Lucas Kunce, a Marine veteran and self-described “different kind of Democrat,” is challenging Missouri Republican Josh Hawley for his seat in the Senate in 2024. Kunce isn’t afraid to be called a populist — in fact, he embraces it. “For me, populism is about embracing, empowering everyday people so that we can make decisions for our own lives, because I think we know how to do that best.”
This isn’t Kunce’s first time running for Missouri Senate — in August 2022, he was defeated in the primary by Trudy Busch Valentine. Valentine later lost in the general election to Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. What did the Democrat take away from the experience? “We learned… how to raise money the right way,” he tells Forbes, highlighting his grassroots movement. In the first quarter of 2023, he raised $1.1 million dollars in his efforts to take on Hawley, a figure Kunce described as “record-breaking.”
Kunce has been trying to differentiate himself from Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who he immediately denounces as both a fraud and faker. In the Marine veteran’s most recent campaign ad, he tapped actor and Missouri native Jon Hamm to attempt to illustrate that point. “In Missouri, you can’t fake courage,” narrates Hamm over the now-infamous photo of Hawley raising a fist to pro-Trump demonstrators outside of the Capitol on January 6. “We’re the ‘show-me’ state,” continues Hamm, as footage of Hawley bolting from rioters inside the Capitol just hours later is shown.
Missouri has skewed increasingly red in recent years. In 2018, Hawley flipped the Senate seat, ousting incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill. Joe Biden lost the midwestern state to Donald Trump by 15 percentage points in 2020. Six of the eight congressional districts are represented by Republicans in the House, the state’s Governor is Republican, and both senators are members of the GOP. That uphill battle does not deter Kunce from believing he can split voters’ tickets. “I want to fundamentally change who has power in this country,” the Democrat tells Forbes, adding that “working people know where I come from and they see that I didn’t sell out when I first got the chance.”
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