The JoCo attorney who challenged Roger Marshall at tense town hall wants his job
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Anne Parelkar enters U.S. Senate race after challenging Roger Marshall at town hall.
- Parelkar targets healthcare, cost-of-living issues and complex federal legislation.
- Democratic field includes Parelkar, Christy Davis and Michael Soetaert for 2025 race.
Driving five hours through the predawn on a Saturday from Overland Park to Oakley isn’t exactly Anne Parelkar’s idea of a good time.
But what she witnessed in March at U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall’s tense town hall in far western Kansas convinced her she could do better.
“I did not want to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning. But there were a lot of people around here that wanted to have someone there to ask the questions,” Parelkar said.
Frustrated attendees repeatedly pressed Marshall over President Donald Trump’s actions and the impact of billionaire Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn cost-cutting measures on federal workers and veterans. Marshall abruptly walked out the door about 40 minutes into the planned hourlong event.
“He had just come to get accolades from people that liked him — thought that he was going to be praised and get to say whatever he wanted to say without question, and that isn’t what happened,” Parelkar said.
Now the 42-year-old immigration attorney and Democrat is one of three candidates running to challenge Kansas’ junior Republican senator in his first re-election bid next year.
Originally from Arkansas — her speech is colored by a trace of southern twang — Parelkar married an immigrant from Mumbai who came to the U.S. as a doctoral student. The couple moved to Johnson County in 2011 after Parelkar passed the bar exam. They returned from a short stint in Kansas City following the birth of their first child to build their life in Overland Park.
Parelkar said she has been disturbed by the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement. She spoke at a May rally outside a Topeka courthouse protesting CoreCivic’s plan to reopen its shuttered Leavenworth prison as an immigrant detention center.
“They say legal immigration is fine, but then we know that they’re taking away legal status from immigrants, so their actions don’t match their words,” Parelkar said.
As her campaign ramps up, she’s winding down her own law practice. “There’s no way for me to do both at the same time and also still be a mom and a wife.”
Senate candidate Anne Parelkar on the issues
Parelkar describes herself as “a normal person” and “a very concerned citizen.” She said the Kansans she’s spoken to in the early stages of her campaign are primarily worried about high prices and other cost-of-living issues.
“Prices keep going up, and people are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet,” Parelkar said. “And instead of doing anything that will work for us, they come up with these culture war issues that they want to stand on.”
Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since George McGill in 1932. Other candidates seeking the Democratic nomination this time around include Christy Davis of Cottonwood Falls and Michael Soetaert of Wellington.
Parelkar said she doesn’t define herself by her party affiliation. One way she hopes to prove herself to Kansans, she said, is by championing “laws that people can understand.”
The 870-page One Big Beautiful Bill Act, supported by Marshall and signed into law in July, is far too dense and complicated for Americans to comprehend how it could affect their lives, Parelkar said.
One aspect she’s worried about is the impact Medicaid cuts will have on healthcare, particularly in rural Kansas. Around the state, too many hospitals have already closed, she said.
On a recent visit to Pratt, she said she heard about a local man who had a heart attack and had to be rushed to Topeka by helicopter.
“If you survive that, how do you pay for that?” Parelkar said.
She said her legal background has primed her to be the kind of advocate Kansans need in D.C.
“As a lawyer, people come to me with problems, right? Sometimes they don’t even know what their problems are. They just know they have a problem,” Parelkar said. “My job is to figure out what exactly the problem is and can I fix it? … And that’s exactly what you do as a senator, or what you’re supposed to do.”
This story was originally published September 18, 2025 at 2:14 PM.
