U.S. Senate candidate Kunce hosts town hall in Cape Girardeau

It was a hot, breezy evening in Cape Girardeau and Lucas Kunce, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, stood before nearly 100 locals Sunday under Shelter No. 1 of Arena Park to tell them about himself and his campaign.

The former Marine and native of Jefferson City, Missouri, made sure to hold the microphone a few feet from his mouth, a habit he said he picked up to help from assaulting his, and attendees, ears from his fiery speeches style.

Kunce's stump speech and subsequent answers to attendees' questions covered an array of issues, from foreign influence on Missouri business to his family's struggle with medical debt to prominent Missouri Republicans Eric Greitens and Josh Hawley. However, Kunce's points always related back to one thing, "fundamentally changing who has power in this country." He wants to reclaim the label of populism, he said.

Kunce is not running as an establishment Democrat, he said. He's running an aggressive campaign that relies on people's support. He wants to be a metaphorical grenade that is thrown into the U.S. Senate to disrupt and destroy the status quo of what he calls "stripping Missouri for its parts," Kunce said.

Kunce's theme for the evening seemed to be about how institutions had failed the people of Missouri and the U.S. The Senate hopeful told the story of his family going bankrupt because they couldn't afford to pay for surgery needed for his sister's heart condition. It's the same thing that happens to people "living paycheck to paycheck" across the state, he said.

"We didn't make it through that time because the institutions were there for us," Kunce said.

His community, like the local grocery store owner who would wait to cash Kunce's family's checks since the first of the month and all the prayer group members that brought over tuna casserole for the family to eat, got his family through. Kunce said institutions in Missouri and in Congress are not helping the people like his family.

Kunce spent the majority of his remarks railing against misallocated spending. The Marine veteran who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan said the U.S. spent more than $6 trillion on nation building in those countries that failed; he said they should've been doing it somewhere else.

"To see our country always willing to spend money on a nation somewhere else and never be willing to do it here is too much. It's too much," Kunce said.

He railed against Missouri farmland being sold to large corporations and pharmaceutical companies setting high prices for medications.

The Senate candidate was not afraid to throw shots across both sides of the bow. Kunce said Democrats are culpable in the problems just as Republicans are.

"They look the other way because they take money from these people," Kunce said.

When asked about Missouri's traditional reputation as a red state, Kunce said he disagreed with the sentiment.

"I would call it a populist state, like people here want to have power again," Kunce said.

Recent voter referendums on Medicaid expansion, the overturning of right to work and passage of the legalization of medical marijuana prove that, he said.

"They are trying to claw it (power) back but they haven't seen the Democratic party as the vehicle for doing that, but I am the vehicle for doing that," Kunce said.