Adam Hamilton, a Methodist mega-church pastor from Kansas, talks to voters as he wraps up a U.S. Senate listening tour on Saturday, April 18, 2026, at Limitless Brewing in Lenexa, Kansas. (AP Photo/Heather Hollingsworth)

LENEXA — 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’s small majority seems less secure than it was a year ago.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton enters the race as a potentially formidable candidate, though it appears likely that at least a few of the eight other, lesser-known Democrats who previously launched campaigns would remain in the Aug. 4 primary race. 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.

Hamilton, 61, has a national following among mainline Protestants, and he’s built his Church of the Resurrection over the past 35 years in the Kansas City area with about 22,000 members — giving him a base from which to tap volunteers and donors.

Hamilton weighed an independent run first

He had considered running as an independent candidate, telling his congregation that he could bridge partisan divides in a highly polarized political climate. However, many Democrats believed that would simply split the anti-Marshall vote, giving Marshall a second term.

“Every 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,” the self-described fifth-generation Kansan said.

While Democrats and Republicans have traded off the Kansas governor’s office for the past 60 years, Republicans haven’t 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.

In some ways, Hamilton’s candidacy would be similar to that of the Democratic nominee in Texas, state Rep. James Talarico, a Presbyterian minister in training who speaks often of his faith and how it guides his positions. However, Hamilton is a generation older.

Hamilton has been registered as both a Democrat and a Republican previously, according to voter records, but switched to unaffiliated in February. He has registered as a Democrat again, his campaign said Thursday.

Run greeted with skepticism on both sides

The Kansas Republican Party quickly signaled that it plans to portray Hamilton as liberal and out of step with the state, however he identifies himself.

“His so-called ‘independent’ exploration was little more than a political marketing strategy to mask a radical left agenda,” its executive director, Rob Fillion, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, two Democratic primary opponents were skeptical of Hamilton’s return to their party.

A spokesman for state Sen. Patrick Schmidt of Topeka noted that Hamilton registered as a Republican for the August 2020 primary and argued that the pastor was not a Democrat “when it counted most.”

Noah Taylor, a Wichita-area veteran who served in Afghanistan, said Hamilton’s return was “not a conversion.”

“That’s a calculation,” he said.

Hamilton started massive church from nothing

But other Democrats — and Marshall — must reckon with Hamilton’s ability to attract followers and raise money.

Hamilton was a graduate of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa and then Southern Methodist University in Dallas when his denomination tapped him at age 25 to start a church in suburban Kansas City for nonchurchgoers.

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 — devoted to mission work — sometimes tops $2 million.

Hamilton also has 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.

He’s running in what promises to be a challenging midterm election year for Republicans. Polling shows most Americans believe the U.S. military action against Iran has gone too far and voters are increasingly worried about what they see as Trump’s failure to address affordability issues.

Hamilton’s home of Johnson County is the state’s 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.

The county is a key reason why a state with an overwhelmingly GOP Legislature has a Democratic governor.

Hamilton’s views shaped through decades as a pastor

How voters view Hamilton’s politics is a key question, because he’ll need to win over disaffected Republicans as well as unaffiliated voters — the formula for Democrat Laura Kelly’s successful bid for governor in 2018 and narrow reelection win in 2022.

Hamilton’s congregation is a nearly equal mix of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, and he describes himself as “a liberal conservative and a conservative liberal.”

Although Hamilton hasn’t run for public office before, he isn’t a blank slate, with decades of sermons, and more recently podcasts and Facebook videos.

Following a surge of federal law enforcement in Minneapolis, for instance, Hamilton cited an Old Testament verse that commands Israelites to treat foreigners with love and fairness.

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 in 2022 against a state constitutional amendment that would have cleared the way for tougher abortion restrictions or a ban in Kansas.

He said lawmakers should not be “the ethicists and the spiritual guides” for women and that he has counseled rape victims. However, he also said his mother considered an abortion when she got pregnant with him as a teenager.

“I feel both of these things at the same time,” he said.

But Taylor said Hamilton “couldn’t decide he was pro-choice until last week,” and Democratic state Rep. Alexis Simmons, of Topeka, focused on abortion in a Facebook post and reacted to Hamilton’s announcement with, “Why would we go backwards?”

“Sorry but no,” she posted. “It’s 2026.”