Overland Park lawyer and Shawnee Mission North grad David Graham says he doesn’t want to be the Libertarian spoiler in the neck-and-neck Kansas U.S. Senate race between Adam Hamilton and Roger Marshall.

But he may become one anyway.

The founder of a New Hampshire-based political action committee has taken an interest in Graham’s candidacy. The group is now trying to raise awareness of Graham’s existence as an alternative to Hamilton, pastor of the country’s largest Methodist congregation, and first-term GOP Sen. Marshall.

Aaron Day, the founder of StarkFreedom PAC who says he has never voted Democratic, believes that with a minimal amount of money and ads, his committee can add a percentage point to Graham’s poll numbers.

The gamble, if successful, is not necessarily meant to elect Graham, who is polling at about 3%. Instead, the aim is to draw enough votes away from Republican Marshall that Hamilton, the Democratic candidate, would win.

But even that is not the ultimate goal. Day says his end game is to get enough Democrats in power to stymie the Trump agenda at least until he’s out of office in two years.

“I am a fan of gridlock at this point in time,” Graham said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “I am for gridlock and for there being actual accountability for this administration.”

An ex-Republican fed up with the Trump administration

Day describes himself as being more on the Libertarian end of the spectrum, but he has been a Republican in the past and is a former chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus in New Hampshire. His stepmother, Sharon Day, is a past co-chair of the Republican National Committee and former ambassador to Costa Rica under the Trump administration.

He said he’s tried working within the GOP but has been disappointed that the party has “broken its fundamental promises.”

The list is long, he said when asked to enumerate: The war with Iran, the high cost of living, tariffs, crypto regulations, data centers and the prospect of surveillance.

Trump promised to drain the swamp, he said, but “it’s actually gotten much worse.”

“The single-party rule right now under Trump where he has all three branches of the government, has not worked,” Day said. “The economy’s worse and we’ve got corruption and big tech taking over everywhere. I think we need to slow things down and we need to hold the administration accountable.”

“Kind of our sweet spot”

So for the next two weeks, the PAC will target Republicans who are dissatisfied with Trump but don’t necessarily want to vote for a Democrat.

“That’s kind of our sweet spot,” Day said.

The PAC has only raised a few thousand dollars so far and, with two weeks to go until Election Day and advance voting already in progress, is still talking to donors and testing which of the 28 songs and online Facebook and X ads would be the most effective in Kansas, Day said.

Kansas is only one of eight close Senate races Day wants to get involved in. The others are Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Even so, Day doesn’t believe it’s a long shot. Making an outsized impact on the race can be done with an investment small enough to self-fund, at least temporarily, he said.

The polling numbers are the reason.

Hamilton and Marshall are so close in most independent polls that the difference is only a percentage point. In a state that has historically been an easy win for Republicans, the GOP has been worried enough to send first Vice President JD Vance and then President Trump to shore up Marshall’s support.

When Trump visited Wichita Monday, he touted Marshall as a “high quality” and “tough guy,” calling him “one of the greatest senators in our country.”

But in Kansas and other races Day has targeted, approval of Trump has dropped. All are close, and in five, the third-party candidate’s polling numbers cover the gap between the two major party candidates, according to his web page.

Small investment, big impact?

In a year where the polling is close and people are in a mood for a protest vote, that could be significant, Day said. If enough people know third-party candidates are an option, that extra point that could have gone to Marshall goes elsewhere.

Candidates not aligned with the two major parties have a hard time getting traction because they don’t get invited to debates and because the major party candidates don’t want to talk about them, Day said. (In fact, Graham was not invited to a debate at the Kansas State Fair between Marshall and Hamilton that drew national headlines for its raucous environment.)

So StarkFreedom’s ads are going to be about giving candidates some name recognition and voters information about their stances.

“There’s something that people miss about all of this which is that people want a choice,” he said. “Just making people aware that there is another choice makes a massive difference.”

Day uses his own experience as an independent candidate in New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate contest in 2016 as an example of why his theory is not so far-fetched.

In that race, Day pulled in more than 17,500 votes, or 2.4%, and another Libertarian candidate garnered another 13,000, or 1.7%. Democrat Maggie Hassan ended up beating Republican incumbent Sen. Kelly Ayotte by a little more than 1,000 votes out of more than 700,000 cast.

Day said his investment for that race was only about $5,000.

Hamilton’s campaign declined to comment Wednesday on the StarkFreedom PAC’s efforts. Marshall’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Graham: “I’m not trying to be a spoiler”

For his part, Graham has said he is running to win the election and does not consider himself a spoiler.

In an interview earlier this month with the Johnson County Post, he said, “To the extent that I quote-unquote ‘take votes away’ from someone, I really believe that I’m taking them evenly from the other two candidates.”

Graham concedes that his positions on some issues might make him seem a more palatable choice to a right-leaning voter. He says he’s strong on the rights of gun owners and would like to eventually defund Medicare and Medicaid. He also considers fertilization the point at which a separate human being is created and, therefore, opposes abortion.

“As a Libertarian, I do stand for certain things that appeal to the right. I’m strong on the Second Amendment. I want less government, lower taxes,” he said.

But he also mentions his support for legalized marijuana as an example of something the political left supports.

“I’m not a spoiler,” Graham said. “I’m not trying to be a spoiler.”