Sen. Roger Marshall faced a noisy audience Saturday while sharing a stage with Democratic challenger the Rev. Adam Hamilton at the Kansas State Fair debate in Hutchinson. The crowd often pushed back as the two candidates covered trade, the war in Iran, immigration, and where each man lives.
Audience members chanted “shame on you” and cut Marshall off while he was still speaking about how he collected unpaid medical bills during his years as a rural doctor in Great Bend. The interruption came as he tried to explain his approach to patients who had not paid.
Marshall closed with a remark about Kansas State beating Washington State in football. The line drew only a cool response from those in attendance, according to the Kansas City Star.
Marshall sued 700+ patients during his OB-GYN days
A New York Times report said Marshall sued more than 700 patients when he practiced as an OB-GYN, and that 81 people were later arrested after they did not show up in court over unpaid bills. Marshall answered that one out of five patients at his hospital received free care and that other hospitals sent him their poorest patients because his practice would treat them.
He called the lawsuits and wage garnishments “common business practices.” Hamilton said Marshall’s treatment of poor patients and his votes against expanding health coverage lacked compassion. Hamilton added that two thousand Bible verses speak to caring for the poor and said, “This is not happening under this man.”
Marshall said Hamilton’s campaign rests on vague statements instead of firm positions. “He’s too weak. He’s too woke. He doesn’t stand for anything,” Marshall said. “He tries to be all things to all people, and that’s not what you want from a senator in Kansas.” Hamilton shot back, “I’m pretty sure if Jesus were here, you would call him woke.”
Hamilton argued that Marshall has failed to challenge President Donald Trump on tariffs that Hamilton said damage Kansas farming and aviation. Hamilton said the tariffs add $150 a month to what the average Kansan pays for goods. Marshall noted that he has spoken against certain Trump proposals, including an exemption for foreign beef and a halt on sales of Canadian-owned Bombardier planes that have U.S. headquarters in Wichita.
He still backed the broader policy. “These tariffs were meant to bring manufacturing jobs home and improve our exports, and guess what? It’s working,” Marshall said. He also said, “China loves this guy.”
Marshall, a former Army Reserve medical officer, said he supports the war in Iran. “I mourn the loss of all eighteen soldiers and I want this war to be over as soon as anybody does,” he said. The debate highlighted conflicting views on the Iran conflict, such as when Trump rejected the idea that the war broke his campaign promise.
He claimed diesel would drop to $3 a gallon once the fighting ends, but would hit $20 a gallon if Democrats keep control and Iran gets nuclear weapons. Hamilton thanked him for his service but called the six-month-plus conflict a serious error. He pointed out that Trump had said last year that strikes on Iranian nuclear sites had ended the threat, yet an armada was later dispatched over a claimed nuclear danger.
Marshall pressed Hamilton on ICE funding and said a Democratic Congress would throw the border open so immigrants could “take your jobs” and “take your homes and everything else.”
Hamilton said he would fund ICE “for the purpose they were intended,” which he described as stopping terrorists after 9/11. He said the agency’s budget rose to $70 billion under Trump and that it has been turned into a militarized, political tool that has left Americans shot during protests.
The candidates also answered questions about homes they own in more than one state. Hamilton said the Johnson County house he and his wife built 25 years ago is his primary residence.
He said they later bought a lake place in Missouri and two houses in Lawrence and Kansas City that belong to their daughters. Marshall said his home sits an hour down a gravel road in Stafford County. He said a Florida property listed at $1.45 million has been unlivable for two years after two hurricanes, and blamed “social media Nazis” for twisting the facts about where he lives.
Published: Sep 13, 2026 08:45 am