Virginia Heffernan's New Republic article traces the history behind Kansas's 2026 Democratic wave: a 21-point left swing that elected Adam Hamilton its first Democratic U.S. senator since 1932 and appeared to make economic populist Cindy Holscher governor, a result she reads through the state's radical past, from Bleeding Kansas and the socialist Appeal to Reason to the Koch-backed Brownback era. Thomas Frank calls the outcome a rebuke of the classic Kansas pattern of using culture wars to drown out economic anxieties, and Heffernan recommends doubters read Hamilton's 2020 sermon on racial justice.