Democratic Senate hopeful Lucas Kunce speaks to the press after conceding at a primary election watch party, in Kansas City, Mo. Two years after Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. now-famous raised-fist salute to rioters at the Capitol, Kunce, announced Friday, Jan. 6, 2023 that he’ll try to unseat Hawley in 2024.Photo: Reed Hoffmann/AP/Shutterstock
Marine veteran Lucas Kunce announced his 2024 campaign for U.S. Senate with a dig at his soon-to-be opponent, Missouri Sen.Josh Hawley.
In the ad, released Friday, a Hawley look-alike runs down a road while wearing a suit and blue tie — a nod to the senator’snow-infamous run through the U.S. Capitolon Jan. 6, 2021, as he fled from the mob he’d riled up earlier in the day.
“I’ve done a lot of running in my life,” Kunce says in a voiceover, as a man in a suit can be seen jogging over a hill, dropping a flag lapel pin to the ground as he goes. “Running to stay healthy, running to fight for my country, running to defend democracy.”
The ad — strategically released on the second anniversary of the attempted coup — goes on to show a photo of Hawley raising his fist in solidarity with Trump supporters gathered outside the U.S. Capitol that day and then, hours later, running through the Capitol as those same supporters broke into the building.
Hawley, the former attorney general of Missouri, was one of the Republicans who objected to thecertification of then President-elect Biden’s election victory, touting unfounded claims of voter fraud. The riot ultimately disrupted the Senate’s process to certify the election results,and led to at least five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer.
The security footage of him running out of the building was shown during a hearing of the committee investigating the riots.
The day it first aired, the footage elicited laughter from many gathered at the hearing, according tothose in attendance, withThe Kansas City Star’s editorial board writing that the footage “will surely follow [Hawley] the rest of his life.”
Speaking toPolitico, Kunce described Hawley as an opportunist.
“When he thought it was going to bring him power, he’s there raising his fist,” Kunce told the outlet. “Then when it got real, he skittered out of there as quick as he could and ran for the exit. And if I ran like that in Iraq or Afghanistan — or anybody else there did — the Marine Corps would have court-martialed us.”
Hawley will soon release a book titledManhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs— a title that his opponent Kunce latches on to in the ad.
“And now, this is the guy’s who’s writing a book telling every single one of us how to be a man,” Kunce says of his opponent.
Kunce, who calls himself a “different kind of Democrat” on his campaign website, draws a stark comparison between he and Hawley in his first campaign ad, describing the Republican as someone with “a banker daddy” who was sent to a “fancy prep school” before graduating from law school and joining “one of the world’s most elite corporate law firms.”
“I joined the Marine Corps to pay back the community that took care of me,” Kunce, who lost the Democratic primary for Missouri’s other Senate seat to beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine in 2022, says.
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Hawley’s term ends in Jan. 2025, though he is among thoserumored to be considering a run for the presidencyin 2024.
source: people.com
