This essay is part of Beyond the battlegrounds, a special opinion series from MS NOW that digs into a number of lesser-known elections to watch, which will each nonetheless impact the national balance of power in important ways.
Unless he’s defending President Donald Trump on Fox News, Roger Marshall, the junior senator from my home state of Kansas, has a habit of dodging questions.
Less than two months after Trump’s inauguration, Marshall faced an angry crowd at a packed town hall in Oakley, a small city in northwestern Kansas. Attendees asked about the Department of Government Efficiency’s slashing of federal agencies, veterans’ benefits, rural healthcare and other depredations being carried out by the administration.
Marshall didn’t take it well. As reported by The Kansas City Star, the senator called the crowd “one of the rudest audiences I’ve ever had.” Roughly 20 minutes before the event was scheduled to end, he walked out as audience members booed and jeered.
Marshall hasn’t held a town hall since.
Ask Marshall’s constituents how often he responds to their phone calls and emails. They’ll tell you rarely, if ever.
I mention this because the Johnson County Post, which covers the state’s most populous and wealthy county, recently posed a series of questions to Marshall and his two opponents, Democrat Adam Hamilton and Libertarian David Graham. The questions posed were based on reader input, including one on rising prices and what the candidates plan to do about them; one on the war with Iran and whether they support a congressional resolution calling for its end; and another on ICE and what they would change about federal immigration enforcement.
Hamilton, founder and senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood (the largest Methodist church in the country, with 24,000 members), gave thoughtful and nuanced answers to all five questions.
Especially notable was his answer to the question about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which last month staged raids in southwestern Kansas, a region that supplies nearly a quarter of the nation’s grain-fed beef.
“Kansans expect our immigration laws to be enforced,” Hamilton wrote. “We also expect every person to be treated with dignity and respect. Enforcement should focus on people who are dangerous, and it should work with local law enforcement, not around it. What happened in Liberal, Garden City and Dodge City doesn’t reflect who we are. We’re Kansans. We don’t make our neighbors afraid.”
And Marshall’s answer? Er, he didn’t provide one. Nor did he provide an answer to the other four questions.
That’s his modus operandi. Ask his constituents how often he responds to their phone calls and emails. They’ll tell you rarely, if ever.
It’s no wonder he’s earned the epithet “Roger the Dodger.” Marshall is so fearful of encountering his own constituents that, at least until recently, he frequently visited his $1.2 million beachfront mansion in Sarasota, Florida, that he purchased in 2019 (and sold just weeks before Election Day).
Caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Marshall finally had to interact with a constituent.
The devotion Marshall withholds from his constituents he saves for the president, whom he unstintingly praises and defends in frequent appearances on Fox News. The first time I can recall Marshall daring to even mildly criticize Trump came during the recent ICE raids. Without mentioning the president’s name, he questioned ICE’s failure to consult in advance with local law enforcement — a true profile in courage.
It’s no wonder that Marshall is facing the fight of his life. Kansas last elected a Democratic senator in 1932, the longest losing streak by far of any party in any state. Trump won Kansas by 16 percentage points in 2024, yet polls show Hamilton running neck and neck with Marshall.
So spooked are Senate Republicans by these numbers that their main super PAC diverted $14 million from North Carolina, which it now regards as a lost cause, to bolster Marshall’s flagging campaign.
A spate of damaging stories over the past month has made the rescue mission more difficult. The New York Times reported that during his years as a practicing OB-GYN, Marshall sued more than 700 patients for unpaid medical debts while charging them 18% interest. One unpaid bill was just $101. After Marshall said that his debt collection practices were “very common,” the Kansas City Star looked at 150 other medical practices and found that the 18% interest charged by Marshall was “by far the highest.” The collection lawyer used by Marshall told the Star that Marshall’s office had determined the interest rate.
More recently, a joint investigation by the Kansas Reflector and MS NOW found Marshall “repeatedly using congressional staff and government resources in ways that experts say likely crossed the line between official business and campaigning.” (A lawyer for Marshall’s campaign declined to answer a detailed list of questions from the two outlets, and instead said in a statement that “Senator Marshall and his team fully comply with both FEC rules and Senate ethics.”)
And then there was the Oct. 8 Facebook post of a baker in Hutchinson who claimed that Marshall stiffed her for almost $700 worth of cookies she had baked for his 2020 election watch party. Marshall quickly paid up, writing, “We have absolutely no idea how this happened … and we have repaid the bill from 2020, double.”
The irony of suing patients for unpaid medical bills while failing to pay for baked goods was not lost on anyone. Caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Marshall finally had to interact with a constituent. It was the perfect metaphor for his crumbling campaign.
The post How Kansas’ Roger ‘the Dodger’ Marshall laid the groundwork for his troubled re-election campaign appeared first on MS NOW.
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