Independence, MO — Tonight, Lt. Col. Lucas Kunce (USMCR, 13 years of active duty) has secured the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Kunce now enters the general election with the largest war chest ever amassed by a U.S. Senate challenger in Missouri.
“Josh Hawley doesn’t want to represent us. He wants to rule us. To decide how we get to live for his own power. We deserve better.” said Kunce at a victory rally in Independence. “The job of a U.S. Senator isn’t to rule us, it’s to represent us. To serve communities like the one I grew up in and invest in us so that we have the resources to live our own lives. That’s why we are here tonight. Join us and we will fundamentally change who has power in this country!”
The win pits Kunce against incumbent U.S. Senator Josh Hawley in November.
Kunce is a 13-year Marine veteran with an extensive record of service, having trained with and been certified by the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, led Marines and a police training team on dozens of missions outside the wire in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle (where he was also exposed to a toxic burn pit), and helped lead arms control negotiations. After active duty, Kunce became a recognized leader in the fight against corporate monopoly power.
Meanwhile, Josh Hawley has consistently earned the lowest approval of any Republican incumbent running for re-election this year. Recent polling has shown Hawley to be even more vulnerable than fellow Senate incumbents Ted Cruz and Rick Scott, and is even polling 10% behind Trump. Heading into this year’s election, Hawley has gained attention for robbing Missourians of $250,000 in taxpayer dollars, comparing abortion to slavery, attacking no-fault divorce laws, and being exposed as a pioneer behind the legal arguments being used by his activist allies to shut down access to IVF.
Unlike other GOP-held U.S. Senate seats up in 2024, Missouri has a healthy record of split-ticket voters. In Jason Kander’s 2016 race, hundreds of thousands of Kander-Trump voters helped him close the gap from a 14% deficit to a near victory against incumbent Roy Blunt in the final months — and outperforming the Democratic presidential ticket by nearly 16%. And in 2012, Todd Akin’s anti-abortion extremism resulted in his double-digit lead swinging to a massive win for Democrats — outperforming the presidential race by 25%.
In their earlier endorsement of Kunce, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board had this to say about the Marine veteran: “Kunce’s personal story demolishes the stereotype of the latte-sipping, out-of-touch liberal Democrat: Raised in a struggling working-class family, he earned his way up to become a Yale grad with a Mizzou law degree and extensive military and foreign relations experience… with his modest upbringing and centrist political bearings, he is also able to communicate to more conservative rural voters, potentially bridging political polarization… With recent polls showing Hawley with a single-digit lead over Kunce in a state Trump won by 16 points in 2020, Democrats may in fact have the opportunity for an upset here. They also have an opportunity to seat a senator the state could finally be proud of.”
Kander himself wrote that not only is Hawley vulnerable — but that Kunce can beat him. And even Donald Trump agreed. After winning only 51% of the vote in his first Senate race—and underperforming Trump’s margin in the previous presidential cycle by 13%—any loss of support for Hawley will jeopardize his chances of being reelected. So, getting caught robbing Missouri taxpayers and being the least popular Senate GOP incumbent running in 2024 should have already given Hawley cause for concern.
But now, in his first election since the Dobbs decision, Hawley will be forced to share the ballot with a massively energizing ballot initiative to end a total abortion ban Hawley supports and restore reproductive freedoms that Hawley helped to end. And while voters are more motivated than ever by issues like IVF, contraception, and abortion, Hawley has built a career—and even a family business—on banning them all. In the last six years, he’s made a terrifying amount of progress in that mission.
Hawley believes his mission to outlaw all abortions is as important and brave as the efforts of American abolitionists to end slavery — so while similarly vulnerable Republicans like Ted Cruz and Rick Scott have made public attempts to moderate their positions, Hawley has made it clear he has no intention of doing the same. Hawley even publicly rebuked Trump, J.D. Vance, and the GOP platform, and proudly declared himself to be an extremist well outside the norm of mainstream Republican voters.
No U.S. Senator has a worse record on reproductive freedoms than Hawley.
Now, Hawley is on the ballot after polling found: “The share of voters who say abortion is the most important issue facing their state in Missouri is higher than any state poll we have conducted in the past year.”