Senator Roger Marshall faced tough questions in North Topeka last week as voters shared worries about rising costs and tariffs. While a local business owner said, "Our small businesses can't sit and wait," the senator claimed most firms are expanding. He now works to defend his seat amid economic anxiety.

Senator Roger Marshall was slow to recognize the steep challenge he faced in his solidly conservative state. Now he is confronting dissent among voters with deep economic worries.

In a restored 1920s train station in North Topeka last week, Senator Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas, listened as a constituent spoke up to complain about how badly President Trump's tariffs had hurt his family's manufacturing company.

Customers were pulling back, Zachary Surritt told Mr. Marshall at a Chamber of Commerce gathering, while costs were rising and employees were struggling to make ends meet.

"Our small businesses can't sit and wait on a promise for things to happen because we're feeling the crunch right now," Mr. Surritt told the senator.

Mr. Marshall begged to differ.

"I think your experience is different than most of the other manufacturing companies that I've talked to," the senator said. "Most of them are expanding and business is great."

It was an unusual message for a Republican facing an unexpectedly steep re-election challenge as voters grapple with economic anxieties exacerbated by tariffs and the costs of the war with Iran. But then Mr. Marshall, a first-term senator who rode Mr. Trump's political wave into Congress and has styled himself as an ultra-loyal acolyte of the president's ever since, has never faced much of a challenge in his solidly conservative state.

It may be one reason his closing pitch leans heavily on discounting his own constituents' concerns.

"Certainly the cost of gas is an issue," Mr. Marshall told reporters at another stop in Topeka last week, "but now people are coming home saying, 'Oh, what's more important than money?' There are things more important than money to Kansans."

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.