His Opponent, Lucas Kunce, Is One Of The Best Candidates Anywhere
Ever since Bill Clinton’s decision to have the Democratic Party move in a more corporate direction, fully embrace Wall Street and prioritize suburban middle class voters over the working class, Missouri has trended Republican. A mainstay of the New Deal coalition, Missouri was so loyal to FDR's party that in 1956, Adlai Stevenson even beat Eisenhower there. But since 2000, it’s been red and getting redder. In 2008 Obama nearly pulled it off, but lost by a fraction of a point. In 2016, Trump clobbered Hillary 56.4% to 37.9% and in 2020, Trump won again— 56.8% to 41.4%. The national Democratic Party has stopped campaigning there… and, basically, left the state for dead. Democrats win in St Louis, Kansas City and Springfield. Of the state’s 115 counties, Biden was also competitive in Clay and Platte; that’s it. It’s a red state.
Even with as lame and flawed a Senate incumbent as Josh Hawley, the Democratic establishment didn’t look at Missouri as a pick-up opportunity this cycle— not even on a fantasy Florida and Texas level— and pretty much ignored the state as an independent-minded, non-establishment populist, Lucas Kunce, won the primary. Since then, he’s raised over $11 million and is in the final stretch with $4.2 million to Hawley’s $5.7 million. The DSCC and its allies haven’t spent a dime on the race. Kunce is basically on his own, although endorsed by Blue America with great ethusiasm.
Ohio has a vaguely similar situation. National Democrats have largely given up on Ohio. Kamala isn’t campaigning in this state that Obama won both times— and that Trump won both times. The local Democratic Party is dead outside of half a dozen blue ghettos— Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton, Akron… It’s almost as bad and worthless a party as the Florida Democratic Party. To win, Senator Sherrod Brown has had to create a parallel organization of his own and count on appealing to ticket splitters. In 2018, he beat multimillionaire Republican Jim Renacci by 7 points, winning counties where other Democrats are no longer competitive— or no longer try to win— like Mahoning (Youngstown), Lake, Wood, Erie (Sandusky), Portage, Trumbull, Lorain, Ashtabula…
Yesterday, Andrew Desiderio took a look at the crucial Ohio Senate race raging right now between Brown and the latest GOP self-funder, Bernie Moreno. Brown is narrowly ahead in the polls and even with Moreno’s $4.5 million in self-funding (so far) is also ahead in the money race— $51.5 million to $15.8 million. GOP billionaires have tried to make up the difference by pumping an eye-popping $130 million into the race in independent expenditures, including millions from the unprosecuted crypto-criminals. Brown’s allies have spent around half of that amount helping him.
Republicans, wrote Desiderio, “are having a difficult time discouraging ticket-splitting. In every Senate battleground, Trump is polling well ahead of GOP candidates. In close races, even the smallest of gaps can make a big difference. How do you win reelection as a Democrat in a state that Donald Trump will carry handily? By running against everyone and everything. That’s Sen. Sherrod Brown’s theory of the case, at least, as he tries to beat back the political winds in Ohio to win a fourth term while also salvaging what’s left of Democrats’ hopes to retain their Senate majority. ‘Politicians of both parties unfortunately have sold our state out over and over,’ Brown said to a crowd assembled at a United Auto Workers union hall here, just miles from the shuttered Lordstown, Ohio, GM plant. ‘You know all too well what happens when politicians and corporations sell us out. I will never ever give up on our workers.’ Brown used the ‘both parties’ line at least a half-dozen times during a two-stop swing through Trump-friendly counties in eastern Ohio on Friday. Brown is seeking to insulate himself from GOP attacks on a number of issues that dominate the most expensive Senate race in the country.”
