(Republicans ruin everything; I was only checking the TV schedule! I included the entire article here; the position Marshall may take is quite far into the article. The thought is that RFK Jr. will be ousted after the ’26 elections.
This is why every election on the ballot matters, and why a Republican supermajority state legislature is to be avoided.)
- Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
- Jun 18, 2026 Updated 36 mins ago
TOPEKA — A Republican-conceived law usurping Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s discretion when filling vacancies in certain Kansas statewide elective offices could complicate the competitive race for U.S. Senate.
Candidates and political observers wonder whether Kansas Republicans could attempt to avoid holding an election for U.S. Senate this year by having the incumbent, Republican Roger Marshall, resign from office to take a position with President Donald Trump’s administration. The power play would raise constitutional questions.
The catalyst for this fear is a 2025 law requiring vacancies for U.S. Senate, state treasurer and state insurance commissioner to be filled by Kansas governors by choosing from a list of finalists endorsed by the full Legislature or a 12-person GOP-controlled legislative committee. A governor of Kansas in the past could immediately and unilaterally choose a person to temporarily fill these jobs pending an election, but the new law limited the governor’s options to members of the former officeholder’s party.
In addition, the same state law says if the vacancy were created after May 1 in an even-number year, such as 2026, the appointed replacement wouldn’t go before voters in an election until “two years following the year in which such vacancy occurs.” A simple reading of this Kansas statute — in isolation from the U.S. Constitution — suggests appointees chosen to fill these jobs this fall would avoid facing voters until 2028.
“This is certainly not the norm in the United States,” said Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University. “Waiting two years is pretty extreme.”
Despite confusing text in the 2025 Kansas law, the U.S. Constitution’s 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, grants states the right to have temporary officials hold vacant U.S. Senate seats until an election could be held to determine who served out the unexpired term. The constitutional amendment wouldn’t permit states to artificially extend a U.S. Senate term beyond six years regardless of the number of people who were elected, appointed or resigned from the position during the six-year window.
This constitutional intent wouldn’t prohibit an individual or organization from raising legal challenges that portray Senate Bill 105 as a clever way of delaying an election amid a senator’s resignation.
Republican and Democratic strategists and candidates in Kansas have been weighing the possibility of Marshall prevailing in his August reelection primary and resigning a month or so later after securing a coveted appointment in the Trump administration. For the first time, under this scenario, Kelly and the Legislature would be responsible for implementing the 2025 law.
Without changing state statute on U.S. Senate vacancies, Marshall’s departure would have enabled Kelly to appoint a Democrat to his seat and weaken the GOP’s grip on the U.S. Senate.
Former Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer dropped out of the GOP’s gubernatorial race June 1 after Trump attempted to break the GOP candidate logjam by endorsing Senate President Ty Masterson for governor. If Colyer were to be nominated to a vacated U.S. Senate seat by Republicans in the Legislature and if he was chosen from among three finalists by the Democratic governor, the new state law could be interpreted to mean Colyer could avoid having his name on a ballot until November 2028.
“This would be helpful for Republicans,” said Beatty, who expected GOP candidates to suffer at the ballot box from Trump’s sagging approval rating. “You get two years for the handpicked person to raise money and avoid an off-year election.”
Statutory uncertainty
Marshall’s chief of staff, Brent Robertson, bluntly answered an inquiry Wednesday about his boss’ future: “Senator Marshall will be running for reelection.”
Nevertheless, Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s staff has been working on an analysis of SB 105 to outline how the process of filling a vacancy for U.S. Senate, state treasurer and insurance commissioner might unfold in 2026. The report hasn’t been released by Schwab, who is the state’s top elections official and a GOP candidate for governor.
In Kansas, the August primary ballot for U.S. Senate has been set. It includes Marshall and one GOP rival, Lawrence resident Pond Naramore, who filed with a campaign email address indicating he could be a “Republican in name only.” There are 11 Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate in Kansas.
If nominated on Aug. 4, Marshall’s name could legally be withdrawn from the November ballot if he was deceased, medically unable to perform the job, or he transferred his official residency outside of Kansas.
Colin McRoberts, an attorney and Democratic candidate for U.S. House in the 1st District, has questioned whether SB 105 could lead to the unprecedented postponement of the 2026 U.S. Senate election. He said Kansas would be forced to unravel the issue if U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. were ousted and the president nominated Marshall, a physician, for the HHS job.
“They probably want someone they can confirm relatively easily, and that would be Roger Marshall,” McRoberts said.
Impetus for amending the Kansas election law was driven by GOP anxiety about Marshall’s possible departure from the U.S. Senate and GOP frustration with Kelly’s decision in 2020 to name Democratic Lt. Gov. Lynn Rogers to replace Republican state Treasurer Jake LaTurner, who had been elected to the U.S. House.
The Legislature passed the vacancy statute in March 2025 on votes of 84-36 in the House and 31-9 in the Senate. Kelly choose not to veto the bill, but referred to it as a “partisan power grab” by the Legislature when she allowed it to become law without her signature.
“I was there the day they voted. I knew it was ill-advised,” said Christy Davis, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. “This is just another example of the Kansas Legislature changing the rules to take power that they’ve not been given by the public.”
Kobach’s assessment
During consideration of SB 105, Attorney General Kris Kobach said the U.S. Constitution required Senate vacancies to be filled temporarily so representation could continue until an election was organized. More than 35 states placed sole authority to fill vacancies for U.S. Senate with a governor, pending the election.
Ten states, including Kansas, now require appointees for U.S. Senate to be drawn from the same political party as the vacating senator. Kobach said a process in which the Legislature limited a Kansas governor’s appointment options in this way was “likely consistent with the 17th Amendment.”
However, he said, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear raised constitutional concerns about the Kentucky Legislature’s authority to constrain his appointment power by forcing him to choose from a list of candidates. Eventually, Kentucky lawmakers decided to cut governors out of the process and mandated special elections to fill vacancies.
“While appointment limitations have been implemented successfully in some states, they are not universally accepted and may be subject to legal or political challenges,” Kobach said.
Kobach said amendments to state law on replacing a state treasurer or state insurance commissioner had a good chance of withstanding legal challenge because those offices were a creation of the Legislature rather than a constitutionally mandated office, such as the U.S. Senate.
In the past three decades, four state treasurers have resigned before their terms expired. Three Republicans — Lynn Jenkins, Ron Estes and LaTurner — quit with two years left on their four-year terms after they won elections to Congress. Over that time, no state insurance commissioner has quit.
In the past 100 years, Kansas has had four vacancies for U.S. Senate. Republican Sen. Charles Curtis resigned in 1929 to become vice president, and a Republican was appointed pending a special election in 1930. Republican Sen. Clyde Reed died in 1949 with one year left on his term. A Republican appointee held the seat until a special election in 1950. Likewise, Sen. Andrew Schoeppel, a Republican, died in 1962. He was replaced by an appointee who won a special election in 1962.
In 1996, Sen. Robert Dole resigned to focus on his GOP presidential campaign. Gov. Bill Graves appointed Shelia Frahm, his lieutenant governor, to fill Dole’s seat. In a 1996 special election, then-U.S. Rep. Sam Brownback won a special election for Senate. He won a full term in the Senate in 1998.
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