Sen. Roger Marshall’s re-election campaign spent $5 million from July through September as his once-safe Kansas seat turned competitive.
None of it went to payroll.
The Kansas Republican’s latest Federal Election Commission filing showed no outgoing payments for payroll or salary over that stretch, even as his spending jumped from just under $50,000 the previous quarter and his Democratic challenger, Adam Hamilton, began picking up steam.
Running a campaign without paid staff is not illegal. Campaigns can lean on consultants, vendors and volunteers. But it is highly unusual for a Senate race and raises fresh questions about who is doing the day-to-day work of Marshall’s re-election effort and whether the senator’s taxpayer-funded official staff is doing campaign work. Senate rules bar official staff from doing campaign work on government time or with government resources, though aides may volunteer for their boss’ campaign on their own time.
Previous reporting suggests Marshall may have used his taxpayer-funded congressional staff during his 2020 Senate campaign.
For a joint investigation published earlier this month, MS NOW and the Kansas Reflector obtained audio recordings, photos, videos, text messages and calendar items that appear to show Marshall and a top aide repeatedly using congressional staff and government resources in ways that experts say likely crossed the line between official business and campaigning.
One example was a 2020 trip to Dallas. According to a former staffer’s notes, Marshall used campaign funds to book flights and taxpayer dollars to pay for a meal. The only official event on his calendar for the trip was a Zoom meeting, tucked among a list of campaign events.
The investigation also found that no one working for Marshall’s campaign had received a paycheck in the past five years.
In an earlier statement, a lawyer for the Marshall campaign said the senator and his team “fully comply with both FEC rules and Senate ethics.”
At the time of that Oct. 9 report, Marshall’s chief of staff, Brent Robertson, also told MS NOW that the campaign had some paid staff. A “facts” section on Marshall’s campaign website says he “has a full campaign team that is separate from his official office staff.”
But the new filing lists none receiving a salary, at least through the end of September.
The filing does list payments to consultants. They include $6,000 to a Virginia-based firm for “communications consulting” and $2,000 for “campaign consulting” to a woman who lists herself on LinkedIn as a press assistant in Marshall’s Senate office. None of the payments are specifically labeled as payroll or salary.
Asked about the campaign’s staffing situation, Marshall’s campaign referred MS NOW to an Axios report from last week about Republicans “scrambling” to defend the Senate seat. The story noted the recent hiring of Chris Grant, who worked on Marshall’s 2020 campaign and helped lead the main pro-Trump super PAC in 2024.
The campaign did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s question of whether Grant will appear on Marshall’s next FEC filing.
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen who focuses on ethics and campaign finance rules, said Marshall’s latest filing “just doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ve never heard of a candidate for Senate not hiring campaign staff,” Holman said. “It sounds like Marshall is just abusing his regular staff.”
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Brendan Fischer, director of strategic investigations at the Campaign Legal Center, said it is “certainly anomalous for a U.S. Senate campaign to not list any payroll expenses and seemingly not have any paid campaign staff throughout most or all of the campaign.”
Marshall’s spending also sets him apart from incumbents of both parties in other closely watched Senate races, an MS NOW analysis found. According to the FEC filings for Sens. Jon Husted of Ohio, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Darline Graham of South Carolina and Jon Ossoff of Georgia — all of them Republicans, with the exception of Ossoff — each spent tens of thousands of dollars over the same three months on payroll for multiple campaign staffers.
Incumbents in races that are considered all but decided, including those in New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia and South Dakota, also reported payroll expenses in their most recent quarterly filings. One exception was Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who reported tens of thousands of dollars in consulting payments but, like Marshall, no line items explicitly labeled as salary or payroll.
In a statement, Hamilton campaign spokesperson Glynnis Harvey said, “This is one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, yet Marshall has never reported any paid campaign staff — and almost no consultants.”
“There are more and more details emerging about the culture of corruption and illegal activity in Roger Marshall’s office that are deeply concerning, and these new revelations clearly warrant an ethics investigation,” Harvey continued.
Fischer said that in the case of Marshall, there is a chance that the expenses the campaign lists as television and digital ad buys in the latest filing — totalling millions of dollars combined — may include some “campaign consulting.”
He also noted the lack of payroll could be a result of Marshall not “treating it as a serious race” until just recently.
“Some of the expenses may just not be reported until the next report — that he staffed up very quickly, and the payroll just hasn’t hit yet,” he said. “Or they’re not planning on paying some of the staffers until after the campaign.”
Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.
Six years ago, Marshall won his Senate race by 11 points. President Donald Trump won Kansas two years ago by more than 16 points.
However, recent polls show the race between Marshall and Hamilton neck and neck.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.
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