ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The U.S. Senate will have multiple seats up for election this coming cycle, and Erik Murray is one of many candidates looking to help change Kansas representation there.
As Murray tells it, his roots in the Sunflower State run deep.
“I was born and raised in Kansas City, meaning I grew up in Wyandotte County, and I'm a fourth-generation Kansas City resident raising the fifth generation,” Murray said. “I went to the number one public high school in the state, and my mother had graduated from that same school in 1957, when it was an all-Black high school, and I've got two children in that same school now. All of that means I've got really, really deep roots in Wyandotte County. I've also got a deep love for public education – my mother was a schoolteacher, as is an aunt, several cousins and one of my nieces. In terms of my professional career, I got into commercial real estate not too long after graduating from the University of Southern California. My degree was in public health, and I did a short stint with the HIV and AIDS Prevention and Planning Unit in Orange County and ended up not being a fan of how much of that work was tied up in bureaucracy, and I didn't like how the money being spent wasn't being spent on patient care and the community.”
Ultimately, Murray said, that led to a career shift.
“I rather lucked into the commercial real estate industry and started as a junior broker before working my way through the ranks of all of that. I started at a firm in Kansas City called Collier's and then later on, some partners and I began our own firm, and the rest is history,” Murray said. “The first decade of running my own commercial real estate business was based on profit and understanding how to actually make money through real estate development, and after a while, I thought 'Making money is great, but how can we do that while respecting and uplifting people and taking care of the planet?' Our firm is focused on what we call the triple bottom line – we are a for-profit venture and want to make money to cover everything we need to, but the projects we take on have to uplift our clients and protect the planet. We will not take on projects that put profit over people and don't contribute to overall sustainability. We build affordable housing, workforce development (especially in the aviation industry), electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and solar energy micro-grids, among others. We love doing projects that combine community impact and sustainability, and that work will continue.”
Like many other candidates, Murray said recent events spurred the idea of running for political office.
“I don't really have a political career, I'm just a normal man who's enjoyed business success, but I'm set up with the chaos of the current political environment, so I think I'm prepared to run against a senator who doesn't show up, doesn't answer questions from constituents and hasn't responded to the needs of Kansans, so there has to be a better way,” Murray said. “I'd started thinking about running for office in early 2025, shortly after the current administration came back for its second term. I remember thinking 'This will definitely not work,' and sure enough, by about March or April, the writing was on the wall of how utterly chaotic this administration was going to be. We started seeing the harm being done to all communities and there were a lot of people saying 'Surely SOMEONE in the U.S. Senate will stand up.' I know a lot of people in my community were reaching out to Roger Marshall urging him to do the right thing and work to actually represent Kansas and what we wanted. But that ended up not happening, and everyone knows the story of him running out of his town hall in Oakley. In the early part of 2025, I had an epiphany and thought 'SOMEONE has to do SOMETHING, we can't just sit back and watch all of this happen,' and then the summer of 2025 is when I started giving the thought of running for political office some serious consideration since Roger Marshall was certainly not stepping up to defend Kansas. I ultimately decided if he wasn't going to do anything, I wanted to help be part of the solution, so I had those conversations with my family and paid some visits to Washington DC to talk to some people there, and ultimately launched my campaign.”
Should he be elected to office, Murray said his priorities will be to Kansans.
“We need leaders who have the courage to do the right thing, which is not always the politically convenient thing or the partisan thing. There's a lot of protection nowadays of a billionaire class that's just taking and taking resources from our communities. We've got to have leaders who are willing to call out injustice and are willing to go to Washington DC and do what's ultimately right for the people,” Murray said. “Politicians are supposed to work for the people, and they need to be held to account. Another thing is we need to prioritize how the government invests resources – everyone says 'We don't have funding for X,' but there are trillions of dollars in circulation, and the government always finds money for its priorities that ultimately end up being the opposite of what Kansans and other U.S. citizens want. We're currently spending roughly $1 billion a day on a foreign war no one asked for or wants, and Congress has not done its job to hold this administration accountable to the War Powers Act, so we continue to spend all of that money every day in foreign places when it could be used here in the U.S. to drastically help our own citizens' quality of life. This administration is running up a massive deficit, and that debt is going to fall on future generations of Kansans – that money should be invested in resources such as education, healthcare and infrastructure, among others. Those priorities are much more important to me and other Kansans than a gilded ballroom and unnecessary tariffs and foreign wars. Those misaligned priorities are what I want to go to Washington DC to help fix. This administration needs to be held accountable for the Epstein files, its multiple violations of the Constitution, war crimes and other massively misaligned priorities so we can invest in actual priorities the U.S. people want, such as healthcare, affordable housing/cost of living, education, and other infrastructure so we can leave a better future for the upcoming generations.”
With the modern political climate leaving much to be desired for many people, Murray said voters cannot give up hope.
“It seems like any time you turn on the news, there are stories of more economic hardship or yet another political scandal, and I totally understand how tired people are of hearing about all of that day after day after day,” Murray said. “On the flip side, however, that's why we need people to show up and vote because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, and we need people engaged in the process to make sure our elected officials are being held accountable and actually representing our interests. I know it's draining, but we need representatives who are willing to do the hard work and who actually care about U.S. citizens and their quality of life. We can't give up and let our current leaders ruin any hope for a better future.”
While on the campaign trail, Murray offered encouragement for constituents to contact him with any questions or concerns they may have.
“We're very active on social media, we've got a lot of people who have engaged with us on Facebook and Instagram, and my team and I are constantly answering questions and interacting with people,” Murray said. “If people want to reach out to me more directly, they can go to erikforkansas.com and fill out a contact form, or they can email me at
