WICHITA, Kan. — Adam Hamilton doesn’t plan to stay in Washington long if he gets there, and he doesn’t plan to spend his time investigating President Donald Trump.

The 62-year-old megachurch pastor, running a surprisingly competitive Senate campaign as a Democrat in Kansas, told MS NOW he would serve no more than two terms in the chamber if elected. He also said he had no interest in the investigations of Trump and his family that Democratic leaders have signaled they would pursue if their party wins control of Congress.

“I’m not going to Washington to hold trials. I’m going to Washington to fight for the people of Kansas and make life better for them,” Hamilton told MS NOW in an interview, adding that Congress must establish “guardrails” to ensure that “some of the things that have happened in the last two years or in the last 12 years don’t happen again.”

Both stances are part of Hamilton’s effort to cast himself as a political outsider, and one who intends to stay that way even after arriving on Capitol Hill.

Hamilton favors term limits — “no more than 18 years of service, combined, House, Senate, White House” — and said he would hold himself to a stricter standard, leaving Congress after no more than 12 years.

“I’m going in as though I’m going to be there for six years, and I’m going to do all the good I can in those six years,” he told MS NOW. “If you go in and you’re thinking, ‘I don’t care if I get re-elected, I want to fight for the American people and do what’s best,’ I may not be there after six years, and that’s OK with me.”

“And if I felt like I could make a difference, maybe there’s six more years,” he added. “That’s it.”

Hamilton’s nonpartisan pitch appears to be resonating in a state where only a quarter of voters are Democrats and that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in almost a century. Amid a national wave of discontent with the GOP, polls show him in a tight race with incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, and the Cook Political Report recently moved the contest from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” one notch from “toss-up.”

Marshall’s camp rejects the idea that Hamilton is a moderate. “Hamilton is a liberal Democrat who was just exposed for shaming his church for eating too much beef and preaching that Christians are dangerous — he won’t serve one term, let alone two,” Brent Robertson, Marshall’s chief of staff, said in a statement.

Hamilton defines himself as an “independent-minded Democrat” and has rebuffed national party leaders, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, who he has said would hurt his election chances if she showed up in Kansas to campaign for him.

“I think people in Kansas are looking for folks who are pretty much in the center,” Hamilton said. “There is a large segment of people who would consider themselves moderates — Republicans and Democrats. And the perceptions are that there are a lot of national Democrats who are further to the left than where people in Kansas are.”

“It’s a Republican state, it’s a red state,” he added. “I think people are willing to say, ‘I’ll consider voting for a Democrat, but I need to know that they align with my values, they line up with how I see the world,’ and that’s going to be people who are closer to the center.”

The crowd at a Hamilton event Friday night, held on a supporter’s front lawn in Eastborough, a Wichita suburb, spanned the political spectrum. Every voter who spoke to MS NOW cited the candidate’s centrist politics as a reason to back him.

“I think he’ll speak to all Kansans. He’s not there to just vote a party line,” said Dawn, 57, an independent who has voted for candidates from both parties, as a bluegrass band, Hamilton’s warm-up act, strummed and sang at the foot of the front steps.

Dawn, who declined to give her last name, said she could not support a Republican “in the current atmosphere,” and that her husband, who declined an interview, “is a Republican who is frustrated with the Republican situation.”

A few feet away, Pam Harnden, a 77-year-old Republican, sat in a lawn chair. She said she was considering voting for Hamilton.

“I just like the fact that he’s thoughtful and is a good listener and I think would be more of a centrist position on things,” she said.

Hamilton, who leads the largest United Methodist church in the United States, benefits from an already high profile. Both Dawn and Harnden are Methodists and knew of him before he announced his Senate bid.

But his moderate message has also caught the attention of Cyndra Whiddon, a libertarian who said she was leaning toward voting for Hamilton as she waited in line for a cup of chili at a Wichita street fair.

Whiddon said she caught bits and pieces of Hamilton and Marshall’s debate at the Kansas State Fair this month. “The only reason I really like him more than the other is at the beginning, he was very, like, ‘I’m middle of the road,’” she said.

“He’s not a politician,” she added. “He hasn’t been bought yet.”

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From MS Now.