在七次国会选举中，堪萨斯州参议员罗杰·马歇尔的得票优势从未低于11个百分点。
In seven primary and general elections for Congress, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall has never won by less than 11 percentage points.
然而如今，他在民调中的支持率几乎与民主党候选人亚当·汉密尔顿持平。在这场关乎政治生涯存亡的较量中，马歇尔暴露出自身作为竞选者的局限——他极少需要应对持续且尖锐的质疑。这一问题同样困扰着德克萨斯州参议院候选人肯·帕克斯顿：虽然他成功通过了共和党初选，但在面对民主党人詹姆斯·塔拉里科的激烈竞争时却举步维艰。
He is now essentially tied in the polls with Democrat Adam Hamilton. And, facing the fight of his political life, Marshall is showing the limits of a campaigner who has rarely had to answer sustained, difficult questions — a problem also plaguing Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton, who has experience surviving a Republican primary but is struggling in a competitive general election race against Democrat James Talarico. In September, a New York Times investigation found that Marshall’s medical practice sued more than 700 patients for unpaid bills.
今年9月，《纽约时报》的调查揭露：马歇尔经营的诊所曾起诉700多名拖欠医疗费的患者，其中80多人因未按时出庭而被逮捕。汉密尔顿的竞选团队迅速反应，制作了一则广告，片中一名孕妇称自己因未能支付医疗费而在怀孕八个月时被捕。
More than 80 were arrested after missing court dates. The Hamilton campaign responded quickly, producing an ad featuring a woman who said she was arrested while eight months pregnant over a missed payment.
经验丰富的竞选者本应为此类情况做好准备。通常而言，竞选团队都会主动搜集对手的负面信息，找出其弱点并制定应对策略。马歇尔的团队本可以公布相关文件以说明他在债务催收决策中的角色，也可以找一些前患者来讲述自己接受的诊疗服务。此外，马歇尔本人也应准备好一套得体的回应方式：承认这一情况确实有损形象、表达同理心，再转而谈及经营乡村地区诊所所面临的种种困难。但马歇尔并未采取任何措施。他的回应引发了现场观众的怒吼：“真可耻！”
A seasoned candidate would have been prepared for this moment. Campaigns typically conduct their own opposition research, looking for vulnerabilities and strategizing on how to address them. Marshall’s team could have released documents clarifying his role in collection decisions or found former patients to speak to the care they received. And he could have had a practiced answer that acknowledged that it was a bad look, expressed empathy and pivoted to the difficulties of running a rural practice. Marshall did not do that. The answer drew chants of“Shame on you”
九月8日，当《泰晤士报》调查首次出现时，一名竞选发言人攻击该报将“一名乡村医生让医院开着灯”视为丑闻。四天后，在他们的第一次辩论中，马歇尔称收集行为是“常见的、常见的商业行为”，称他没有参与收集，并认为这个问题“只是噪音”。9月1日，这个答案引起了当时的高呼。28日，马歇尔的律师向汉密尔顿发送了一封停止信，称该广告具有诽谤性。这并没有让故事逐渐消失，而是产生了另一轮的报道。
from the crowd. On Sept. 8, when the Times investigation first appeared a campaign spokesperson attacked the newspaper for treating “a rural doctor keeping the hospital’s lights on” as a scandal. Four days later, at their first debate, Marshall called the collection practices “common, common business practices” said he was not involved with collections and argued the issue was “just noise.”The answer drew chants of Then, on Sept. 28, Marshall’s lawyers sent Hamilton a cease-and-desist letter calling the ad defamatory. Rather than letting the story fade, that generated another round of coverage.
如果马歇尔是第一次候选人，或者争议并不明确，这些失误可能是可以理解的。但他从政已有十年，并以“马歇尔医生”的身份开展竞选活动，并将妇产科医生作为自己身份的核心。这是一个完全可以预见的弱点，在他之前的任何一场比赛中都可能出现。
If Marshall were a first-time candidate or the controversy were obscure, these missteps might be understandable. But he’s been in politics for a decade and made his OB-GYN practice central to his identity, campaigning as “Doc Marshall.”This was an entirely predictable vulnerability that could have come up in any of his previous races.
