Adam Hamilton: I listened to Kansans. I heard my family’s story | Opinion
My parents dropped out of Shawnee Mission East when they had me. My dad was 17, my mom 18. They married, and my dad eventually took a job at Boeing in Wichita, then Seattle, before they moved back to Prairie Village when I was 6. When I was a kid, he managed the Prairie Village Standard gas station at 68th and Mission, working 60 hours a week and often more to provide for our family. A smart and driven man, he eventually returned to Boeing, where he had a successful career in field services.
After their divorce, my mom, a remarkable woman in her own right and one of my heroes, married a carpenter. He was a great guy when he wasn’t drinking. We moved out to Blue Valley. By my junior year of high school, they had divorced too, leaving my mom to raise three kids on her own. She did it heroically, by sheer will. At one point we lost everything to bankruptcy and moved into an abandoned farmhouse that members of our church helped make habitable. After we moved out my senior year, the fire department burned it down for practice. We moved seven times in six years.
My wife LaVon and I married the week after high school graduation and went off to college. For the first eight years of our marriage, we lived paycheck to paycheck.
I know plenty of people have had it harder than we did. But the gift of the chaos and financial hardship we lived through was a compassion for people who struggle.
It’s that compassion that sent me, over the last several months, into communities across Kansas. Not at rallies, but in library basements, parks, and community centers. I went to listen. I heard stories of frustration and struggle. And the struggles that folks are facing around the state these days sound a lot like my own family’s story, just in a different time, and in different towns.
I sat with farmers, ranchers, single moms, retirees, schoolteachers, business owners and professionals. I asked how they were doing and what they were worried about in Washington, D.C. A woman told me her family’s health insurance now costs more than $2,000 a month, and she did not know how much longer they could afford it. Farmers and ranchers spoke about the rising price of fertilizer, diesel and equipment, the bite of tariffs, and concerns about the immigrant workforce their industry depends on. Others raised the war in Iran and what it has done to the price at the pump. If you have ever lived paycheck to paycheck, you know that a 35% jump in the price of gas means a family is going to struggle to make ends meet.
These are problems people face all across Kansas. The mother in western Kansas skipping her own doctor’s appointments and the family in Overland Park watching their premiums climb are facing the same broken system from different sides of it. Most of what is hurting Kansas right now is self-inflicted. Government is not meant to solve all of our problems. But decisions in Washington are not supposed to make them worse.
Republicans, Democrats, independents together
Kansans told me something else, too — quieter and harder. They are worried about the rhetoric coming out of Washington, the way it turns people into issues and neighbors into enemies. The loss of basic decency. I hear it from Republicans who feel their party has left them. From Democrats who feel unheard. From independents who are exhausted by the noise.
For 36 years, I have led a congregation in the Kansas City area that is roughly equal parts Republican, Democrat and independent. We disagree about plenty. And we love each other precisely because of those differences. Together, we have given tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours to our neighbors in need, bound by a shared conviction that we are meant to love our neighbor, do justice, practice kindness, and walk humbly.
If we can do that in one congregation, we can do it across Kansas.
I am an independent-minded Democrat. I will lead from the center. I am not naive. Kindness alone will not fix what ails us. But I have to believe that if Republicans, Democrats and independents actually work together, not just with common sense but with common decency, we can solve the serious problems we face.
Service above self. Country before party. People over politics. That is the standard I want to bring to the United States Senate.
The compassion I learned from my mother, watching her hold our family together when nothing else could, is the same compassion I heard Kansans calling for this year. We can and must do better in Washington, for Kansas and for our country. If you believe that is possible and necessary, I would be grateful to have your support.
You can learn more at HamiltonForKansas.com
Adam Hamilton is the founding pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood and a fifth-generation Kansan. He is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.