Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee challenging Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in the Kansas Senate race, previously urged his congregation to repent for their carbon footprints, including those tied to eating beef and raising cattle. These past statements have become a point of contention in the campaign in a state where cattle are a major economic driver.
In a January 2020 sermon titled "What would Jesus say about climate change?," Hamilton, who led one of the nation's largest United Methodist churches for years, encouraged congregants to reconsider their impact on the environment. "So what I'm calling you to today, and I'm calling myself to it, because I've been wasteful, I've done things that wasn't, you know, I didn't think about it, how it wasn't really good stewardship of the earth around me," Hamilton said. "I'm calling us to repentance to say, ‘I realize that this has impact, even if it seems small, it has an impact on the world and future generations. And I feel badly about that, and I'm going to do something different from this time forward.’"
During the sermon, which included a presentation on greenhouse gases, Hamilton suggested that beef production was a significant contributor to the problem. "Some of the things that we grow, because we like to eat them, like cattle, end up producing more carbon dioxide than other crops that we could grow, other forms of food that we could have," he stated. "And so, in all of these ways, we are creating or adding to the amount of greenhouse gases in our world."
Senator Marshall criticized these remarks, stating, "In a state with more cattle than people, Hamilton saying that Kansans need repent for eating too much beef and flip flopping on the Farm Bill proves he’d be just like every other liberal Democrat in the Senate." Kansas is the third-largest producer of beef in the nation, with more than 5.8 million cattle and a population of approximately 2.9 million.
Hamilton's campaign countered by pointing to Marshall's own legislative record and statements regarding emissions from cattle. "Marshall has repeatedly introduced legislation to reduce emissions from cattle and claimed 'everyone's concerned about the methane production in the cattle industry,'" said Tyson Brody, a spokesperson for Hamilton. "Marshall even bragged how the decline of the herd 'eliminated half of the methane gas produced from cattle already.' As Adam said at the debate, Roger should repent for failing to stand up for Kansas cattle producers on tariffs, foreign imports, and skyrocketing diesel prices, and now he should repent for attacking Adam for something Roger Marshall said himself in the Senate. Kansas producers don't need lectures from someone who voted to put warning labels on hot dogs and bacon."
The Kansas Livestock Association also commented, with CEO Matt Teagarden stating, "It is disappointing that a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kansas, one of the nation’s top beef-producing states, would make a statement like this to his parishioners about beef’s impact on the climate." He added that "Beef is an important, nutritious part of the American diet, and cattle play a significant role in maintaining grassland health and conservation, while accounting for only 2% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions."
The race between Hamilton and Marshall has tightened in recent months, with Kansas shifting from "Likely R" to "Lean R" in some political analyses. High fuel prices, particularly diesel, are also a concern for voters in the agriculture-centric state.