He pointed out that “Brown’s strategy of castigating both parties for national problems that have disproportionately impacted Ohio— from the decimation of the state’s manufacturing base to the influx of fentanyl from the southern border— is giving Democrats hope that he can hang on. It’s an attempt to appeal to ticket-splitters who back Trump but are willing to vote for Brown… Brown’s UAW speech focused on China’s exploitation of U.S. trade policies and its impact on manufacturing jobs. He name-checked the last four presidents, including Joe Biden, for failing to do enough to protect those jobs through trade enforcement… In Steubenville, Brown talked up the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, which was signed into law earlier this year. Brown led the effort and noted it was overwhelmingly bipartisan. The only time Brown mentioned Trump was when he pointed out that the former president signed a fentanyl bill of his into law. Focusing on fentanyl also allows Brown to blunt some of the GOP attacks over the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. ‘We’ve got to close the border better than we have. Presidents of both parties have failed at the border,’ Brown told us. ‘I think [voters] are encouraged by our efforts on fentanyl. The thing many people feel the most is the fentanyl in their communities.’ Brown is betting that these anti-establishment messages resonate with voters who’ve seen first-hand how unfavorable trade policies and fentanyl have ravaged the state. But with ticket-splitting becoming less common and the Buckeye State getting tougher for Democrats statewide, Republicans are pouring unprecedented sums of money into Ohio to knock off Brown and flip the Senate red.”
Kunce has a very similar approach in Missouri. “Wall Street banks had gambled away our economy. And just a few short years after the American people had come to their rescue with bailouts, those same banks were selling out our men and women in uniform for profit… One of the hardest things for me between these tours was coming back home to Jeff City, to the community I had signed up to serve, and seeing what was going on in my old neighborhood. When I came back from Iraq, the first house I’d ever lived in was bulldozed down. It’s now an empty lot. When I came back from Afghanistan, the house I lived in when I joined the Marine Corps was vacant and starting to fall apart. The corner store was boarded up. The whole time all of us were risking our lives overseas, our leaders were spending trillions of dollars trying to build up towns in these other countries— places like Habbaniyah, Fallujah, and Herat— when they should have been spending our money, blood, and sweat on towns like St. Joe, St. Louis, and Jefferson City. From the Middle East to the Pentagon, my time in the Marine Corps provided me with direct insight into the control that giant corporations have over our tax dollars, our politics, and our everyday lives. That’s why, in my final year of active duty, I worked to upend the domination of corporate monopolies over our economy that is crushing innovation, costing taxpayers money, and leaving our country less safe. After active duty, I joined the American Economic Liberties Project— the nation’s leading non-profit in the fight against monopoly power in our economy and our democracy. We took on the corrupt politicians and monopolists who threaten our national security, dominate our lives, squeeze small businesses out of our markets, and enrich corporate elites at the expense of everyday Americans— from Big Tech and agribusiness conglomerates to pharmaceutical cartels and defense contractors… Everyday people should be calling the shots in our country— not giant corporations or the cowards and phonies they bought off in Washington. That’s why I’m running for U.S. Senate: To take power back for working families in Missouri and across America.”
Kunce makes a very strong case for Missouri voters, regardless of partisan identity. “While our state has been getting stripped for parts, corrupt politicians like Josh Hawley have been attacking workers with schemes like ‘Right-to-Work’ and fighting to block wage increases— for Missouri families— all to enrich multinational corporations and mega-donors who bankroll their campaigns. They helped Wall Street financiers sell off our farmland to billionaires in China and Brazil— devastating rural communities and contributing to the closure of 90% of Missouri hog producers in a single generation. One of Missouri’s oldest and largest employers, Anheuser-Busch, was sold to a Belgian conglomerate— costing Missouri more than a thousand jobs. Missouri-based Monsanto, one of the world’s most important agrochemical and biotechnology companies, was sold to Germany— eliminating even more jobs… Manufacturing, agriculture, production— they’re shipping it all away to foreign oligarchs who don’t care about working people in our state. And while Missouri was getting gutted, these same politicians voted time and time again to spend trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on overseas wars that got their Big Oil friends rich. Our politicians have spent decades sparking phony culture wars to distract and divide our families. They’ve become so obsessed with controlling our lives, they made Missouri the first state in the nation to ban abortion— without exceptions for victims of rape or incest.”
We can stop printing money for Wall Street and start funding our schools enough to get Missouri out of last place for starting teacher pay.
