Hi John — My name is Lucas Tyree Kunce and I’m running to flip Missouri's open U.S. Senate seat. I promise this isn’t another campaign email asking you for money — it’s a little long, but will you give me just a few minutes of your time to introduce myself?
I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Jefferson City and like so many others, my family struggled to make ends meet. We went bankrupt after my youngest sister was born with a heart condition and relied on our neighbors to help us make it.
They helped me go to college, then law school. After that, I chose to join the Marine Corps to honor everything our community did for me and my family growing up. Deployed to Iraq once. Afghanistan twice.
My final tour was at the Pentagon. I worked with the National Security Council, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, and other agencies to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical, and missile technology around the globe. I then oversaw U.S. military compliance with our international arms control obligations and negotiated arms control agreements at NATO and with Russia.
I spent every day doing what I could to make the world a safer place, with fewer weapons, less conflict, and more money to spend on improving lives rather than destroying them.
But when I came home to my old neighborhood, I found a community that had been picked for parts — the corner store where my mom floated a check boarded up, my first family house bulldozed to the ground. Here’s all that’s left of it:
Overseas, I saw first-hand how corrupt politicians were willing to spend trillions of dollars sending me and my buddies out to fight and die in pointless wars and “nation-build” in someone else’s country. But back at home, I saw how those same politicians were letting massive corporations strip our own communities for parts — and I was ready to fight back.
So in my final year of active duty, I worked to upend the corporate defense monopolies that leave our country less safe. I also joined an organization that fights corporate monopolies — taking on defense contractors, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag, Wall Street. The people buying off our politicians and leaving the rest of us behind.
Take both of Missouri’s senators, Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley, for example. They’ve made my home-state the frontline of decades-long economic warfare. In exchange for huge sums of corporate campaign cash, they’ve let massive corporations ship our jobs overseas, destroy family farms, and even attack the union way of life.
And now, after spending more than $6.4 trillion trying to build up other countries in forever wars, they claim we can’t spend even just a fraction of that on infrastructure here at home. Well I’ve had enough.
I’m running for U.S. Senate to fundamentally change who has power in our country — so everyday people call the shots, not corrupt corporations or criminal politicians. I want to abolish corporate PACs, expose lobbyists writing our laws, criminalize war profiteering, ban insider trading among members of Congress, and enact a Marshall Plan for the Midwest — a massive investment and job creation program that will rebuild our forgotten communities and get us off fossil fuels once and for all.
It’s time everyday Missourians — working people who know how to take care of each other — called the shots in our country, not the monopolies, multinational corporations, and career politicians who’ve sold off jobs and land and stripped our communities for parts.
We need to take back this Senate seat for the people. That’s what we are fighting for and what drives the campaign we are building together.
Let’s get moving,
Lucas
PS — It’s pronounced “koonce.”
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A message from Team Lucas Kunce Our momentum is undeniable. Topping $3,300,000 since launching this campaign in March 2021 and outraising the entire field of candidates in this race (with $0 from corporate PACs) is a huge accomplishment for a political outsider like Lucas. But we’ve got to keep going. GOP mega-donors and corporate elites are already pouring millions of dollars into this race to back our criminal opponents, and we can’t let them slow down our momentum. So if you’re ready to help us flip this U.S. Senate seat and save our democracy, chip in any amount — $7, $10, $15, or whatever you can today — to help us elect Lucas » |
