Challenger to Hawley: Quit Your 'Fake Populism'

[UpInArms]

A person’s watch can tell you a lot about him or her. Watches can project authority and power, as Vlad Putin likes to do; they can convey humility and solidarity, as with Pope Francis’s cheap Casio. The message of a calculator watch is simple: I am a nerd, it proclaims. And Democratic senate challenger Lucas Kunce, who says he has played Magic: The Gathering “in every place he’s lived,” is nothing if not a nerd.

Kunce is embarking on his second Senate run in two years. After losing in a 2022 Democratic primary, he’s now campaigning to face fleet-footed Republican incumbent Josh Hawley in 2024.

Kunce’s run for Hawley’s seat is actually the 40-year-old’s third campaign for elected office. He made an unsuccessful bid for the statehouse in 2006 while still in law school at the University of Missouri. After graduating he joined the Marines, and he did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before transitioning to the Pentagon, where he worked on arms control measures. He’s since left active duty, joined the reserves, and taken a job at the anti-monopoly-focused American Economic Liberties Project in Washington.

After Sen. Roy Blunt announced he would not seek re-election, a crowd of Republicans entered the primary, but none of Missouri’s prominent elected Democrats did the same. Kunce leapt at the opportunity to run—but then Trudy Busch Valentine, heiress to the Busch beer fortune, announced a late, self-funded campaign. She edged out Kunce to secure the party’s nomination. Even though the 2022 midterms were largely a success story for Democrats, Busch would go on to lose to Attorney General Eric Schmitt by 13 points.

But Kunce is now back to try again. Although he rejects corporate money entirely, his unsuccessful 2022 run set up a grassroots network that could provide him with the resources he’ll need to mount a real challenge to Hawley. He’s also gotten endorsements from some big Missouri celebrities: Jon Hamm and Andy Cohen. “We’re not starting from scratch,” he says.

More at:

https://www.thebulwark.com/challenger-lucas-kunce-to-hawley-quit-your-fake-populism/

[Rebl2]

1. I voted

for him in the primary and unfortunately Busch Valentine won. She comes from a family of republicans. She refused to do any debates during the primaries or with Schmitt. That really annoyed me that she would not debate-like she thought she was to good to do that type thing.