Josh Hawley criticized the use of private jets for the US Senate campaign in Missouri | KCUR

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

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

Six years later, as Hawley seeks a second term, the attack on him is reversed.

Democratic Senate candidate Lucas Kunce is pounced on videos distributed by his campaign showing Hawley boarding a Gulfstream IV SP to hop across the state last week for meetings with Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker.

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

“Missouri’s flyover country for this guy,” Kunce said Saturday at a campaign rally in Jefferson City. By contrast, Kunce says he travels 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 hammered McCaskill over private planes in 2018, still accepted a $6,000 charter flight as an in-kind donation from a Jefferson City lobbyist.

But Hawley’s use of chartered planes began increasing 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 charter flights between mid-December and June. The largest expenditures were $23,000 on March 19 and $21,000 on February 6 to Air Charter Advisors.

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

In response to the criticism, Hawley’s campaign focused on attacking an essay Kunce wrote in 2021 in which he argued that the US should end its dependence on fossil fuels for the sake of national security.

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

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

Every public poll shows 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 has allowed him to agree with Hawley on television advertising spending.

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

Hawley’s campaign has spent $3.9 million, while an independent PAC supporting his reelection, Show Me Strong, has spent about $1.9 million.

Kunce, a Navy veteran, portrays Hawley as an outrageous plutocrat, sometimes referred to as “Posh Josh,” who is only running for Senate to benefit himself and his future political ambitions.

“While I spent 13 years in and out of war zones abroad, Josh Hawley and his political friends literally waged war against the people I wanted to serve here at home,” Kunce told a gathering of Marine Corps supporters. League in Jefferson City Saturday. “And that’s not an exaggeration.”

Hawley, who served as Missouri’s attorney general for two years before joining the Senate, has portrayed Kunce as a radical on immigration and LGBTQ rights. And he has 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 a crisis. This country is in crisis. It’s chaos. And you and I know why that’s true. It is in crisis because of the policies of my opponent, Lucas Kunce.”

Hawley’s campaign has repeatedly asked Kunce who he will support in the upcoming presidential election, something he has steadfastly refused to do.

“Will he now answer a simple question about 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 attempt 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 not nice and he knows he’s on the wrong side of every issue.”

Anna Spoerre contributed. This story was originally published by the Missouri independent.