By Ana Kaminski
TOPEKA — Lawyers for a Kansas Republican U.S. senator running for reelection sent his opponent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the Democrat stop airing an ad featuring one of the senator’s former patients.
The lawyers for U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, said in a Monday letter that the Rev. Adam Hamilton’s campaign had published and distributed ads about Marshall’s medical debt collection practices that were “defamatory.”
The ad begins with Meischa Zimmerman, who said she was arrested while eight months pregnant for missing a $50 payment to Marshall. She was paying roughly $50 a month to account for 18% interest on nearly $3,600 in total debt, according to court records.
The woman was one of more than 700 patients who Marshall sued while a practicing physician in Great Bend, according to reporting by the New York Times.
“The unmistakable message to a reasonable viewer is that Senator Marshall caused a pregnant patient to be arrested and jailed for missing a single $50 payment. That message is false in every material respect,” the letter said.
The Hamilton campaign’s ad had been viewed more than one million times on X.
Heartland Regional OBGYN, where Marshall worked, opened a case against the woman in December 2009, according to court documents. Zimmerman was first arrested in 2011. She said in the Hamilton campaign ad that she was handcuffed while pregnant in front of her 2-year-old daughter.
Marshall’s lawyers took issue with three facets of the ad. They said Zimmerman wasn’t arrested for a missed payment but, instead, for failing to appear in court. They said the campaign ad frames the premise of the arrest on a $50 bill rather than the sum of Zimmerman’s debts. They said the arrest wasn’t a surprise, arguing that court records show Zimmerman “was called to court in three different counties by eight different businesses over a multi-year period, including by a different hospital and in an eviction proceeding.”
Zimmerman said in the ad: “Roger Marshall preyed on the low-income families of Kansas.”
The letter demanded the Hamilton campaign within 24 hours remove the ad, issue a formal retraction and apology and cease further republication or promotion of false claims.
“Falsely accusing a physician of having a pregnant patient arrested over a $50 bill strikes directly at Senator Marshall’s professional integrity as a physician and his fitness for public office, and it has been broadcast to thousands of Kansas voters in the final weeks of an election,” the cease-and-desist letter said.
As of Monday afternoon, the campaign had neither issued an apology nor removed the ad from social media.
Hamilton’s campaign, Hamilton for Kansas, spent at least $7,500 to play the ad to YouTube users between 165,000 and 280,000 times from Friday to Monday, according to Google ad tracking.
Tyson Brody, a spokesperson for the campaign, said that “not once” did Marshall dispute Meischa’s story “that his lawyers had her arrested in front of her children.”
“The lies in his letter are blatant and reek of desperation,” Brody said. “The truth is what Roger Marshall did is extreme and hurt Kansans. Voters should know the truth about who their senator is and what he’s done.”
Marshall said in an Instagram post: “This ad is a complete lie and multiple organizations have called for the ad to be pulled from TV.”
Samantha Cantrell, regional press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, issued a statement calling the ad a “manufactured hit piece by Hamilton and national Democrats” and called for it to be taken down.
“Adam Hamilton knows a Democrat has not won a Senate seat in Kansas in nearly 100 years, so he is deliberately lying about Roger Marshall to deceive voters,” Cantrell said.
The cease-and-desist letter is the latest friction in an increasingly contentious U.S. Senate campaign between the former OB-GYN and the Kansas City-area pastor. What once appeared to national forecasters as a safe Republican win has veered closer into toss-up territory as Hamilton has fundraised and campaigned across the state since winning a crowded Democratic primary in August.
Hamilton has billed himself as the candidate in the middle, attempting to appeal to moderate Republicans and Democrats and undecided voters while Marshall has leaned into his connections to President Donald Trump’s base.
The two faced a predominantly pro-Hamilton crowd at a state fair debate earlier this month and are set to take the stage together again Oct. 21 on FOX4 in a debate hosted by John Holt.
