Sen. Roger Marshall unleashed a $1.2 million ad blitz this weekend that accuses Democratic Senate nominee Adam Hamilton of protecting a homosexual pedophile who volunteered at his church.
The 30-second spot, running statewide on broadcast, cable, and streaming, zeroes in on Scott Moore, a Church of the Resurrection volunteer accused of molesting teenage boys at church camps in 2005 and 2006. The narrator charges that Hamilton and church leaders ignored parents, dismissed the boys’ claims as slander, and let Moore return as a counselor the following year.
“What did Hamilton do when victims reported him to church leaders? Parents were ignored, and Hamilton never called the police,” the ad states. “The next fall, Hamilton welcomed him back. Free to lurk for new victims — later convicted of more child sex crimes. Adam Hamilton protected a pedophile. He should never be our senator.”
Moore was convicted in 2013 of misdemeanor sexual battery after inappropriately touching his son’s friend at a sleepover. Teenage victims from the Leawood megachurch testified against him at trial. Court records show Moore had been allowed to continue working with youth after the initial 2005 allegations because two church staffers, neither of them certified investigators or mandatory reporters, could not positively identify him at the time.
Hamilton, the founding pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation, has denied any cover-up. His campaign calls the ad “desperate and shameful” lies, claiming the church eventually reported Moore to law enforcement and that Hamilton personally helped secure his conviction. Hamilton told the Kansas Reflector earlier this year that he would handle such matters differently today.
The ad lands as Marshall holds a slim lead in the RealClearPolitics average heading into the Nov. 3 election. Hamilton, a prominent progressive pastor, is trying to become the first Democrat to win a Kansas Senate seat in nearly a century. The race has turned sharply negative in its final weeks, with both sides trading accusations of protecting predators.
The ad marks the sharpest attack yet on Hamilton’s long tenure at Church of the Resurrection and threatens to reopen questions about how the megachurch handled the Moore allegations two decades ago.
