The first Democrat hoping to unseat Sen. Josh Hawley in 2024 has gone ahead, launching his campaign on the anniversary of the January 6, 2021, uprising with a nod to the infamous action of the Missouri Republican that day.
Lucas Kunce, who lost last year’s Democratic Senate race to beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine, is back to challenge Hawley in 2024, HuffPost said Friday.
“He never ran away with all the baggage he’s carrying now,” said Kunce, a Marine veteran and former arms control negotiator with NATO. “This is ‘Show Me State.’ You need to show people what you stand for. This guy has shown everyone that he is a coward and a fake.
Bukak Kunce’s video leans a lot on greetings before the Hawley Riot and the length of it was discovered by the House January 6 committee that showed the senator fleeing the crowd in the Capitol. Later that day, Hawley refused to certify the election results in the Senate. He later wrote in an op-ed that the objections were designed to encourage debate about election integrity.
Kunce had a very uphill path to victory against Hawley, who ousted the incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill in 2018. Hawley is one of only a few Republican incumbents up for reelection in a cycle when national Democrats will focus their resources on defending seats in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. But Hawley is so polarizing that Democrats will pursue the race.
A spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate’s campaign arm, rejected Kunce’s challenge.
“Unhinged liberal Lucas Kunce will grift millions from the coastal elite, then disappear. Just like when he ran in the last election,” NRSC communications director Mike Berg told HuffPost in a statement. A spokeswoman for Hawley had no comment.
Kunce lost the primary by 5 points but managed to raise nearly $6 million from a strong national grassroots base. But he was defeated by the Anheuser-Busch beer heir, who lent the campaign millions from his own wealth. Busch Valentine lost the general election to Republican Eric Schmitt in a state that Trump won by double digits two years earlier.
That is not the case for Kunce, who hopes there is a path to victory in espousing the populist message and highlighting Hawley’s position on January 6, gender roles and other issues.
“He’s just doing horrible things, like writing a book that tells everyone how to be a man, and if you don’t do what he says, then you’re not a man. So we’re going to hold him to task,” said Kunce. “They’re obsessed with what other people are doing in the bedroom, in the office, on the internet, in the doctor’s office.”
Kunce said that despite losing the last primary, it helped lay the groundwork for other campaigns, mostly based on a deep online donor base.
“We worked super hard, and you probably won’t win the first time,” Kunce said. “When I came in, I had no family money, no connections. I wasn’t the son of a banker like Josh Hawley. And for me, we had to figure out how to build a real grassroots movement. And we finally did that in the end.