Best of KC 2023: Lucas Kunce has Magic up his sleeve in the 2024 Election

Lucas Kunce talks to Jim Martin, chair of the Perry County Democratic committee, before giving a campaign speech in Perryville in July 2022 (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

This month, we published The Pitch’s annual Best of Kansas City issue. You can browse the results of the readers’ poll here. The issue also included a list, compiled and written by our editorial staff, of some of our current favorite things about Kansas City in 2023. We’ll be publishing these items online throughout November. 

Ask U.S. Senator Josh Hawley about Magic: The Gathering and he’ll first defer to the think-tank that designs his personality before coming back to spew a bunch of buzzwords about how the popular trading card game is a cornerstone of the attack on masculinity. 

Meanwhile, his probable 2024 challenger, Democrat Lucas Kunce, is being himself: crushing online opponents in the wee hours of the night while he ponders the cards he’s been dealt. 

Kunce, 41, a former major in the Marine Corps, ran for Roy Blunt’s seat in 2022 but lost to Trudy Busch Valentine in the Democratic Primary 43.2% to 38.3%. Eric Schmitt now holds that office, but Kunce is taking what he’s learned and launching another assault on the Missouri GOP next year.

Hawley, 43, has never served his country, nor has he served up devastating spells from the latest booster pack. In fact, he appears to wear the same shirt at every major public event. Never mind the running from the Capitol riot he helped stoke; Josh Hawley just isn’t cool. And while both candidates look to emphasize labor issues in their campaigns, Kunce has been working himself to build an entirely new kind of deck, one that can bridge the surface-level ideological divisions in a former bellwether state that has pivoted sharply red in recent decades. One which creates and revives rather than incites and destroys. Your move, Missouri.