The pastor of the nation’s largest Methodist church is running for the US Senate in Kansas

LENEXA, Kan. (AP) — 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 wasn’t immediately clear how many of the eight other, lesser-known Democrats who’ve announced for the Aug. 4 primary would drop out. 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.

He had considered running as an independent candidate, telling his congregation that he could bridge partisan divides in a highly polarized political climate, but many Democrats believed an independent candidacy would simply split the anti-Marshall vote, making it easier for Marshall to win 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, though Hamilton, is a generation older.

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.

Hamilton, who lives in the town of Stillwell on the edge of the Kansas City metro, has never had trouble attracting followers. After graduating from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa and then Southern Methodist University in Dallas, 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.

“I’ve raised a lot money over the years and I’m not afraid to do that,” Hamilton said on the eve of his announcement.

He’s 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.

His entry comes during 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 more and more worried about 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.

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

“I didn’t think that our state legislators should be the ethicists and the spiritual guides for all of the women of the state of Kansas,” he said while tearfully describing that while he has counseled rape victims, his mother considered an abortion when she got pregnant with him as a teenager. “I feel both of these things at the same time.”

His church also applied financial pressure before the United Methodist Church conference struck down longstanding anti-LGBTQ policies. “We’ve lost a thousand people over the years because this was our commitment, and so I want to say that I will take that commitment with me to Washington D.C.,” he said during his listening tour.

Hamilton said that if he wins, he would remain pastor but would scale back his preaching to around 12 to 18 times a year.

“Can you imagine a future,” he asked, “where Republicans and Democrats and Independents work together to actually solve problems?”

___ Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.