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February 8, 2023 Political Note #538 Lucas Kunce Missouri Senator
2024 General Election
In the 2022 General Election, the Democratic nominee for the US Senate, Trudy Busch Valentine, was crushed by Eric Schmitt, then the state Attorney General, in the race for an open Republican Senate seat in Missouri. The Democrat did not lack resources. Trudy Busch Valentine is the heir to the Busch brewery fortune. She entered the race late, won the Democratic primary, and spent almost $17 million in her unsuccessful campaign. Eric Schmitt spent almost $6.5 million in his successful race.
Lucas Kunce lost to Trudy Busch Valentine in the Democratic primary in 2022 — 43-38. Valentine won because she promised the possibility of a victory in the general election. She appeared to be willing to spend nearly unlimited amounts of money to win. Lucas Kunce’s money was limited. He raised $5.2 million only to lose the primary. Had he won, he would have had no money to contest the general election.
Why then consider supporting Lucas Kunce for 2024? He had a message in 2022 and has the same message for 2024 – an anti-corporate viewpoint that resonates for many. In an election season when the analysts describe Senate Democrats as being on the defensive because of the number of vulnerable seats, we should look at Republican seats that could be vulnerable. In 2022, Democrats held all of their Senate seats and flipped Pennsylvania’s open Republican one. I am beginning my conversation about the contest for the Senate with the possibility of flipping Missouri.
Of course, 2024 is a presidential year. I make no predictions about who the Republican nominee will be or even whether Joe Biden will run. I make no predictions about whether Joe Biden will overcome his classified document problem and be able to focus on the many successes of the first half of his term of office. What the second half of his term will look like as he deals with Republicans acting like conquerors because of their teeny House majority is beginning to get played out – not to the Republicans advantage.
For now, disregard the implications of a Presidential year and consider the possibility that Lucas Kunce could defeat Missouri’s sitting Senator Josh Hawley. Josh Hawley has weaknesses. His weaknesses are sufficient so that he withdrew from consideration as a presidential possibility in 2024. He is settling for what he must believe is the consolation prize of running for reelection as US Senator from Missouri.
During the January 6 hearings, he may have been the only public figure who was publicly mocked. The first Senator, and one of the very few Republican Senators, to insist that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected President, the picture of him raising a fist in solidarity with the January 6 insurrectionists was interspersed with video of him running away from the danger of the mob. He has been diminished. What’s more, the House of Representatives, with its narrow Republican majority dominated by the most radical elements of the Republican Party, has stolen what thunder he has.
Josh Hawley explained the 2020 election results that disappointed Senate Republicans in a way that was opposite from Mitch McConnell’s explanation. McConnell focused on the quality of the Republican candidates. Hawley attacked the Republicans in general: “When your ‘agenda’ is to cave to Big Pharma on insulin, cave to Schumer on gun control…., you lose.” Hawley claimed Republicans could get the support of working people by backing a more Trumpian agenda – tougher tariffs on China, “reshore” American jobs, pump oil, hire more cops.
Hawley does not persuade. Morgan Stanley’s chair for Asia advises that Biden was tougher on China than Trump was, Biden has “reshored” more American jobs. The AP reports that most of the jobs Biden was creating were in Republican territory and Joe Biden was saving American jobs “one factory at a time.” The Wall Street Journal said that “just when Americans were ready to vote for [Republicans] the GOP nominated too many radicals and weirdos.”
Josh Hawley is vulnerable. A Gray TV/SurveyUSA poll during the summer of 2022 found only 17% of Missourians strongly approved of the job Josh Hawley was doing and only 22% somewhat approved. In contrast, 13% somewhat disapproved and a whopping 31% strongly disapproved. Missourians have been introduced to the idea that 44 year old Josh Hawley is one of the “radicals and weirdos.”
Lucas Kunce is making that case. He is showing the people of Missouri. He alludes to the video of Hawley running away from the mob saying “if any of us Marines had run away from danger like that, we would have been court-martialed.” Lucas Kunce “reviews” Josh Hawley’s new book titled Manhood by saying: he’s got a book coming out on masculinity where he wants to tell everyone exactly what it means to be a man, which I guess means being made in his image. It’s weird, it’s creepy, and it’s gross, and I don’t understand it…..He hasn’t had to be held accountable for being a coward and fraud. …. he hasn’t had to be held accountable in front of Missourians for that weird creepiness”. Lucas Kunce adds “by the time I’m done with him, I’m telling you every single person in the state and the country is gonna know what a fraud, a coward, and a faker he is.”
Can Lucas Kunce make it stick? Josh Hawley is the son of a banker and a teacher. He was raised in Lexington, Missouri and went to a Jesuit Prep School in Kansas City. While in Prep School, he wrote columns for the Lexington newspaper. Valedictorian, he went to his mother’s alma mater, Stanford, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and graduated in 2002. After a year teaching at the St. Paul’s School in London, he went to Yale Law School where he edited the Law Review and served as president of the school chapter of the Federalist Society. After two clerkships, one of them with US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts (There, Hawley met his wife who also clerked at the Supreme Court), he joined a fancy Washington and London law firm. Beginning in 2011, he spent four years at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Also in 2011, he joined the faculty at the University of Missouri Law School. In 2013, he became a part of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, funded by the Alliance Defending Freedom which, in a perfect Orwellian reminder, has been designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Then Hawley entered politics. He ran successfully for Missouri Attorney General in 2016, ran again successfully in 2018 for US Senator from Missouri. While doing all of this, he has written two books, one of which is a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. He has also undertaken an advice blog with his wife. Rebecca Onion, Senior Editor of Slate, reviewed the blog and alluded to the Roosevelt biography. She was disdainful of the effort to resurrect early 20th century views of masculinity and, in particular, suggested that whatever Hawley wants to do next, neither the podcast nor the books are likely to get him there.
