Roger Marshall calls Kansas cabin home. Official trips took him near $1.2M Florida house
On the side of a dirt road in western Kansas stands a locked metal gate flanked by a mailbox and two no-trespassing signs. A quarter-mile past the gate, obscured from the road by trees and terrain, sits a 1,120-square-foot cabin with a small patio that looks out onto a fishing pond.
This is where Sen. Roger Marshall calls home.
Some 1,500 miles away in Sarasota, Florida, the Kansas Republican keeps a much larger and more expensive house that includes a boat dock on a bayou and is only a short walk away from Sarasota Bay. At 1,949 square feet, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house is valued at $1.2 million, more than eight times the appraised value of the cabin and surrounding land near St. John in Stafford County.
Four years into his Senate term – and eight years after he was first elected to Congress – Marshall has established a presence in Florida. Kansas’ junior senator has charged taxpayers several thousand dollars for flights and related expenses for trips that include stops in Sarasota while in the Senate; trips his office said were approved by a Senate committee and were for official business.
The Sarasota vacation home – Marshall does not take a Florida tax break for permanent residents – is just miles from his grandkids. Two of Marshall’s four adult children have homes in Sarasota.
Federal lawmakers have long juggled time between their home states and Washington, D.C. Many maintain residences in the Washington area, though they typically don’t advertise it. Spending too much time in Washington can be a political liability in an era where politicians often portray themselves as outsiders.
But keeping a house in another state far outside D.C. is more unusual, with fewer parallels.
The Star tried unsuccessfully to reach Marshall at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. Asked for his response to questions about his houses and where he spends his time, Marshall spokeswoman Charyssa Parent cast any indication that Marshall doesn’t live in Kansas as “dishonest and factually inaccurate.”
Parent said Marshall uses the Sarasota house to visit his grandkids over the holidays “like many grandparents.”
“In the four years he’s been elected to the Senate, Senator Marshall has spent three weekends in Washington D.C. and averages three trips a year to visit his children and grandchildren in Florida,” Parent said in an email.
Like most senators, Marshall, 64, leads a travel-heavy life. Congress spends more than 150 days in session each year and there are exclusive occasions on some weekends in Washington, like annual Christmas parties at the White House and tickets to the Kennedy Center Honors. Travel to conferences and political visits, such as stops at the southern border, take up time as well.
Back in Kansas, Marshall participates in numerous events – visiting businesses, walking in parades and meeting with constituents – including some that are hours away from the ranch, located south of Great Bend in Stafford County.
How much time the senator spends at the cabin and in Sarasota is difficult to discern with precision. Marshall’s official Instagram account contains a handful of photos, some years old, that show the cabin.
“I also had to ask him, where are you going to be on Father’s Day so I can mail you a card at least?” Marshall’s daughter wrote in a 2022 Father’s Day post on his Instagram page. “So I’m just laughing that I don’t even know where to mail him a card that he will actually get in a decent amount of time.”
Real estate moves
Marshall’s political rise is rooted in Great Bend, a city of about 15,000 in Barton County. He worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist, delivering by his own count more than 5,000 babies and gaining prominence locally before defeating Rep. Tim Huelskamp in the Republican primary for the 1st Congressional District in 2016.
He served two terms in the House before winning his Senate seat in an open race in 2020. Marshall was sworn into the Senate on Jan. 3, 2021. Just 10 days later, he sold the five-bedroom, four-bathroom house in Great Bend where he had raised his children for $415,000, according to the Barton County Appraiser’s Office.
The Great Bend sale came after Marshall sold a one-bedroom apartment steps from the U.S. Capitol that he owned while in the House. Marshall sold the apartment to Rep. Jodey Arrington, a Texas Republican, in 2020, for $400,000, according to District of Columbia records.
Marshall’s Kansas voter registration now lists the St. John cabin as his residence. The cabin, built in 1980 and renovated in 2009, sits on roughly 310 acres of ranch land that have been in the Marshall family for decades. His office said he moved there when his children went to college.
Along the property, signs posted at regular intervals along the road, muddy after recent rainfall, warn against hunting without permission. Oil pumps dot the landscape.
The cabin has one bathroom and one bedroom – with three rooms total – according to records kept by the Stafford County Appraiser’s Office. The appraiser this year valued the cabin, which includes a detached garage and two storage sheds, at $124,200. The agricultural land was valued at $21,530.
Parent repeatedly referred to the cabin – a term Marshall has used on social media – as a “ranch” and emphasized that it sits on over 300 acres. Asked how much time Marshall spends at the property, Parent didn’t answer directly.
“This is his primary residence—so as much as anyone who lives at their own house???” Parent said.
The property is owned by a family-controlled corporation. Marshall and his wife, Laina, are its directors. Two of his sons serve as officers.
Marshall has assets between $2.75 million and $9.3 million, according to his Senate financial disclosure. He makes $174,000 a year from his official Senate salary, after several decades as an OB-GYN.
A revocable trust purchased the Sarasota property for $750,000 in June 2019, just months before Marshall launched his Senate campaign. The address listed for the trust during the sale was Marshall’s home address in Great Bend at the time. Marshall’s House financial disclosure form also lists a June purchase of a Sarasota vacation home.
Three months later, Marshall sold for between $1 million and $5 million a property in Santa Cruz, California, that he had rented out.
A Zillow page for the Sarasota property includes images showing an expansive two-story backdoor deck with a view of the bayou. Inside, a spiral staircase connects the first and second floors.
Travel expenses
The Sarasota house first received attention last week, when Politico reported Marshall spent more than $4,500 in taxpayer money for flights and related expenses near his vacation home in Sarasota. Senate expense records show Marshall charged taxpayers for seven trips to Sarasota in 2021. Some of the trips included multiple stops in addition to Sarasota.
Additionally, Marshall’s leadership PAC, called DOC’s PAC, spent $261.86 at Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse in Sarasota in March 2024, according to Federal Elections Commission records.
Taking personal travel on the taxpayer dime is illegal, said Kedric Payne, the senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit government watchdog. But he said tacking personal travel on business travel can sometimes be a murky line – one that is often determined by a Senate committee.
“You cannot spend taxpayer money on personal travel,” Payne said “The analysis comes in as to whether or not it’s truly personal.”
Marshall’s office said the flights were all approved by the Senate rules committee “and admissible official travel that included visits to military bases, agriculture interests, and meetings regarding health care policy.”
Marshall isn’t the first member of Congress representing the Kansas City region whose residency has attracted attention.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, came under scrutiny in 2020 for maintaining a house in Virginia and using his sister’s address to register to vote in Missouri. Hawley said the address was temporary, as his family built a house in Ozark.
Former Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican who Marshall replaced in the Senate, was criticized during his 2014 reelection bid for not maintaining a house in Kansas. He listed a house owned by two of his donors as his permanent address. The senator infamously joked to The New York Times that he had “full access to the recliner.”
Roberts, who had spent 17 years in the Senate, won the Republican primary by a margin of less than 8 points.
And former Rep. Jim Ryun, a Republican, faced questions over whether he received a friendly deal from a consulting firm on a D.C. townhouse he bought in 2000. Democrat Nancy Boyda defeated Ryun in 2006 amid controversy over the townhouse.
“Here in Kansas, I think it can matter because we’ve had instances where people have been interested – not just the media, but voters,” Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University and a longtime observer of Kansas politics, said of residency questions.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the amount of travel expenses reported by Politico. It is $4,500.
This story was originally published September 25, 2024 at 11:05 AM with the headline "Roger Marshall calls Kansas cabin home. Official trips took him near $1.2M Florida house."
