Josh Hawley Hit by Two Terrible Reports Back-to-Back

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ’s editorial board endorsed Hawley’s Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce, on Sunday, calling Hawley the “worst sitting senator in America right now.” The Missouri newspaper of record said that Hawley “stands apparent for his singular role in spurring the violence” on January 6, 2021, referring to the Capitol insurrection .

The editorial pointed out that Hawley was initially the only senator to challenge the 2020 presidential election results, and raised his fist in solidarity with the mob on January 6—only to run away with his fellow members of Congress when that mob breached the Capitol building.

Hawley’s actions on January 6 alone would “merit his expulsion from the Senate,” the editorial said, if not for his other stances: his attempt to halt aid to Ukraine, his lack of accomplishments in the Senate, and his “unparalleled record of demagoguery on the Senate floor, where he endlessly spews faux-populist sound and fury signifying nothing.”

The editorial went on to praise Kunce , an attorney and Marine veteran from a working-class family in Jefferson City, Missouri, noting his moderate political background and support for red-flag gun laws and universal background checks. Kunce has also worked with the Department of Defense negotiating arms control agreements involving Russia and NATO, in contrast to Hawley, who supports abandoning Ukraine in favor of Israel .

Then, on Monday, Hawley came under fire over a Missouri Independent story detailing his use of a private jet to campaign around Missouri, even though he attacked his 2018 opponent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, for doing the same. According to the report, he spent over $132,000 on chartered flights between mid-December and June.

“Missouri’s flyover country for this guy,” Kunce said on Saturday at a rally in Jefferson City, pointing that he instead was campaigning in a minivan with his wife and 16-month-old son.

A self-described Christian nationalist , Hawley seeks to push religious values as law alongside his wife, a lawyer for the extremist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom . Hawley has also mistaken a white nationalist magazine’s words for a Patrick Henry quote , scuttled bills simply to hurt President Biden , and written a bizarre book titled Manhood extolling the virtues of masculinity .

Does Kunce have a chance to unseat Hawley? Currently, the challenger is polling behind the incumbent senator, but now he has the state’s largest newspaper behind him. Kunce will need more than that if he expects to push out the national conservative firebrand in a few weeks.