New Delhi, Aug. 5 -- LEAWOOD, Kan. - In a state that has not sent a Democrat to Washington's upper chamber since the early years of Franklin Roosevelt's first term, a Methodist pastor named Adam Hamilton walked out of Tuesday's primary with a nomination that few people in Kansas politics believed would ever arrive.

Hamilton, the founding senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood and the man who delivered the sermon at Barack Obama's 2013 inaugural National Prayer Service, defeated a field of ten other Democratic contenders to claim the party's Senate banner for November. His opponent will be Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent who won his own primary and enters the general election with more than a decade of Washing...