There is plenty of blame to go around for the shameful attack on American democracy from within on Jan. 6, 2021.
First and foremost, of course, is then-President Donald Trump, whose refusal to admit his election loss and submit to the peaceful transfer of power was an outrage without precedent in the U.S. Then there were those in his inner circle who supported the scheme. There were the rioters themselves — violent vandals and thugs who richly deserve the hundreds of criminal convictions that have been successfully imposed upon them.
There is plenty of blame within the halls of Congress as well, but one member stands apart for his singular role in spurring the violence that day: Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, was the first and initially only senator to announce his baseless challenge of the election results, setting in motion the grotesque events that followed. As Trump’s rabble gathered for their attack, Hawley infamously raised his fist in solidarity with the mob — a mob from which he eventually had to sprint for his life, along with so many of his congressional colleagues.
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Hawley’s role in Jan. 6 would, in itself, merit his expulsion from the Senate by Missouri voters even if there weren’t so many other reasons to reject his reelection bid: his shortsighted and obtuse quest to nix Ukrainian aid; a Senate term almost completely devoid of substantive accomplishments; an unparalleled record of demagoguery on the Senate floor, where he endlessly spews faux-populist sound and fury signifying nothing.
For reasons above and beyond any partisan considerations, Josh Hawley is quite possibly the worst sitting senator in America right now.
Luckily, Missourians have an alternative on Nov. 5 who is as richly qualified for high office as Hawley is unfit. The Editorial Board enthusiastically endorses Democrat Lucas Kunce for the United States Senate.
Kunce, 42, is an attorney and former U.S. Marine whose politics are moderate and whose personal story is compelling in ways that should transcend party lines.
Raised in Jefferson City, his working-class family went bankrupt because of immense medical bills from his ailing sister’s multiple open-heart surgeries. Kunce has talked extensively about how the surrounding community came together to help his family. Despite those modest roots, Kunce went on to obtain degrees from Yale (on a Pell Grant), Mizzou law and Columbia law.
He subsequently joined the Marine Corps’ Judge Advocate division, serving one tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. Later, he negotiated arms control agreements for the Pentagon involving Russia and NATO.
That may be why Kunce understands the need to continue standing up to Russia in Ukraine. Hawley, conversely, has been among the Senate’s loudest and most irresponsible voices for abandoning that crucial ally, which would embolden not only Russia but China as well, while undermining NATO.
Kunce checks the boxes that Democrats generally care about, but with a centrist element that should allow more conservative Missourians to at least consider his candidacy.
He supports reasonable abortion rights as they existed under Roe v. Wade. He supports reasonable gun policies like red-flag laws and universal background checks, as do most Americans. He favors universal health care, as even Hawley has at times improbably claimed to (though all that Hawley has actually done on the issue is to demagogue it).
Some Missouri Republicans who rightly conclude that Hawley is unfit for reelection might be tempted to support the third-party candidacy of Jared Young. Former Sen. John Danforth, for one, is promoting Young as a suitable alternative for disaffected Republicans who can’t bring themselves to cross party lines all the way to voting Democratic.
Danforth was Hawley’s political mentor and key supporter of his successful 2018 Senate run — support Danforth has since called “the worst mistake I ever made in my life.†With that apt conclusion in mind, we must respectfully disagree with Danforth’s current third-path strategy in his quest to unseat his former protege.
We talked recently with Young and we did in fact find him to be a serious, reasonable conservative in the Danforth-Reagan mold. But this election, like most, is ultimately binary. Any vote that doesn’t go to Kunce aids Hawley.
Hawley, in spite of everything he’s done and failed to do, goes into his reelection bid with the enormous baked-in advantage of Republican incumbency in a bright-red state. Such is the reality of this deeply partisan, sharply polarized era.
But we would implore those voters who plan to automatically check every “R†on the ballot to pause and consider Hawley’s bid from the point of view of patriotism rather than partisanship. This is a sitting senator who attacked the very heart of democracy from its core, then shamelessly, literally fled from the damage he helped inflict. And he has never once apologized for it.
Hawley should have resigned his seat in disgrace on Jan. 7, 2021. Missouri’s voters this year can finally remove him from it, while getting a reasonable, centrist new senator in the bargain. We strongly recommend a vote for Lucas Kunce on Nov. 5.