但马歇尔只在相对安全的共和党地区竞选。他的前国会选区是共和党人，这使他以大约40个百分点的优势获胜。虽然他2020年参议院竞选竞争激烈，但堪萨斯州自1932年以来就没有选出过民主党参议员。
But Marshall has only run in relatively safe Republican areas. His former congressional district was safely Republican, giving him a margin of victory of roughly 40 points. While his 2020 Senate race was somewhat competitive, Kansas hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932.
这并不是说马歇尔不擅长竞选。竞选安全席位需要一种完全不同的竞选活动。
It’s not that Marshall is unskilled at campaigning. It’s that running for a safe seat demands an entirely different kind of campaign.
共和党初选选民已经准备好不信任《纽约时报》--该报一开始可能就不会投入同样的资源来报道这个故事，因为国家政治记者通常关注竞争激烈的竞选。在距离更近的地区或州，这个故事可能早几年就出现了，让马歇尔有机会在早期的竞选活动中解决这个问题，或者迫使选民决定是否接受他的解释。
Republican primary voters are already primed to distrust The New York Times — which probably would not have devoted the same resources to the story in the first place, as national political reporters typically focus on competitive races. In a closer district or state, the story might have emerged years earlier, giving Marshall the chance to address it — or forcing voters to decide whether they accepted his explanation — in an earlier campaign.
他更大的问题是，除了忠诚于特朗普的共和党人之外，他没有建立起自己的身份。
His larger problem is that he has not built an identity other than as a Republican loyal to Trump.
帕克斯顿的问题略有不同。他已经经历了多起丑闻，包括2023年由共和党领导的州众议院弹劾的证券欺诈案，他的妻子以“圣经理由”申请离婚，甚至声称他口袋里有一支1,000美元的笔，但他更大的问题是，除了作为一名忠于特朗普的共和党人之外，他还没有建立一个大选身份，但仍然受到总统的嘲笑。在这些都不是优势的一年里，这损害了他的竞选活动。
Paxton has a slightly different problem. He has already survived multiple scandals including a securities fraud case 2023 impeachment by the Republican-led state House, his wife filing for divorce on “biblical grounds” and even a claim that he pocketed a $1,000 pen But his larger problem is that he has not built a general-election identity other than as a Republican who is loyal to Trump, but nonetheless mocked by the president. In a year when those aren’t advantages, that has hurt his campaign.
一个来自安全席位的现任者在竞选活动中会生疏，这并不是一个预料之中的结论。在共和党占多数的内布拉斯加州，参议员皮特·里基茨面临着可能成为他职业生涯中最接近的大选，对手是独立的丹·奥斯本。一个独立组织最近刊登了一则广告，批评里基茨支持赦免一名被判强奸前妻的男子。他在一个电话中回应说，作为一个丈夫和“两个女孩的父亲”，他的“心”向受害者伸出，称这是一个“可怕的罪行”，并指出他直到服完14年徒刑后很久才被赦免。“我根据我掌握的信息做出了当时最好的决定，”他说。
It’s not a foregone conclusion that an incumbent from a safe seat will be rusty at campaigning. In heavily Republican Nebraska, Sen. Pete Ricketts is facing what could become the closest general election of his career against independent Dan Osborn. An independent group recently ran an ad criticizing Ricketts for supporting a pardon, as governor, for a man who was convicted of raping his ex-wife. He responded in a call by saying that as a husband and “father of two girls,” his “heart goes out” to the victim, called it a “terrible crime” and noted he was not pardoned until long after he served his 14-year sentence. “I made the best decision I could at the time with the information I had,” he said.
里基茨并没有让赦免争议消失。但他对此表示同情、相关事实和一定程度的个人责任。与马歇尔不同的是，他并没有让事情变得更糟。
Ricketts didn’t make the pardon controversy disappear. But he responded to it with sympathy, relevant facts and a measure of personal responsibility. Unlike Marshall, he didn’t make it worse.
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