Roger Marshall is the junior senator from Kansas. He sold the house in Great Bend where he and his wife raised their children 10 days after being sworn into the Senate in January 2021. Two years before that, he bought a beachfront house near Sarasota, Florida.

For the next three years, his Senate office billed taxpayers for trip after trip that ran through that part of Florida.

The Kansas City Star's Reality Check series just put a number on it. Between July 2021 and July 2024, Marshall took at least 14 official trips through the Sarasota area, and his office charged taxpayers $18,886 for them.

That breaks down as:

• Nearly $12,000 for his airfare and other transportation
• More than $6,000 in per diem — the daily allowance a senator collects for meals and lodging while traveling
• $689 in incidental expenses

It is illegal to use taxpayer money to pay for personal travel.

This is four times bigger than what we knew before

Politico first reported on these flights on September 20, 2024. At the time, the public records showed eight trips and nearly $4,500.

That was the version Marshall's office defended. The flights, they said in 2024, were all approved by the Senate Rules Committee and were "admissible official travel that included visits to military bases, agriculture interests, and meetings regarding healthcare policy."

The Star went back and pulled the later filings with the Secretary of the Senate. The real figure was more than four times higher, across nearly twice as many trips.

Marshall's office confirmed to the Star that roughly $19,000 in travel expenses were reimbursed. It then argued that most of those charges were racked up outside Florida, and produced itemized expense reports — never made public — showing $5,296 in reimbursements for purchases made inside Florida.

When the Star asked what specific government business the Gulf Coast flights were for, his office did not respond.

The boat lift

One trip stands out.

On December 13, 2021, Marshall signed off on a boat lift installation at the Florida property. The document was notarized in Washington, D.C.

Five days later, on December 18, his office spent $318 on airfare from Washington to Sarasota.

Then the trips stopped

Marshall's last taxpayer-funded trip to the Sarasota area was in the summer of 2024. The Star found no record of any Gulf Coast travel charges between July 9, 2024 and March 31, 2026, the end of the most recent reporting period.

Look at what happened in between:

• July 9, 2024 — the last billed trip
• September 20, 2024 — Politico publishes the story
• September 26, 2024 — Hurricane Helene brings strong winds and historic flooding to parts of Sarasota County
• October 9, 2024 — Hurricane Milton becomes the first hurricane to directly strike Sarasota since 1944, with gusts up to 115 mph

The trips stopped two months before the storms — and two months before the story broke.

"I only wish I had a home in Florida"

At a campaign stop earlier this month, Marshall told the Topeka Capital-Journal on August 10: "I only wish I had a home in Florida. Our home in Florida was destroyed by a hurricane almost two years ago."

He still owns it. He put it on the market on March 30, according to the listing agent's website, at an asking price of $1.45 million. The listing calls it "an exceptional opportunity" to "create your dream waterfront retreat in one of Sarasota's most desirable locations," and the photos show rooms that remain unfinished.

Sarasota County property records list the combined home and land value at $921,100, down from just under $1.3 million before the hurricane damage.

Back in 2024, the Star reported that the Florida property — then appraised at $1.2 million — was worth more than eight times the cabin and surrounding land in Stafford County, Kansas, that Marshall identifies as his primary residence.

Records show two of Marshall's four adult children also have homes in Sarasota. "We do have grandchildren there," he told reporters in Topeka. "My wife wanted a second place to go visit. I didn't ever get there very often."

The trips stopped. The fundraisers didn't.

Taxpayer-funded travel to the Sarasota area ended in July 2024. Marshall's political operation kept going back.

In late February 2025, he hosted a three-day fundraising retreat at Sarasota's St. Regis Longboat Key Resort. A document published by Politico advertised it as the "second annual Sarasota Retreat With Senator Roger Marshall, M.D."

Federal election filings show two political action committees controlled by Marshall paid the St. Regis a combined $1,804 for travel-related expenses in the two days after that retreat — and a combined $5,180 almost exactly a year later, on consecutive days in early March 2026.

A pattern of paperwork problems

This is not the first time Marshall's own filings have been the story.

He broke the STOCK Act by filing a dependent child's pandemic-era stock trades more than 17 months late — trades in Microsoft, Disney, Chevron, Gilead and Roku — and then introduced a bill in 2026 to ban exactly that kind of trading.

He was also convicted of reckless driving after a neighbor called 911 saying Marshall nearly ran him over with a pickup, only for a prosecutor whose father was Marshall's business partner and across-the-street neighbor to get the conviction swapped for a traffic ticket on Christmas Eve.

And while he was flying through Florida, he was not holding open meetings back home. Marshall once bragged about holding 105 town halls and then went more than 500 days without holding a single open one — long enough that nearly 3,850 Kansans from 100 of the state's 105 counties signed a petition asking for one.

What his office says

Marshall's chief of staff, Brent Robertson, went after his Democratic opponent instead, calling the Rev. Adam Hamilton's focus on Marshall's residency hypocritical: "Hamilton should know that people in glass houses shouldn't throw a stone — he owns four homes, two of which are in Missouri."

Hamilton is registered to vote in Stilwell, Kansas, where he and his wife have owned a home since 2001. His lakefront house is in Climax Springs, Missouri. The other two are in Lawrence and Kansas City, and his campaign says his two daughters live in them.

Marshall himself posted his own accounting on Monday: over six years, he says, he has averaged 185 days a year in Washington, 130 days a year in Kansas with over 300 stops annually, about 35 days of official travel, and 20 holiday or personal days.

What the filings show

Roger Marshall's Senate office billed Kansas taxpayers $18,886 for at least 14 official trips through the part of Florida where he owns a beachfront house — more than four times what was publicly known before, with nearly $12,000 of it his airfare and transportation. One of those flights was booked five days after he signed a boat lift order for that house. When the Kansas City Star asked what government business the trips were for, his office would not say. The house is now listed at $1.45 million, and Marshall says he only wishes he had a home in Florida.

Source

Marshall spent more time, taxpayer money near Florida property. It's up for sale — Matthew Kelly, The Kansas City Star, August 24, 2026. Photo: Facebook/Senator Roger Marshall, M.D.