Prairie Village, Kansas
Standing before a crowd of a hundred people Friday night, Adam Hamilton did not have the aura of a man whose entire life was about to be shattered, whose political ambitions were about to be undermined by millions of dollars of negative television ads, whose campaign had become a shameless vector of hope for Democrats dreaming of unfathomable midterm elections.
Instead, the Democratic Senate candidate from Kansas appeared calm, projecting easy confidence as he stood on a haystack.
Hamilton was speaking to a group of voters who had come to see him. And as those voters helped themselves to beer and wine from the coolers – as the evening chill set in and the kids remained busy roasting marshmallows on a Solo stove – he seemed to welcome the target now on his back. He informed the crowd that the Senate Republicans’ super PAC had took his money out of North Carolina and diverted it to Kansas. The state airwaves, he warned, would broadcast a storm of advertising against him, which would begin perhaps within hours.
“They are afraid,” he said in an unwavering voice. “They should be afraid.”
Few Democrats would have imagined Kansas as a Senate battleground early this cycle. Even fewer candidates would have chosen Hamilton as the Republican nominee. But the 62-year-old founding pastor of nearby Church of the Resurrection, the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation, has become just that — combining an atypical political biography with a sympathetic on-the-ground approach to potentially unseat incumbent President Roger Marshall.
Polls suggest this could very well happen. The question now is whether Hamilton peaked too soon. With a month to go, Republicans are pouring resources into the state. And even Hamilton acknowledged that he was entering a new phase of the campaign. Although he broke fundraising records in Kansas, he told the crowd he still had millions left to raise. He made no secret of the personal toll the campaign took on his church, his community and his family.
When I asked Hamilton about this, he was convinced that only someone who regularly attracts thousands of people can his church pews may be saying:
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