We've Been Here Before

Electing a Democrat to the United States Senate is something Kansas Republicans do about once every national crisis. The last time it happened, Herbert Hoover was president. Apparently we like to give these things some thought.

Democrat Adam Hamilton has a chance to end that streak by defeating incumbent Republican Roger Marshall. It invites a question more interesting than whether Kansas is trying on purple.

What has to happen inside a reliably Republican voter before the Democrat starts looking like a safer choice?

Let’s climb aboard the way-back machine.

In 1932, Americans were three years into the Great Depression. People who had worked hard, saved money and played by the rules were discovering that none of those precautions guaranteed a pot roast in the oven or shoes for the kids. In Kansas, falling commodity prices and debt threatened the family farm.

Imagine the kitchen table convo. You’ve voted Republican your entire adult life. The old man voted GOP. But the bills are piling up and loyalty doesn’t make the payment. Kansas helped elect FDR president and re-elected Democrat George McGill of Wichita (by way of Barton County) to the U.S. Senate.

Yet those same voters elected Republican Alf Landon as governor. Even in a national emergency, Kansans could distinguish between the party label and the person wearing it.

Forty-two years later, the country had another confidence problem.

Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974. Watergate revealed that Nixon and the public had different ideas about whose government it was.

Inflation was chewing through paychecks. The economy was sliding. We didn’t use this word back then, but affordability was a thing. Americans had reasons to question both the competence and honesty of Washington.

Republican Bob Dole, seeking his second Senate term, nearly lost to Democratic Congressman Bill Roy of Topeka. We remember Dole today for the accumulated accomplishments of a distinguished career. Voters in 1974 did not have that perspective. They had a first-term Senator who had chaired the Republican National Committee, serving as Nixon’s partisan hatchet man, not exactly something you’d embroider on a throw pillow.

Dole survived, barely. An important detail for anyone tempted to declare that an unhappy country automatically produces a particular election result.

Fast forward to Kansas, 2026.

Today’s circumstances are their own. But the old tension lingers: What happens when confidence in your party collides with concerns about your country?

Some Republicans may vote for Hamilton without buying what the Democrats are selling. They may simply decide their own party needs a message, and re-electing Roger Marshall sends the wrong one. A Methodist minister may offer those voters a comfortable place to land.

We should be careful about assigning one mood to millions of people. Fear, anger, loyalty and hope can coexist in the same voter. Sometimes before breakfast.

Still, elections occasionally ask us to reconsider what loyalty means. Loyalty to a party? To a set of principles? To a country that party seeks to govern?

In 1932, enough Kansans found room for a Democratic Senator. In 1974, almost enough did.

Hamilton’s opportunity rests partly with Republicans willing to ask whether their party has earned another vote.

Ninety-four years seems like a respectable interval between second thoughts.

Mike Matson describes himself as a former political journalist and “recovering” political operative. He has been an unaffiliated voter since the turn of the century. His column appears every other weekend in The Manhattan Mercury, and he hosts Within Reason, at 9 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays on NewsRadio KMAN.