It could be a banner year for religious Democrats. There's Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and a few new faces vying for House seats. And in deep-red Kansas, there’s megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton, who over the past few months has closed the gap in a now surprisingly tight race.
Hamilton’s campaign could provide a playbook for Democrats who are eager to break the GOP’s stranglehold on religious voters and religious messaging. But if they look a bit closer, there are perhaps more important and urgent lessons to take from Hamilton’s campaign — though many of them won’t be easy to follow.
Vox politics correspondent Christian Paz drove 900 miles across Kansas to take a deeper look at Hamilton’s popularity among the voters who have made him the breakout Democratic success of the midterms. Yes, many of them liked that Hamilton is a man of faith, and how he found ways of melding Christian faith with Democratic politics. But many others pointed to Hamilton’s independence, authenticity and character.
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—Katie Fossett, senior editor
