The pastor of the nation's largest Methodist church is running for the US Senate in Kansas (As a Dem)
LENEXA, Kan. (AP) — The pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the U.S. launched a campaign Thursday for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas, upending the race in a normally Republican state as the GOP’s small majority seems less secure than it was a year ago.
The Rev. Adam Hamilton enters the race as a potentially formidable candidate, though it wasn’t immediately clear how many of the eight other, lesser-known Democrats who’ve announced for the Aug. 4 primary would drop out. The winner will face incumbent Republican Roger Marshall, who aligned himself closely with President Donald Trump in his first run for the Senate in 2020.
Hamilton, 61, has a national following among mainline Protestants, and he’s built his Church of the Resurrection over the past 35 years in the Kansas City-area with about 22,000 members — giving him a base from which to tap volunteers and donors.
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His entry comes during what promises to be a challenging midterm election year for Republicans. Polling shows most Americans believe the U.S. military action against Iran has gone too far and voters are more and more worried about Trump’s failure to address affordability issues.
Hamilton’s home of Johnson County is the state’s most populous, with 643,000 people, more than one in every five Kansas residents. Once overwhelming Republican, it has grown increasingly blue, voting against Trump in the last two presidential elections.
More at:
https://apnews.com/article/methodist-megachurch-pastor-kansas-senate-candidate-c703c399ddd3f16a0f0d9dab1cc08e05
= new reply since forum marked as read
and the other, quite the opposite when it comes to LGBTQ, abortion, and all the other hot button issues.
I don't have time to research (and I know nothing about this pastor, his church, or his views) but I do want to know if the United Methodist Church was the former or the latter as described above, post-split.
SO, I'll reserve any further thoughts on this candidate until then. 
“Every week, it seemed there was another news story in the last year where I would find myself shaking my head and thinking, we have to do better,” the self-described fifth-generation Kansan said.
He went to oral Roberts university
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Hamilton’s congregation is a nearly equal mix of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, and he describes himself as “a liberal conservative and a conservative liberal.”
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His church also applied financial pressure before the United Methodist Church conference struck down longstanding anti-LGBTQ policies. “We’ve lost a thousand people over the years because this was our commitment, and so I want to say that I will take that commitment with me to Washington D.C.,” he said during his listening tour.
… lots more at the link
