SEDALIA – A confrontation between U.S. Senate rivals Thursday at the Missouri State Fairgrounds could be the closest thing to a live debate in the 2024 campaign.
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican seeking a second term, came to the governor’s ham breakfast looking for Lucas Kunce, the Democrat who hopes to oust him from office.
He found him, and for about twenty minutes—until the moderator asked them and the crowd of reporters jamming the main aisle to make way—they hurled personal jabs at each other, argued about the veracity of the campaign ads and about whether or when they would even officially meet in front of the television cameras.
“It’s great to look out of your basement, Lucas,” Hawley once said. “By the way, are you going to be doing campaign events around the state or just media work?”
“Josh, why are you so weird?” Kunce replied. “Man, why are you so creepy?”
In the two weeks since the primaries, Hawley and Kunce argued over the Location and format of the debatesIn the hours after Kunce won the nomination, Hawley called for a “Lincoln-Douglas-style” debate on the fairgrounds.
In return, Kunce said he would accept all invitations to televised debates, including one from Fox News. At the trade fair, however, he declined to participate.
The The State Fair Commission rejected the idea on August 9, declaring that no political events were allowed. The chairman of the commission, Kevin Roberts said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the Commission was unaware of Hawley’s challenge at the time the action was filed and never received a request to use the site.
The Missouri Farm Bureau, which supports Hawley and donated $5,000 to his campaign, volunteered to host the event at a location across the street from the fairgrounds.
Kunce’s campaign said in a letter to the Insurance and Agriculture Organization on Wednesday that such a debate would violate campaign finance law, which prohibits nonprofit groups like the Farm Bureau from hosting debates. The law Kunce cited says groups that financially support candidates cannot host debates.
“Lucas does not want to put the Farm Bureau or your members at unnecessary risk,” wrote Caleb Cavaretta, Kunce’s campaign manager.
During their back and forth, Hawley accused Kunce of trying to intimidate the Farm Bureau.
“The Farm Bureau being threatened with legal action is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever heard in an agricultural state,” Hawley said. “It’s unbelievable.”
“That’s unrealistic because it’s a lie,” Kunce said. “We didn’t threaten the Farm Bureau.”
The letter states that the law can only be enforced by the Federal Election Commission and that there is no possibility of private prosecution for alleged violations of campaign finance law.
Kunce makes a second application for the Senate after losing the 2022 Democratic primary. He is the most resourced Democrat in a statewide race and the only one advertising on television.
Hawley, who defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill in 2018, used the meeting on Thursday morning to make a fundraising appeal that was sent out about an hour after it ended.
“This dispute does not change the fact that Democrat Lucas Kunce is sitting on a jackpot and his campaign has raised 2:1 more than I have so far this year,” Hawley told his supporters.
There are two other candidates – Jared Young, who is on the ballot after filing a petition to form a new political party, the Better Party, and WC Young of the Libertarian Party.
The back and forth in the debates between Hawley and Kunce has not led to a solution.
“Let’s discuss,” Hawley said.
“Let’s do it,” Kunce replied. “We got all five and I agreed with Fox News.”
“Well, right over there,” Hawley said.
“See you at Fox News, brother, we have given you a safe place,” Kunce replied.
The most important discussions between the two parties included the issues of trade union rights and worker protection.
Hawley, the supported the anti-union efforts for the right to work as a candidate for Attorney General in 2016, he has made a complete about-face since the overwhelming anti-right-to-work result in the August 2018 primary election.
“Missouri, number one, we voted not to be a right-to-work state,” Hawley explained his position on Thursday. “Number two, I don’t think it’s fair to ask union leaders to work for people who don’t pay union dues. When you get a union contract, it applies to all the workers in the plant, in the organization. If a bunch of those people don’t pay dues and still benefit from the contract, I just don’t think that’s fair.”
Hawley secured the support of the national Teamsters union, which donated $5,000 from its PAC to his campaign in March.
Hawley also promoted his proposal to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour for companies with annual revenues of more than $1 billion.
“We should raise the national minimum wage and protect workers,” Hawley said.
Kunce, who has received $80,000 in donations from 16 different union PACs, said Hawley’s love of unions turned into an election-year conversion.
When the Senate voted on the CHIPS Act in 2022, Kunce said then-US Senator Roy Blunt supports the demand for local wages for projects initiated under the law, while Hawley was against it.
In order to prevent unfair competition between unionised and non-unionised construction contractors, local wages are prescribed for large public construction projects.
“He was a right-to-work candidate,” Kunce said. “He doesn’t believe in labor. In fact, he called half the workers hostage takers… He tried to reinvent himself in an election year because he knows people don’t want our rights taken away, and he’s afraid of that.”
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