The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did not mince words in its endorsement of Democrat Lucas Kunce for the United States Senate.
In its endorsement of Kunce, the Post-Dispatch took his opponent, incumbent Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), to task for his role in sowing chaos on January 6th, 2021 when he led the charge to attempt to block President Joe Biden's victory against former President Donald Trump.
"Hawley... was the first and initially only senator to announce his baseless challenge of the election results, setting in motion the grotesque events that followed," the editors write. "As Trump’s rabble gathered for their attack, Hawley infamously raised his first 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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The editors then went on to list off what they said were other reasons to oppose Hawley's candidacy, including "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."
All of this, suggested the paper, means that Hawley "is quite possibly the worst sitting senator in America right now."
The editors then pivoted to praising the record of Kunce, whom they went on to endorse "enthusiastically" for the job.
"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," they wrote. "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)."
