faced a tough reelection bid against Hamilton, a Johnson County pastor and the co-founder of one of the largest United Methodist congregations in the country. He’s attempting to become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in Kansas since 1932. 

In a race that has become the most expensive in Kansas history, Marshall and Hamilton have held nothing back, relentlessly attaching each other’s pasts and affiliations, perceived or otherwise, while trying to convince voters of which future they ought to choose.

Polls closed at 7 p.m. Central Time in most of Kansas, but four western Kansas counties are in Mountain Time. Hamilton is expected to digest the night’s results at a watch party in Overland Park, while Marshall will watch results roll in among other Republican candidates at a party in Wichita. 

Voter turnout was strong Tuesday in Kansas’ three largest counties, said Brian Caskey, the state elections director, during a virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon. As of 3:30 p.m., 55% of registered voters in Johnson County had turned out to vote, along with 44% of voters in Sedgwick County and 35% of voters in Wyandotte County. The first returns released included Sedgwick County. 

After his final rally Monday night in Overland Park, Hamilton said he would be proud of his campaign regardless of the results.

“Kansans are tired of the chaos, corruption and indecency in Washington that’s making life harder and more expensive,” Hamilton said. “No matter what the results are tomorrow night, I’m proud of the campaign we’ve run, and I’m proud of how we’ve stood up for the issues that matter.”

Hamilton has campaigned on affordability, health care and ending the war in Iran. He beat out 10 other primary candidates to become the party’s nominee in April, and Marshall’s lone primary opponent endorsed Hamilton. 

In the months since, national attention has flocked to Kansas. The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia changed its rating Monday in the Kansas U.S. Senate race to “leans D,” a remarkable shift from the “safe R” rating the race had back in July.

Outgoing Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, said Hamilton has run a campaign that shows “what he says is what he means” in a time when voters nationwide have grown accustomed to broken promises.

“I don’t think he comes across as a Democrat or a Republican, and I think he just is sort of party-free,” Kelly told Kansas Reflector on Thursday. “I think that he’s been able to get Kansans to trust him.”

Polls ahead of Election Day put Marshall and Hamilton neck-and-neck, while Marshall has been supported by two visits each from fellow Republicans President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Marshall has accused Hamilton of being controlled by U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, while Hamilton has criticized Marshall for failing to break with Trump when his administration’s policies hurt Kansans. 

Marshall has relied on his record in the Senate and loyalty to the Trump administration to resonate with voters, often touting efforts to advocate for year-round E15, a gasoline-ethanol blend, and introducing legislation that targets large financial institutions’ partnerships with major credit card networks such as Mastercard and Visa.

Marshall, at a Trump rally in Salina on Sunday, made a final pitch that every vote matters, and that a vote sends a message in Kansas. He said every time he would see former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansas, he would tell Marshall: “Roger, remember where you’re from.”

“I think that’s so important,” Marshall said. “And I want to make sure that everybody — whether you’re from Salina or, like I was, raised in El Dorado and lived in Great Bend now for 25 years — let’s let Washington know where we’re from.”

Trump said Tuesday on X that Marshall “is one of the Best Senators in the United States of America.”

“He loves Kansas more than anyone, with the possible exception of me!” Trump said.

In the same post, he called Hamilton a “Radical Left LUNATIC Dumocrat, whose Values are not those of the People of Kansas!”

In a video message before Election Day, Kansas GOP Chair Danedri Herbert said this election is critical for Republicans.

“In Kansas, there are 900,000 registered Republicans and only about 500,000 registered Democrats,” she said. “We know that if we vote, we win. But we need you to do your part.”

Graham, the Libertarian candidate in the race, was barred from participating in the candidates’ two debates ahead of Election Day. He encouraged voters in a statement to Kansas Reflector to avoid voting for the lesser of two evils. 

“Vote for freedom,” he said.

He said he’ll be watching Tuesday night to see how many people cast votes for libertarian candidates, who he said are gaining ground across the country.

“Regardless of the results, I shall continue working to provide a pro-freedom alternative to voters,” Graham said. “We need to end the two-party stranglehold on our country! I am optimistic about America!”

Tim Carpenter contributed to this report.