JEFF GREENFIELD:

This is what you'll see just about any autumn in Kansas: fields of corn that await the harvest, the search for food at a farmer's market or at Oklahoma Joe's always crowed barbecue. And this is what you'll hear: the roar of the crowds and the motorcycles at a Kansas State football game.

But for all that is familiar in this place, in this season, there is one thing happening here that is almost totally unprecedented. Something so surprising, almost shocking, that it has Republicans from Maine to Hawaii asking, "What's the matter with Kansas?"

In what is surely the biggest surprise of the 2014 midterms, both Republican Senator Pat Roberts and Republican Governor Sam Brownback find themselves in serious political peril in this most Republican of states. Two races that were on no one's radar a few months ago – one of which may decide who controls the United States Senate.

It's enough to make an observer like the Kansas City Star's Dave Helling, who's covered politics for almost 35 years, to feel as if he's not in Kansas anymore – where every statewide official and every member of Congress is Republican.