Republican Sen. Roger Marshall settled his debts over the weekend with a Kansas bakery after a bill for hundreds of treats ordered by his campaign for a 2020 event went unpaid for six years.
Holly Thomas, the owner of the store that made cookies, brownies and cupcakes for Marshall’s primary election watchdog party, said in a social media post Friday that she would not vote for the senator in this year’s election, where he faces a surprisingly strong challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton, after he failed to pay the $678.75 he owed his small business.
“This is not about political parties or political disagreements. This is about my personal experience as a small business owner and the importance of honoring my financial commitments,” Thomas said. “This experience is why Roger Marshall will never get my vote.”
Thomas said she reached out several times but never heard back, noting the lack of payment occurred when her business was just getting started and at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. “Six years later, I haven’t forgotten,” she said.
Marshall posted a screenshot of a $1,300 payment Saturday, showing he had paid the half-decade-old cookie bill and then some.
“We have absolutely no idea how this happened, but rest assured, as soon as we found out about it, we immediately attempted to contact the company to apologize, and we have refunded double the 2020 bill,” Marshall said on social media.
Thomas confirmed hours later that she could “finally mark the bill paid.”
The Republican senator faces a competitive re-election race this fall, with strong voter disapproval of President Donald Trump and widespread economic anxiety raising the possibility that Kansas could send a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in nearly a century. A recent New York Times and University of Siena poll shows Marshall tied with Hamilton at 45 percent of likely voters.
The bakery bill reimbursement comes as Marshall, a former obstetrician-gynecologist, came under fire last month following a report that he sued hundreds of patients over unpaid medical debts.
The New York Times found that he had filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with unpaid bills and that at least 81 of those people had been arrested for missing court dates. Democrats leaned on that story in ads, accusing Marshall of ignoring people’s concerns about health care costs.
A spokesperson for Marshall told the Times that the longtime doctor spent many years treating patients regardless of their financial ability.
“Judges issue arrest warrants when people repeatedly miss court dates, not doctors,” spokesperson Payton Fuller said in a statement to the news outlet.
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