Fresh off his victory in Kansas’ Democratic Senate primary, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, who leads the country’s largest United Methodist congregation, told MS Now’s Stephanie Ruhle that he’s ready to end his party’s nearly century-long losing streak for Congress’ upper chamber by defeating Sen. Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent.

“It’s very important to me to be able to displace — to help Roger Marshall retire,” he said Wednesday morning, adding, “He spends a lot of time in Florida when he’s not in Washington, D.C. I’d love to help him just spend more time in Florida.”

According to Cook Political Report, the pastor’s win on Tuesday helped make his race potentially more competitive ahead of November, with analysts shifting the race from solid Republican to likely Republican.

In deep-red Kansas, Hamilton has made his faith a central part of his campaign, telling MS NOW he wants to prove that Christianity doesn’t belong to one political party.

“The religious right does not represent all Christians,” he said, adding: “There are many people who are saying what we see in Washington does not reflect their faith; 66% of Americans claim to be Christians — there’s a lot of those who say this doesn’t look like anything like the Christian faith.”

“I had a man in Holton, Kansas — so this is a rural area in Kansas —and he said to me on a campaign event, ‘I’m a one-issue voter,’” Hamilton recalled. “And I was waiting to hear what his one issue would be. And he said, ‘Here’s the thing: I will not vote for anybody who doesn’t believe we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves.’ And all I could say to that was, ‘Amen.’”

Those are values Marshall has not been practicing, Hamilton said.

The Democrat said that 36,000 people “who had health insurance a year and a half ago don’t have it anymore because of policies that Roger Marshall supported; 10,000 children who receive SNAP benefits — which is $6 a day to help a kid who’s hungry have enough macaroni and cheese and applesauce at dinner time — and those were cut under Roger Marshall.”

Jesus “tells us to care for children,” the pastor added. “He tells us to love our neighbor. These are things that Washington, D.C., seems to have forgotten — or at least my current sitting senator is not practicing.”

Hamilton said Kansans deserve a senator who will “fight for them” and their values.

“We have to do better for the people of Kansas, and I think for all the people across the United States,” he told Ruhle.

You can watch Hamilton’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.

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