Trust fall: ads for Kansas candidates address voters’ slumping faith in almost everything

Campaign ads this Kansas political season have seized on our low-trust environment — both when promoting and attacking candidates. (Photo illustration by Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)

I watched 52 Kansas campaign commercials today so that you don’t have to. 

Actually, for the next few weeks you will still be watching them. Whether you want them or not, they will still be on during the nightly news, college football games and re-runs of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” 

If I can’t do you the favor of vaporizing the ads from your channels, let me give you a new way to think about them.

Let’s divide them into two buckets. The division won’t be about Democrat vs. Republican or state vs. local. The distinction will be about trust, because trust seems like an essential political ingredient  this election. 

One variety of ads uses “real people” — or the appearance of people who appear to be ordinary Kansans, even if they are paid actors. These ads use nearly anonymous cardboard cutouts of folks because we have otherwise become so skeptical of everything except for the apolitical people around us.

The second bucket uses political celebrities to do the exact opposite: sow distrust and animosity. Through messages packed with Washington elites or well-known Kansans, campaigns and PACs are trying to tear down their opposition.   

To find the ads, I visited the Kansaspolitics YouTube channel, which has archived ads for state house, attorney general, governor and U.S. Senate races. Some gain trust in subtle ways, while others are screechingly obvious.

Most of the ads were standard fare. For 30 seconds, we hear a campaign, candidate or PAC argue for your vote. Usually, these ads would run on broadcast TV, but they likely appear on streaming platforms like YouTube. 

(The Kansaspolitics channel also documents a political phenomenon that was new to me. A few ads extended past two minutes, notably Adam Hamilton’s response to an attack from the right that was posted to the channel at the end of September. There was also a 3 minute 14 second ad titled “Protecting our Farmers from Data Centers.” Call them what you will. Ads? Mini-docs? Campaign announcements? Social media content?)  

 

The distrust election

At the end of last month, one national political reporter urged us to think about the 2026 election as the “distrust” election. Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times described how American trust in institutions has meaningfully eroded. Backed by longstanding polling from Gallup, Tavernise argues that our slumping faith in many things — the medical system, banks and Congress — will steer election results in November. 

Combine that with our recent increased skepticism of national political candidates. Even loyally conservative Kansas has lost trust in President Trump, allowing a fall of 20 percentage points in his approval rating in the state as compared with his first term. 

When Kansas threatens to elect its first Democratic senator since 1932, Republicans are experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime crisis of trust. 

The idea of 2026 as a distrust election echoes through the ads I watched. While Tavernise hears distrust from the voters she met throughout the country, I saw it coloring Kansas political ads. 

 

The good stuff

With Americans reluctant to trust, how do you conjure positive feelings in a possible Kansas voter for a candidate? 

The answer, over and over again in the ads I watched, was surrounding the candidate with “real people.” When Americans trust few other things, we are left with, well, just folks. 

Gallup polling reaching back to 1973 shows we trust fewer institutions. The ones that we do trust are barely hanging on. Big business is favorable among only 8% of Democrats and 32% of Republicans. So, no use boasting of the fortune you, the candidate, made as a business person.

Only 13% of Democrats and 22% of Republicans trust the criminal justice system a great deal or quite a lot. Grab your resume and cross off your work as a lawyer, judge or prosecutor. 

Trust in organized labor has eroded to only 32% — and that is among Democrats. During the 1970s, a greater share of all Americans trusted labor unions than Democrats do now. No use appealing to union membership in your commercial. 

The church, banking, police and public schools are the same: Less than 30% of either Democrats or Republicans nationally trust those institutions. With that, a political campaign has few visual symbols they can use to build a candidate’s image. 

Nameless and often faceless people are the standard B-roll of almost every positive political advertisement. (The Kansaspolitics YouTube channel helpfully labels these as “pro-”, as in pro-Kris Kobach.) The goal is clearly to build trust with these anonymous, briefly seen maybe-Kansans.

A candidate walks and talks with a couple in their 60s. One sits down next to an older woman — seemingly clutching her property tax bill. Another candidate struts his way through a manufacturing business flanked by two normal guys dressed in red and blue. Over and over, candidates huddle with people who refer to candidates by their first names and who are meant to represent everyday Kansans.

Often, the locations are just as vital. The ads brag: “Our candidate finds real people everywhere!” At the library and walking the dog. At a backyard dinner table and at the playground. On their front porch and at the hospital. Downtown and on the farm.

Often, it’s the kitchen table as the epicenter of trust. The ads ask you to imagine how these candidates squirm their way past a Kansan’s front door only to sit at an empty kitchen table for a chat. No drinks. No snacks. No clutter at all. Who has a kitchen table so pristine? It’s an alien landscape, so staged and antiseptic, for most families. 

