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Oct. 14, 2024 |  By: Jason Hancock - Missouri Independent

Josh Hawley draws rebuke over use of private jets for Missouri Senate campaign

a plane

By Jason Hancock - Missouri Independent

One of Josh Hawley’s favorite lines of attack during his first run for U.S. Senate in 2018 was to lambaste his Democratic opponent for using a private jet to travel the state. 

“I say, ‘Look, I’m driving everywhere, why don’t you drive?’ She can’t do it,” Hawley told Politico during the 2018 campaign about then-Sen. Claire McCaskill. “She’s totally addicted to her luxury lifestyle.”

Six years later, as Hawley seeks a second term, the attack is being turned back against him. 

Lucas Kunce, the Democratic candidate for Senate, is pouncing on videos being circulated by his campaign of Hawley boarding a Gulfstream IV SP to hopscotch the state last week for rallies with Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker. 

The three-stop tour with Butker, Kunce said, was the senator’s first event in Missouri in weeks.

“Missouri’s flyover country for this guy,” Kunce said at a campaign rally in Jefferson City on Saturday. By contrast, Kunce says he’s traveling to campaign events in a minivan with his wife and 16-month-old son. 

It’s a familiar knock on Hawley, who even as he was hammering McCaskill in 2018 over private planes still accepted a $6,000 charter jet flight as an in-kind donation from a Jefferson City lobbyist. 

But Hawley’s use of chartered jets began to increase last December, according to his most recent disclosure filed with the Federal Elections Commission in July. Hawley’s campaign spent more than $132,000 on chartered flights between mid-December and June. The largest expenses were $23,000 on March 19 and $21,000 on Feb. 6 to Air Charter Advisors.

The next round of campaign disclosure reports are due this week. 

Responding to the criticism, Hawley’s campaign pivoted to its attack on an essay Kunce wrote in 2021 making the case that the U.S. needed to end its reliance on fossil fuels for the sake of national security.

“We get it,” Abigail Jackson, Hawley’s spokeswoman, said in an email to The Independent. “Kunce has made it clear he hates all vehicles that run on gas and diesel.”

Hawley and Kunce are entering the final weeks of a contentious fight for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat. 

Every public poll has shown Hawley in the lead, and national Democrats have largely ignored the race. But Kunce has run a populist campaign fueled by millions of small-dollar donations that have allowed him to go toe-to-toe with Hawley in television ad spending. 

Since the August primary, Kunce’s campaign has spent more than $6 million on television advertising, according to FEC records analyzed by The Independent. 

Hawley’s campaign has spent $3.9 million, while an independent PAC supporting his re-election, Show Me Strong, has spent roughly $1.9 million. 

Kunce, a Marine veteran, paints Hawley as an out-of-touch plutocrat that’s he’s dubbed “Posh Josh” who only is running for Senate to benefit himself and his future political aspirations.

“While I spent 13 years in and out of war zones overseas, Josh Hawley and his political buddies were literally waging war on the people I’d signed up to serve right here at home,” Kunce told a rally of supporters at the Marine Corps League in Jefferson City Saturday. “And that’s not a hyperbole.”

Hawley, who served as Missouri attorney general for two years before joining the Senate, has portrayed Kunce as a radical on issues like immigration and LGBTQ rights. And he’s worked to tie Kunce to national Democrats in a state where Republicans have won every statewide election since 2018. 

“We have to save our country,” Hawley told a crowd of supporters in Parkville on Thursday. “We are in crisis. This country is in crisis. It’s in chaos. And you and I know why that’s true. It’s in crisis because of the policies of my opponent, Lucas Kunce.”

Hawley’s campaign has repeatedly demanded Kunce state who he supports in the upcoming presidential election, something he has steadfastly refused to do. 

“Now will he answer a simple question on the presidential election?” said Jackson, Hawley’s spokeswoman. “Is he voting for Trump or Kamala?” 

Kunce says he won’t answer the question because it’s an effort by Hawley to distract voters and nationalize the race. 

And he claims Hawley’s motivation is fear.

“He sees us coming for him,” Kunce said. “He knows he’s unlikable and he knows he is on the wrong side of every single issue.”