As 2021 got underway, Sen. Josh Hawley did not find himself in a good position. After the Missouri Republican helped take the lead in trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, Hawley was briefly seen as a political “pariah.”
As regular readers know, the GOP senator was denounced by former allies; prominent businesses distanced themselves from him; several independent media outlets called on Hawley to resign in disgrace; and several of his Senate colleagues filed an ethics complaint against him.
Even many Republicans balked. The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, concluded, “The ambitions of this knowledgeable, talented young man are now a threat to the republic.” Then-Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska added, in reference to Hawley, “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.” Then-Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said Hawley would be “haunted“ by his actions.
A year later, the Missouri senator’s reputation had not improved. Then-Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois called Hawley “one of the worst human beings” and a self-aggrandizing “con artist.” Soon after, the editorial board of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch told readers that Hawley is “grossly unfit” for office.
The Republican incumbent, of course, is seeking a second term anyway, and he’s very likely to win in spite of his record. But the Post-Dispatch’s editorial board isn’t just eager to remind local voters about Hawley’s on-the-job performance, it’s also urging Missouri’s electorate to vote for his opponent.
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.
Ouch.
It’s important to emphasize that the newspaper’s editorial didn’t just slam the incumbent, it also celebrated his challenger: Lucas Kunce, a Democratic attorney and retired Marine.
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.
In theory, given Kunce’s impressive background and Hawley’s record on Capitol Hill, this should be one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races.
In practice, Missouri has become a ruby-red state, and while there haven’t been many polls in the Show Me State lately, the available data suggests the Republican incumbent is ahead by double-digits — even if Hawley is “quite possibly the worst sitting senator in America right now.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
