MANHATTAN — The Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate agreed in a live-streamed Saturday morning debate that they want to do all they can for the president and his policies.
They differed mostly on who among them could offer President Donald Trump the strongest ally on Capitol Hill and on who had the best chance to beat a Democrat to get there.
The two best-known candidates — former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall — clashed most directly with each other. They challenged each other’s conservative bona fides and their respective electability in November.
State Senate President Susan Wagle championed herself as a foil to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and a powerful force in reopening a Kansas economy flattened by the coronavirus shutdown.
And the two other candidates — long-retired football player Dave Lindstrom and founder of a large Kansas City-area plumbing business Bob Hamilton — stuck largely to broad anti-politician, anti-government rhetoric.
The five would-be senators met in a largely empty hotel ballroom. (They all shook hands at the end, despite the threat of the coronavirus.) The audience was almost entirely online through the Kansas Republican Party’s Facebook Live feed, restarted in the middle of the opening arguments because the audio made them sound as if they were speaking through kazoos.
When the technical problems got solved, the farm-focused debate saw the candidates focused on attacking China over trade issues, backing Trump in his ongoing trade war and talking about who’d best argue the case for Kansas ranchers and farmers in Washington.
The winner of the primary will most likely face state Sen. Barbara Bollier, who left the Republican Party last year.
Here’s who the candidates are (in alphabetical order) and some of what they said Saturday:
Bob Hamilton
People who live in the Kansas City area know well the Bob Hamilton Heating Plumbing radio commercials and the business’ ubiquitous pink vans. His campaign has been financed largely by a $2 million loan from the candidate.
He said he was the “one candidate up here on stage who has created jobs.”
His understanding of farm issues, he said, comes from talking with people who work plots of ground he owns in Kansas.
“They want trade, not aid. I’ve yet to talk with a farmer who wants to be subsidized.
Every farmer I’ve talked to is 100% Trump with the trade deals,” he said. “China rigs the system and they steal our technology. …. We have a China problem in this country.”
