Kansas state senator joins field of Democrats with eyes set on D.C.
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Why is Patrick Schmidt running for the U.S. Senate in Kansas?
The calendar is flipped to May and the August election primary is three months away and it's time for candidates to dig deep, work to convince voters they have the right stuff to lead. And it's quite a challenge in the upcoming US Senate race for the seat held by Republican Roger Marshall of Kansas. At this point in the Democratic Party's primary, there are about nine candidates in the running. Among them is State Senator Patrick Schmidt, a Topeka Democrat. Senator Schmidt, welcome to the Kansas Reflector Podcast. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, thank you for taking time to do this. Um so in these kind of interviews uh that we do with candidates, we ask some basic questions and the first one is, have you lost your mind?
Uh why are you running for the United States Senate?
So on election day 2025, my wife and I welcomed our first child. Um his name is Graham. He's extremely healthy, he's extremely chubby, and we're we're very fortunate and and very happy, uh blessed every day to have him. But it also really s clarified for me that the the issues that I care about most in the state senate, it's uh they're bigger than the legislature. Uh I think that, you know, we know firsthand how hard it is to raise a family and certainly I know as I've been knocking doors this year, but also throughout the last five years in Kansas, all over the state, uh that More and more people think it's harder and harder to get ahead. It's harder and harder just to keep your head above water. And we had politicians that are only
worried about special interests, worried about lining their own pockets, and that we um partisanship rules the day here in Topeka and here and and in Washington. And that's a choice, that's a false choice, and we should demand more from our elected representatives and we should demand that demand more from our United States Senator. We have an opportunity this cycle We have an opportunity this cycle to send a message to Washington to send a fighter for Kansas, not a fighter for special interests, and I hope that I can earn the esteem of the the electorate in Kansas and be that fighter for him.
All right, Senator, there's uh obviously a lot of candidates in this field, a lot of different backgrounds, real diversity there of experience. So you want to just explain uh who you are as as if you were uh speaking to a group of potential
voters out there? Sure, absolutely. I'm a I'm a sixth generation Kansan. My Dad's family came over about a hundred and sixty years ago. They were Mennonites from Ukraine and uh they farmed until and and my dad, in addition to being the first in his family to go to college, uh taught elementary school and also was a custom cutter, harvested wheat from Texas to Canada until the late eighties, uh during the farm crisis and lost lost the business. And he drove those combines in himself. my parents saw as they were raising me and my brother that, you know, between the two of them they taught for ninety one years in Shawnee Mission elementary school. They played by the rules, they did what they were told to do.
They had to work second jobs, each of them. My dad tutoring, uh, my mom in retail. Uh at Williamson Oman and other places. And it wasn't enough to raise two kids and own their own home in Kansas. They played by the rules, it wasn't enough. My dad struggled with heart disease, COPD, neurological disorders. That that's what aid is retirement and then some. Still, they you know they did everything that they could. They they you know made sure my brother and I got off to college. I commissioned as a naval intelligence officer officer after after graduating from college, served on board the USS Ronald Reagan in the Pacific based out of Japan. served in Bahrain with a special forces team, served at the Office of Naval Intelligence and got off active duty, moved to the reserves in in twenty twenty one.
Yeah.
How did Schmidt’s family background and military service shape his political outlook?
ran for Congress in the second district didn't make it. But the thing that I'm proud of s most about that campaign is that we got More Democrats out in all but one of the counties.
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