The other home interiors also suggest a family of orderly, wealthy, suburban Kansans who we can trust. Yes, even the couch behind Tricia Sinclair, a Republican candidate for the Kansas House, was uncannily reassuring. “You can trust my beige, overstuffed cushions and decorative throw pillow with a pattern of blue scrolls,” the couch said to me from the background. 

That’s when I realized, “Wait. I have seen that trustworthy couch before!”

It was also sitting behind GOP House candidate Alex Bergman in his ad. And those downright respectable folks talking to Bergman in the front yard of his ad? They were also chatting with Sinclair in her ad. The kitchen table chat? Bergman and Sinclair were talking to the same couple at the same kitchen table in their two different ads. 

So much for “real people” developing trust. 

Sometimes, campaigns took the extraordinary steps of choosing people because they actually are connected to an institution. The workplaces chosen as locations for a few ads suggest small businesses. Gallup polling suggests such businesses are a smart electoral choice in terms of building trust. No other institution — not even the military — had higher cumulative trust ratings than small businesses.

Adam Hamilton’s campaign took a riskier swing in this way. They chose doctors for a recent campaign testimonial. In addition to endorsing Hamilton, the physicians in the ad remind voters of both the medical system and higher education, both of which are seen as overwhelmingly untrustworthy by Americans. (Democrats and Republicans trust the medical system at a rate of only 26% and 30%, respectively. Higher education has only 23% support from Republicans.) 

Even so, the message was an effective roast of Roger Marshall’s aggressive handling of his patients’ medical bills, as reported recently. Sometimes you need to ignore the numbers and bow to the political narrative.

The masterclass in rallying the visual of “real people” for a positive message comes from the campaign of Cindy Holscher, who is the Democratic candidate for governor. In 33 seconds, we see Holscher with Kansans in what believably appear to be candid, informal situations. Who knows, maybe they actually were!

Fourteen different shots feature Holscher in a meeting, a brewery and a gymnasium, always smiling, always listening and even dishing out a few hugs. Cultivating trust looks natural for Holscher, and that’s the point.

 

Art of darkness

The counterpoint ads bring bleakness. 

Conventional political wisdom apparently says that injuring the image of an opponent is as simple as associating him or her with distrust. And what is less trusted than Congress? (Spoiler alert: nothing.)

Gallup reports that the least-trusted American institution of all those they polled is Congress. I can’t even describe my embarrassment, on behalf of journalism, that newspapers and television news are only a few cumulative percentage points higher.

Nevertheless, Congress resides in the basement with less than 15% of all Americans, whether Republicans, independents or Democrats, trusting it a great deal or quite a lot. The distrust of national politicians becomes a cudgel against your opponent.

Attack ads exploit this by showing a rival candidate next to the most extreme personalities in Congress. In one ad, resembling a deranged art project, Adam Hamilton’s face is combined with one Democratic leader after another: Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Two-Faced,” the ad concludes. “Too Extreme For Kansas.” It’s blunt — if bluntly untrue — but likely effective for some voters swayed by hinting at Hamilton’s associations with “extremists” and “radicals.”

To drain humanity from your rivals and their alleged political allies, the producers of the commercials de-saturate every Congressional or political face we are meant to loathe. This dark and gritty styling, when combined with selecting the least flattering moment possible, makes people look sinister.

An ad for Democratic Attorney General candidate Chris Mann does exactly this to his opponent Kris Kobach. Curiously, an ad supporting Kobach gives his image — along with a family walking down the street — the same bleak, stylized treatment. 

Trump’s approval rating has slumped recently, and he was absent from every ad I reviewed from the past few weeks. This is despite the “presidency” being the most trusted branch of the federal government, according to the Gallup polling. Republicans likely see him as a liability when persuading Kansans for the general election. Democrats seem reluctant to use him as a weapon in ads because of lingering, if reduced, statewide support among conservatives.   

Standing out from the herd of ads this week was a 30-second ad for Don Coover, a Democrat running against Derek Schmidt for the US House of Representatives. His ad pokes Schmidt without all of the overprocessed gloom and darkened images of his rival. 

Instead, standing in front of cattle, Coover repeatedly almost says, “Bull****” before being interrupted by a cow’s moo. “Protecting DC insiders? That’s just bull…” 

Moooo. (Even the cow knows how little trust Americans have in Congress.)

Clicking through these 52 ads, I found either menacing attacks on Congressional trust or polished candidates with real people. During the last few weeks of campaigning before the mid-term election, there will likely be few ads in between. 

In other words, there will be little viewers can trust.