Lucas Kunce targets Josh Hawley in final campaign push at Cape Girardeau rally

With five days remaining until the Tuesday, Nov. 5, general election, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Lucas Kunce made a campaign stop Wednesday, Oct. 30, at American Legion Post 63 in Cape Girardeau.

Kunce, who is challenging Republican incumbent Josh Hawley for the Senate seat, spoke to an audience of more than 100 people about his stance on topics such as women's health care, veteran care, state infrastructure and economic inequality.

"The same people who lit $6 trillion on fire in the Middle East are now fiscally conservative," Kunce said. "The same people who, every time the big banks jack up our economy, find billions and billions of dollars to bail them out, those people are always fiscally conservative when it's time to reinvest. I reject that. As your U.S. senator, I refuse to transfer another dollar of everyday people's wealth up to this class of people who've been stripping our communities apart."

Kunce was highly critical of Hawley, pointing to Hawley's legislative record on women's rights issues, Social Security, Medicare, military funding, veterans issues and acceptance of corporate Political Action Committee money.

"Whatever you think about (former Republican Sen.) Roy Blunt, for example, Roy Blunt did the bare minimum and brought $300 million-plus a year back to the state every single year," Kunce said. "Because that is literally the bare, basic minimum of the job. Can anybody guess how much Josh Hawley has brought back in six years? ... It is literally $0. He does not think that that's his job. He literally doesn't think that it's his job."

Recent polls show Kunce is gaining ground on Hawley. To win the election, however, he will have to secure support from rural voters, something he expressed confidence in during an interview with the Southeast Missourian.

"It's not a left-right race for me. It's about taking care of communities," Kunce said. "I learned the strength we have in communities, like here in Cape, when I was a kid growing up in a town of the same size. My parents went bankrupt for medical bills, and we didn't make it through that time because politicians like Josh Hawley were there for us. We made it because the people in our neighborhood, who had no more money than we did, passed the plate down at my mom's prayer group for us, brought more food by the house than we could eat and really took care of us.

"I've seen that strength in our communities, and when I go around everywhere, especially in rural Missouri, and I talk about that and the way we can take care of one another, everybody gets it, man. Everybody's been a part of that."