ST. JOSEPH, Missouri — When Josh Hawley decided to run against two-term incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill in 2018, there was plenty of skepticism that he could dislodge her from the U.S. Senate seat she had held since 2006.
McCaskill, now a very liberal MSNBC contributor, was considered at the time a centrist member of her party as well as a tough-as-nails campaigner who, in a last-minute effort to hold her seat, ran a radio ad saying she was “not one of those crazy Democrats.”
The ad did not go over well with either black or liberal supporters.
Yet despite the millions of dollars that poured in for her from all across the country and despite her attempts to rally suburban women and hold on to just enough of her rural support from 2006, she lost to Hawley, who was then the attorney general and had punched his way up there from positions as a Supreme Court clerk and law professor.
Since Hawley defeated McCaskill, the Republicans have gained a supermajority in the state House and state Senate, and Missouri voters have not elected a Democrat to any statewide offices.
Six years later, Hawley’s Democratic opponent, Lucas Kunce, a lawyer and Marine veteran, is largely making some of the same moves McCaskill did when Hawley challenged her in 2018: raising boatloads of out-of-state money and trying to pick off rural voters and bring them back in the Democratic fold.
Kunce was here in St. Joseph, visiting with members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and last week, he was at the Missouri State Fairgrounds, where he and Hawley exchanged words over the details of a stalled debate. Kunce used the “Why are you so weird?” Democratic rallying cry against Republicans, and Hawley quipped, “It is great to see you out of your basement. ... By the way, are you going to do any campaign events around the state or just media?”
Kunce ran for this seat in 2022, but he lost the Democratic primary to Anheuser-Busch heiress Trudy Busch Valentine, who had the backing of Washington, D.C., Democrats. What Democrats in Washington seem not to understand about Democrats in Missouri is that they are also populists. As Democrats nationally moved far to the left politically, those populists turned Missouri from a politically competitive state that supported Democratic former President Barack Obama by a substantial margin in 2012 into a solidly Republican bastion. During the past six years, statewide elections have largely been decided in Republican primaries, as the Republican Party bolstered its strength in the rural and small-town areas that make up much of the state.
Two other candidates will be on the ballot in November: Jared Young of the Better Party and W.C. Young of the Libertarian Party.
After doing a statewide bus tour, Hawley told the Washington Examiner that the No. 1 issue for Missourians in November will be the economy, combined with a deep sense the country is in trouble overall.
“The thing I hear over and over as I travel the state is people are concerned about the survival of the country. They just feel that as a nation, we are in chaos, we are coming apart,” he said, especially noting their concerns that the border is overrun with historic numbers of illegal crossings.
Hawley said the effects of the Biden-Harris inflation top voters’ list of economic stressors. “They can't afford groceries for their kids. Their credit cards are maxed out,” he said, adding that high essential costs are hurting their plans for their children’s future.
Those voters’ sentiments are not created in a vacuum. People are holding a historic amount of household debt, to the tune of a record $1.4 trillion, according to a report from the New York Federal Reserve. As for grocery costs, polling has consistently shown inflation is the top concern for voters. A recent YouGov poll showed a whopping 64% of people said inflation was a “very serious problem,” with grocery costs being what people were most concerned about.
Hawley said the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class in this country: “When you have to put fundamentals like their groceries on their credit card, and gas on their credit card, and their utilities on their credit card, it's why debt is at all-time highs.”
Hawley said it’s clear where the blame should be affixed: “It’s because the policies that the Democrats have pursued have left these folks without wages that are growing. I mean, wages have flatlined and declined under Biden-Harris, while food prices, gas prices, anything touching energy has just skyrocketed.”
Hawley said that voters in Missouri said they also want a sense of stability and safety and that they are not feeling that. “They want their kids to be safe,” he said. “They want their neighborhoods to be safe. The basic fundamentals of the country they feel are at risk, and they're right.”
Hawley said he believes those things are what this election is going to be about.
Hawley said his opponent in this race is the very example of how out of touch Democrats are with the working class and the rural voter.
“This is a guy who wants to eliminate gas and diesel from the Missouri economy,” he said of Kunce’s call to eliminate the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. “I mean, that's his big plan. Four and a half trillion dollars he wants to spend to eliminate gas and diesel.”
Kunce expressed that goal of “decarbonization” in a piece he wrote for American Prospect , a left-wing policy magazine. He wrote that the United States should eliminate reliance on fossil fuels for the sake of national security.
Contrarily, Hawley said that in a state that heavily relies on agriculture as an economic driver, that stance is untenable: “So, no more farming in Missouri. No more biofuels. Working people can't drive your trucks. Got to turn in your pickups. I mean, it is absolute insanity. And it's those policies, it's those ideas that are just decimating working people.”
“They're anti-gas and diesel,” Hawley continued. “Their climate agenda, their anti-energy agenda, is destroying people in my state. I mean, it may be that if you live in California and you work in Silicon Valley, you can afford to pay $5 a gallon for gas. Not in Missouri. Not if you're a family farmer, you cannot. Not if you are a local firefighter or a schoolteacher. You can't afford that.”
Agriculture is a big economic driver in Missouri. In 2022, the state generated $14.9 billion in agricultural cash receipts, with the highest-valued commodities being soybeans, corn, cattle, and calves, according to the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
The UADA also found the value of Missouri's agricultural production and processing industries represented 4.4% of total state GDP.
“It is a constant class warfare that the Democrat Party and people like my opponent in this race, Kunce, are waging,” Hawley said.
Hawley said working-class voters, the ones who once were part of the New Deal coalition who were shed by the Democrats 12 years ago, know their way of life is not respected by the Democratic Party that is focused on Washington needs and not Missouri needs.
The latest polling shows Hawley up by 9 percentage points, but that has not stopped Kunce from bringing in Hollywood to cut ads for him, with actor John Goodman narrating a negative ad against Hawley.
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Nonetheless, Hawley is running as though he is 9 points behind.
He argued it is the Republican Party that is for the working men and women, not Democrats. “You can't be the party of working people and be for that [agenda],” Hawley said. “It's just not possible. But that's where the Democrats are. And so all they're left with is theater, and frankly, I think the theater is wearing thin, and the American people see it.”
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