Lucas Kunce is the son of a public employee. His dad worked for the state Department of Conservation. His mom was at home, caring for Lucas Kunce’s sister who had a heart condition. Finances were a struggle and eventually the family faced bankruptcy. Despite those troubles, Lucas Kunce was also a valedictorian. Of his local high school. He went to Yale, graduating in 2004, but went home for law school – to the University of Missouri a few years before Josh Hawley taught there. Lance Kunce got his degree in 2007.
In 2007, Lucas Kunce passed the bar and joined the Marines as a member of the Judge Advocate division. He served a tour in Iraq, two tours in Afghanistan, and was sufficiently distinguished to become the Negotiations Officer representing the Pentagon dealing with Russia and NATO. In 2017 he remained on active duty and joined the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2020, he moved to the reserves as a major. In contrast to the current Senator’s service in a group funded by an organization identified as a hate group, Lucas Kunce joined a non-profit devoted to corporate accountability and enforcement of anti-trust laws. Maybe some in the corporate world would call it a hate group.
Lucas Kunce calls his economic plan a Marshal Plan for the Midwest. In addition to “reshoring” (where did that word come from?) American manufacturing jobs, he favors spending on domestic infrastructure. These goals, it has become clear, are consistent with the President’s goals. He supports the student loan forgiveness effort, protecting social security, and further support for education. He would prohibit foreign ownership of American agricultural land, would prohibit Members of Congress from owning stock (I don’t think that is going to fly). Speaking of flying, he would legalize cannabis nationally. Lucas Kunce may have seemed radical when he ran last year, but the world and, perhaps Missouri, is catching up with him.
Even if he wears suits once in a while, Lucas Kunce can be a John Fetterman. Lucas Kunce does not have as much to work with in Missouri as John Fetterman had in Pennsylvania. After all Joe Biden carried Pennsylvania in 2020 by more than a point; Trump carried Missouri in 2020 by 15 points. Fetterman defeated Oz (one of the radicals and weirdos) for the Senate in 2022 by 5 points. Valentine lost her race for the Senate in 2022 by 13 points.
Lucas Kunce has two jobs to get done. He has to work on himself. He needs to be and appear to be as distinctive and authentic as Fetterman. Sometimes, he dresses like Zelensky. That could do it. Lucas Kunce is comfortable with that look.
He has to work on Hawley, too. Lucas Kunce is comfortable doing just that. Prep school Hawley, Yale Law School Hawley, the Josh Hawley from an organization condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Josh Hawley running away from the mob he incited – these are Hawley characteristics that Lucas Kunce disdains.
Josh Hawley is beatable by himself. Lucas Kunce can define him in a way that makes him more easily beatable. Help Lucas Kunce in his early start. With enough resources, he could be Missouri’s next US Senator.
UPCOMING ELECTIONS TO INVEST IN
February 21 and April 4
Virginia Fourth Congressional District Special Election on February 21
Jennifer McClellan is running to replace the only current vacancy in the US Congress – Virginia’s Four Congressional District. A state senator representing the 9th Senate district, she is the child of a civil rights activist and a university professor. She ran Terry’s McAuliffe’s transition team when he was elected governor in 2013, is vice chair of the Virginia Democratic Party and of the legislature’s Black Caucus. She is the favorite to defeat Pastor and Navy veteran Leon Benjamin, Sr. See Len’s Political Note #527.
New Hampshire Special Election on February 21
House District 8, Rochester Ward 4
Incumbent Chuck Grassie is running because of a rarity. In November, he and former mayor Republican David Walker tied. Because New Hampshire’s House of Representatives is so large, you would not expect that a single seat would matter much. This election in February will matter. Republicans have a narrow majority – 201-198. Make it a little narrower (201-199) by helping to reelect Chuck Grassie.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Multiparty Primary on February 21 followed by a General Election on April 4
Janet Protasiewicz is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Her win in the February 21st primary and the April 4th General Election would flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 4-3 Republican to 4-3 Democrat with enormous implications for issues such as abortion and redistricting. This is an open seat because a Republican Justice retired. The election is in the spring rather than November because Wisconsin strives to limit partisanship in judicial elections. See Len’s Political Note #528
Wisconsin Primary on February 21 followed by a Special Election on April 4
Jody Habush Sinykin is running in the special election for Wisconsin’s State Senate District 08. She is also running to prevent Republicans from having two thirds of the seats in the Wisconsin State Senate. If the current State Senator for the District were not retiring, Republicans would have 22 of the 33 State Senate seats. See Len’s Political Note #529’
Kentucky Special Election on February 21
Democratic Metro Councilwoman Cassie Chambers Armstrong is running to fill an open Democratic State Senate seat. She is running against Misty Glin. When Glin ran and lost a race for School Board, she was described by All Eyes on Kentucky as supported by hate groups and election deniers. That may be. Her website for the State Senate race is refreshingly missing those kinds of Republican tropes. Whichever kind of Republican Glin is, you should help out Cassie Chambers Armstrong. She has a political future. Born poor in Eastern Kentucky, she went to Yale, London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School. After Harvard, she rejected high paying jobs in big firms and came home to Kentucky. She has represented low-income women suffering from domestic violence. As a member of the Metro Council, she has helped pass legislation such as parental leave and legal representation for renters facing eviction.
