The president came out in support of Senator Roger Marshall, who is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton. The fact that Donald Trump was here at all said more about a looming electoral disaster facing his Republican party next month than anything contained in his dark and discursive 98-minute stump speech.
On Monday, amid raucous chants of "USA! USA!", the president held his first campaign rally in Kansas for eight years. No Democrat has won a US Senate seat in this ruby-red state since 1932, the year Herbert Hoover was president, Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and the Nazis became the biggest party in the German Reichstag. Since then, Republicans in the state have built one of the longest winning streaks in Senate history, but such is the collapse in public esteem of the president that the midterms on 3 November could be the night that a blue wave engulfs the heart of Trump country.
Acknowledging Shifts in Kansas
"You’re really sort of – I hate to say it – you’re sort of tending toward the purple," the president told about 5,000 supporters in a multipurpose arena outside Wichita, acknowledging that Kansas already has a Democratic governor in Laura Kelly. "That’s why I have to be sure that we get this guy."
The “guy” concerned was Roger Marshall, a first-term Republican senator facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Adam Hamilton, a Methodist megachurch pastor. Opinion polls show them running neck and neck. In the third quarter, Hamilton reportedly raised $11 million while Marshall managed just $800,000.
Marshall, 66, is an obstetrician-gynaecologist and ex-congressman who has proved a staunch Trump ally, including by embracing his debunked claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Hamilton, 62, founded the 24,000-member Church of the Resurrection, the biggest United Methodist congregation in the country. He opposes Trump’s tariff agenda and what he calls the president’s “erratic leadership.” Despite Hamilton’s background as a pastor and former Republican, Marshall insisted on Monday that Hamilton was "too woke for Kansas".
Accompanied by Chuck Berry’s "Johnny B Goode" as he walked on stage, Marshall said:
“"This is a guy that participates in protests against police. He supports drag shows. He tells us to apologise for the colour of our skin. And in a state with more cattle than people, he tells you to stop eating beef."
The crowd jeered each time.
Trump's Campaign Strategy
Trump, 80, is barnstorming the country in what some have called a “desperation tour” aimed at rescuing Republicans from the hole he has dug for them. Critics suggest he might actually be making life harder by nationalising races that candidates would prefer to keep focused on local issues. By imposing himself in Kansas, at a rally that was disrupted by several protesters, Trump underlined the election as a referendum on his presidency, with the potential to cost Republicans control of both the Senate and House of Representatives just two years after they swept into power.
Farmers in Kansas, a heavily agricultural state, have been hit hard by the consequences of the Iran war: a gallon of diesel costs nearly $6. The president upset cattle ranchers with a plan to reduce import tariffs to lower the price of beef and with aggressive immigration raids that prompted some agricultural workers to stay at home. On Monday, Trump announced a new program to provide farmers with $8 billion in support to offset diesel costs during the harvest season.