We can abolish corporate PACs and demand a government that safeguards our democracy and holds corrupt politicians accountable.
We can build an economy that puts American workers and small businesses in charge, not giant corporations and foreign oligarchs — an economy that invests in putting America first in the next generation of energy, semiconductors, and supply chain independence.
We can put an end to pointless, trillion-dollar wars and invest in a Marshall Plan for the Midwest— a historic investment in our workers and communities to rebuild our forgotten towns and cities, and to finally start making stuff in America again.
We can put everyday Missourians back in charge of their own neighborhoods, workplaces, and bodies.
It’s time to take our power back.
And that led to the powerful endorsement from the largest and most influential newspaper in the state, the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
They began by savaging Hawley’s participation in the J-6 attempted coup and insurrection, noting that though “there is plenty of blame within the halls of Congress… one member stands apart for his singular role in spurring the violence that day: Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, was the first and initially only senator to announce his baseless challenge of the election results, setting in motion the grotesque events that followed. As Trump’s rabble gathered for their attack, Hawley infamously raised his fist in solidarity with the mob— a mob from which he eventually had to sprint for his life, along with so many of his congressional colleagues. Hawley’s role in Jan. 6 would, in itself, merit his expulsion from the Senate by Missouri voters even if there weren’t so many other reasons to reject his reelection bid: his shortsighted and obtuse quest to nix Ukrainian aid; a Senate term almost completely devoid of substantive accomplishments; an unparalleled record of demagoguery on the Senate floor, where he endlessly spews faux-populist sound and fury signifying nothing. For reasons above and beyond any partisan considerations, Josh Hawley is quite possibly the worst sitting senator in America right now.”
Luckily, Missourians have an alternative on Nov. 5 who is as richly qualified for high office as Hawley is unfit. The Editorial Board enthusiastically endorses Democrat Lucas Kunce for the United States Senate.
Kunce, 42, is an attorney and former U.S. Marine whose politics are moderate and whose personal story is compelling in ways that should transcend party lines.
Raised in Jefferson City, his working-class family went bankrupt because of immense medical bills from his ailing sister’s multiple open-heart surgeries. Kunce has talked extensively about how the surrounding community came together to help his family. Despite those modest roots, Kunce went on to obtain degrees from Yale (on a Pell Grant), Mizzou law and Columbia law.
He subsequently joined the Marine Corps’ Judge Advocate division, serving one tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. Later, he negotiated arms control agreements for the Pentagon involving Russia and NATO.
That may be why Kunce understands the need to continue standing up to Russia in Ukraine. Hawley, conversely, has been among the Senate’s loudest and most irresponsible voices for abandoning that crucial ally, which would embolden not only Russia but China as well, while undermining NATO.
Kunce checks the boxes that Democrats generally care about, but with a centrist element that should allow more conservative Missourians to at least consider his candidacy.
He supports reasonable abortion rights as they existed under Roe v. Wade. He supports reasonable gun policies like red-flag laws and universal background checks, as do most Americans. He favors universal health care, as even Hawley has at times improbably claimed to (though all that Hawley has actually done on the issue is to demagogue it).
…Hawley, in spite of everything he’s done and failed to do, goes into his reelection bid with the enormous baked-in advantage of Republican incumbency in a bright-red state. Such is the reality of this deeply partisan, sharply polarized era.
But we would implore those voters who plan to automatically check every “R” on the ballot to pause and consider Hawley’s bid from the point of view of patriotism rather than partisanship. This is a sitting senator who attacked the very heart of democracy from its core, then shamelessly, literally fled from the damage he helped inflict. And he has never once apologized for it.
Hawley should have resigned his seat in disgrace on Jan. 7, 2021. Missouri’s voters this year can finally remove him from it, while getting a reasonable, centrist new senator in the bargain. We strongly recommend a vote for Lucas Kunce on Nov. 5.
If you want to keep the Senate from falling into MAGA hands and you have a few bucks you’re willing to invest, you can contribute to Kunce, Sherrod Brown and the independent candidate in Nebraska, Dan Osborn, on this ActBlue page. That’s what Nita in Colorado did:
