[Lucas Kunce, a candidate in Tuesday’s Senate primary, is
running an anti-corporate campaign.]
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THE DEMOCRAT WHO THINKS HE CAN WIN BACK MISSOURI WITH POPULISM  
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Walter Shapiro
August 1, 2022
The New Republic
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_ Lucas Kunce, a candidate in Tuesday’s Senate primary, is running
an anti-corporate campaign. _

Democratic Senate candidate Lucas Kunce in Independence, Missouri,
Dominick Williams/The Washington Post/Getty Images

 

For almost an hour, punctuated by my occasional question, Democrat
Lucas Kunce hammered home the theme that animates his uphill Senate
campaign—the economic “gutting” of his home state of Missouri by
greedy corporations and their political enablers.

Dressed in a black T-shirt, Kunce, a 39-year-old, Yale-educated Marine
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, radiated coiled energy as passion
rose in his voice. “The country-club Republicans are the reason we
have Donald Trump,” he said. “They sold our industries overseas
and told us that it was good for us. They ran Nafta through and told
us it was good for us. They said Big Ag was good.” Then, turning on
his own party, he added, “Frankly, there were a lot of country-club
Democrats that were doing it right alongside them. And that’s why
when Democrats stopped standing for something different and stopped
fighting for workers, they started losing.”

We were sitting outside a coffee shop in what might be the epicenter
of Democratic faded dreams—Harry Truman’s hometown
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Independence, Missouri, where Kunce now lives. For a century, from
1904 to 2004, Missouri was the nation’s bellwether state
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presidential candidate in every election except 1956. But it has been
all downhill for Democrats in the last decade, as white
non-college-educated voters stampeded over to the Republican side.
Even in 2018, a terrible year for the GOP, Democratic Senator Claire
McCaskill [[link removed]] lost
her bid for a third term by more than 100,000 votes. Then Trump romped
in Missouri, two years later, by a 15-point margin.

 

With his populist, anti-corporate arguments, Kunce comes out of the
Truman “give them hell” tradition. He strongly resembles
Democratic Senate nominees John Fetterman
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in Pennsylvania and Tim Ryan
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in Ohio, who have pitched their campaigns around winning back
working-class voters. But neither of them boasts Kunce’s military
record—he joined the Marines after graduating from the University of
Missouri Law School and now holds the rank of lieutenant colonel in
the reserves.

But first, Kunce has to win Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Missouri
against self-funding beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine. Even though
Kunce has raised $4.7 million
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since he declared for the Senate in March 2021 (more than half in
small contributions), he is being outspent by an almost five-to-one
margin
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on television in the closing days before the primary. There have been
few public polls: A recent Emerson College survey
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has Busch Valentine leading Kunce by a 39–35 percent margin, while
SurveyUSA
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implausibly points to a landslide victory for Busch Valentine. But
without any recent history of contested Democratic statewide primaries
or reliable turnout estimates, polling is about as accurate as a
blunderbuss.

The primary is a study in contrasts—Kunce’s disciplined
anti-corporate message versus Busch Valentine’s genial generalities.
After ducking debates, Busch Valentine has given occasional television
interviews
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that offered an adventurous can-she-get-through-the-next-answer
quality. Last Monday, speaking with KMOX in St. Louis, she initially
responded
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to a question about laws banning school discussion of gender identity
in the early grades by denouncing “critical race theory,” which is
both a right-wing talking point and a subject totally unconnected with
the query. As Jeff Smith, a St. Louis-based Democratic lobbyist, put
it, referring to another
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stumbling novice candidate, “She’s Herschel Walker with more money
and fewer concussions.”

Democratic hopes in November had initially been buoyed by disgraced,
sex scandal–scarred former Governor Eric Greitens
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leading in the GOP polls for the seat of retiring Senator Roy Blunt.
But polls and portents suggest that Greitens is fast fading, with
right-wing state Attorney General Eric Schmidt now the favorite to win
the GOP primary. Schmidt has his own vulnerabilities, such as his
staunch advocacy of a 2011 plan to make St. Louis a hub for trade with
China
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“If Missouri were a five-point state, Schmidt would be
vulnerable,” says Stephen Webber, a former chair of the state
Democratic Party who is now the political director for the Missouri
AFL-CIO. “But not in a 17-point race.”

Even with daunting odds against the Republicans, Kunce would be an
intriguing Senate candidate, assuming he prevails in the primary. What
he offers is a different road for the Democrats than that of moderates
such as McCaskill and now Busch Valentine. “Kunce may be onto a
strategy that pays dividends down the line,” said Daniel Ponder, a
political science professor at Drury University. “It might signal a
return to Democratic populism.”

Like Elizabeth Warren during the Democratic presidential primaries,
Kunce is adept at fusing his life story with his policy positions. As
we talked in Independence, on an early summer afternoon, Kunce
conjured up his hand-to-mouth childhood in Jefferson City, Missouri.
“I remember going to the grocery story with my mom and having her
write the check and then begging the manager—Mr. Rackers—not to
cash it until she could cover it,” he recalled. Then Kunce pivoted
to life today. “Stores like that don’t exist anymore because
Walmart came in on that side of town and ran them out of business,”
he said. “And now, if you want to get through to the end of the
month, there’s no Mr. Rackers. You’re getting a payday loan and
607 percent interest.”

What Kunce is offering voters is a fresh set of political
villains—predatory lenders, corporate executives shipping jobs to
China, and private equity firms buying houses and then jacking up the
rents. And what he is up against in Tuesday’s primary illustrates
his populist arguments, since Busch Valentine has injected $5 million
of her personal wealth into the race to fund her late TV blitz.

But there’s much to be said for a different-drummer Democrat in a
difficult political environment. Smith, who has not endorsed in the
race, adroitly summed it up: “Kunce is fresh, he’s got a unique
message, he presents well. What do we have to lose?”

Walter Shapiro [[link removed]]
@MrWalterShapiro [[link removed]]

Walter Shapiro is a staff writer at _The New Republic_.

* Lucas Kunce
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* Missouri Democrat;
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