At a chapel in Lindsborg, Kansas, Adam Hamilton began singing a hymn. The audience joined in. The Methodist pastor was seeking votes for the US Senate, carrying a pocket Bible and a chunk of salt, a reminder of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Hamilton defeated Republican Senator Roger Marshall, ending a Democratic Senate drought stretching to 1932.
If we’re liberals or conservatives, we just see the world differently,” he said. Bruce Bratman, who had voted for Trump three times, said he was knocking on doors for Hamilton. Hamilton, a former Republican running as a Democrat, offered a gentle pitch in a bitter campaign. “Most of us… are not enemies. There were signs that Republicans were listening. At another stop, retired Kroger chief executive Dave Dillon, a registered Republican, endorsed the Democrat.
His campaign offered one answer to a difficult question: how to ask people to change their vote without asking them to change who they are.