Kansas City entrepreneur prioritizes passion, decency in campaign for U.S. Senate

Erik Murray, a Kansas City, Kansas, entrepreneur, is running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate against at least six other candidates in the August primary. The winner will face the Republican incumbent, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall. (Photo submitted by Erik Murray)

TOPEKA — A Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate said he realized how broken modern systems are when he began planning a total revamp of a fading shopping center in Kansas City, Kansas.

Erik Murray, a land developer from Wyandotte County, said on the Kansas Reflector podcast that he has become attuned to the disconnect “between what capital wants and what community wants,” the conflict between local and state government priorities, and what he called ineffective advocacy on the federal level.

These problems prompted him to run in a crowded primary to be the Democratic candidate in a race against the Republican incumbent, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall.

Murray equates politics with problems, and he said on the podcast that his campaign is geared toward solutions.

Health care, education and the economy are a major focus because he said he has seen those issues transcend typical dividing lines.

“The reality is is that our challenges are the same,” Murray said. “We are often divided between urban and rural, between rich and poor, between black and white. There are so many different ways that people try to divide us, but our core values, as Kansans, I believe, are largely aligned.”

People care about their families, good health, a roof over their head, groceries in the fridge and access to a fair economy, “where a hard day’s work gets a hard day’s pay,” he said.

Murray, 44, grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. He attended Sumner Academy, a magnet high school, before enrolling at the University of Southern California. There, he met his wife, and he got a start in real estate. He bounced back to Kansas to raise his children in Overland Park, then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for work before returning to Kansas City, Kansas, in 2023, when he began work on a major redevelopment project at the former Indian Hills shopping center.

The 2026 Senate race is Murray’s first time running for elected office. He filed in December to join the crowded Democratic field. Murray will be running in the August primary against a Biden-era U.S. Department of Agriculture administrator, Christy Cauble Davis; a former businesswoman, Sandy Spidel Neumann; an immigration attorney, Anne Parelkar; an activist and business owner, Michael Soetaert; a former assistant U.S. attorney, Jason Hart; and a state senator and veteran, Patrick Schmidt. A Methodist pastor from Kansas City, Kansas, Adam Hamilton, is also weighing a run as an independent.

Murray said a competitive primary is healthy for the Democratic party. “Iron sharpens iron,” he said.

He appeared on the debate stage March 8 with four other candidates in Topeka for one of the party’s first public forums in 2026.

He acknowledged Kansas’ comparatively late primary could work against Democrats, who have not held a U.S. Senate seat in the state in roughly 90 years, but he predicted that candidates will begin to separate themselves over the next several months.

Thus far on the campaign trail, he said he has heard most about property taxes and affordability.

He announced on the podcast his intention to visit all 105 counties in Kansas with a “heart of America tour,” during which he plans to reach voters from every corner of the state.

Murray translated his understanding of the social and economic issues in Wyandotte County to the rest of the state.

In rural areas, a disproportionate number of hospitals are at risk of closure, and in urban areas, disparities persist in the quality of care, he said. Murray criticized the Trump administration’s foreign policy and its effect on diplomacy, agriculture and the American people.

“Tariffs are a tax,” he said. “Don’t let anybody tell you differently. Tariffs are a tax, and the American public has borne the brunt of those taxes.”

He supports raising the minimum wage — at the state and federal levels — and building more housing, creating attractive jobs in Kansas’ key industries.

When it comes to immigration, Murray said Americans are given false choices. Arresting and deporting people convicted of crimes has always been legal, he said. He attributes the current state of immigration to a “double crisis of weak borders and poorly run immigration systems,” placing equal blame on former President Joe Biden’s lax border maintenance and President Donald Trump’s extreme crackdown on anyone resembling his administration’s idea of an immigrant.

“We were built by immigrants,” Murray said. “We cannot penalize those folks.”

The United States needs a functioning immigration system, he said. Democracy and humanity also need protecting, he said.

“Shredding our own Constitution to put American citizens and hard-working immigrants in what appear to me to be inhumane warehouses is not a viable solution,” he said.

Murray said he is running his campaign on a passion for building and growing, and he is using his penchant for solutions to guide it. Embedded in his approach are principles often excluded from political discourse: love, kindness and decency.

“I think if you start there,” he said, “if we start by loving our neighbor, if we recognize that we are more alike than we are different, a lot of other things fall in place.”