A newly elected Democratic senator from Kansas says he will not join calls from within his own party to pursue investigations or impeachment of Trump administration officials, a position that could complicate Democratic leadership’s plans heading into the next Congress.
Adam Hamilton, speaking Sunday on Meet the Press, said he has no appetite for spending his first term chasing investigations rather than working on policy.
If I spent the next two years, my first two years in the Senate in investigations, I’d be deeply disappointed. I want to get to work helping the people in my state and helping the people across the country. So what I’m interested in is yes, let’s get guardrails put in place so that we don’t see these kinds of things happen again. But let’s focus on helping the American people. And I will tell you the Democrats, if we don’t figure that out and get to work on helping people, this is going to be a one-and-done kind of, you know, kind of blue wave.
“I don’t want to see us spend the next two years dividing our country further,” Hamilton added. “I want to see us come together to look at solving really big problems.”
Hamilton also confirmed he will not back Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for majority leader, saying he favors someone with more centrist leanings. “There are a handful of people that I think are probably, you know, lead more from the center, but I don’t know enough yet to be able to say these are the people I would endorse,” he said.
His comments come after other Democrats have been more aggressive in floating action against the administration. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said in mid-October that President Trump had “undoubtedly” committed impeachable offenses, in his view, adding, “Impeachment is not a taboo with us” and “We will not hesitate to use it if we need to use it.”
Hamilton is not alone among newly elected Democrats from red-leaning states in distancing himself from that approach. Iowa’s Josh Turek, also elected to the Senate, said in October he had “no interest” in an impeachment push against Trump. “I think we need to look forward, not back,” he told NBC Nightly News. “And I think that people are tired of this party-over-country mentality and this overt partisanship, this overt tribalism.”
As of now, Decision Desk HQ projects a 54-44 Democratic-Republican split in the Senate heading into 2027, with two races still outstanding along with several House contests. Even if Alaska and Mississippi both end up in the Democratic column, that would add two more senators from red states whose voting records are likely to reflect those states’ politics, particularly in Mississippi’s case.
These freshmen from red and swing districts are unlikely to vote as conservative Republicans would. But their presence suggests at least some Democrats elected in territory Trump carried comfortably may resist party leadership on matters like impeachment votes and investigations, a dynamic already visible in the reaction to Hamilton’s remarks.
