ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) – Lucas Kunce, a former Marine, is running for the U.S. Senate in Missouri for the second time after losing the Democratic primary two years ago. And although Sen. Josh Hawley is polled as a popular politician in Missouri, Kunce believes he can pull off the upset.

Kunce spoke to about 200 people on Monday evening at the Sheet Metal Workers’ Union building in South City.

“We can win this thing, everything is going like clockwork this year,” he said.

Democrats and supporters of Lucas Kunce were angry.

“It seems like there is a good idea of ​​where we should go,” said Irving Hamilton.

“I think he has what it takes to beat Josh Hawley, who is wrong for St. Louis and wrong for Missouri,” Janis Chadah said.

The supporters at the rally were obviously not fans of Hawley.

“He’s kind of a miniature version of Donald Trump,” said Tullia Hamilton.

Kunce sat down with First Alert 4 before addressing the crowd.

“We are seeing a movement in our country that aims to get the people to take back power,” Kunce said.

A recent poll from St. Louis University and YouGov found Hawley outperforming Kunce by 11 percentage points. And Hawley had the highest approval rating of any politician in Missouri at 53%. We asked Kunce how he would turn the tide in an increasingly Republican state.

“We need to remind everyone how bad he is,” Kunce said.

Kunce says Hawley wants to keep abortion illegal and claims he is on the side of corporations, not his constituents.

“These guys are so obsessed with deciding how we live and controlling our lives that they just can’t stop,” Kunce said.

“Can you afford food? It’s because of what these people have done to our country. They’re making China rich and America poor,” Hawley said in August.

That’s according to a speech Hawley gave at a rally in Chesterfield last month, where he lumped Kunce’s policies together with those of the Biden administration.

When First Alert 4 reached out to Hawley’s campaign for comment, they sent us a tweet referring to Tuesday night’s presidential debate:

“Tomorrow is a big night for Kamala! Can she convince @LucasKunceMO to support her? Missourians want to know,” said the tweet from Hawley’s account.

Kunce had previously refused to support his party’s presidential candidate. We asked him if he plans to support Harris.

“It’s strange that he’s so obsessed with this. He wants this race to be about the presidential election,” Kunce said. “I didn’t get into this race to decide who’s going to be president.”

We asked our supporters if it was important to them that Kunce supported Harris.

“No, because I know he does,” said Chadah.

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