SEDALIA – A confrontation between U.S. Senate rivals Thursday on the Missouri State Fairgrounds may be the closest thing to a live debate in the 2024 campaign.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican seeking his second term, arrived at the Governor’s Ham Breakfast looking for Lucas Kunce, the Democrat hoping to unseat him. 

He found him, and for about 20 minutes – until the emcee asked them and the mass of reporters clogging the main aisle to move – they jabbed at each other with personal digs, disputes about whether campaign ads are accurate and when, or if, they would meet formally before television cameras.

“It’s great to see you out of your basement, Lucas,” Hawley said at one point. “By the way, are you gonna do any campaign events around the state or just media?”

“Josh, why are you so weird?” Kunce responded. “Man, why are you so creepy?”

Over the two weeks since the primary election, Hawley and Kunce have been arguing about the location and format for debates. In the hours after Kunce won the nomination, Hawley called for a “Lincoln-Douglas style” debate at the fairgrounds.

Kunce, in return, said he would accept all invitations for televised debates, including one from Fox News, but declined to do so at the fair.

The State Fair Commission shot the idea down on Aug. 9 with a statement that it did not allow political events. Commission chairman Kevin Roberts told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the commission knew nothing of Hawley’s challenge when it was issued and never received a request to use the grounds.

The Missouri Farm Bureau, which has endorsed Hawley and donated $5,000 to his campaign, volunteered to host it at a location across the street from the fairgrounds. 

Kunce’s campaign, in a Wednesday letter to the insurance and agriculture advocacy organization, said such a debate would violate campaign finance laws that bar not-for-profit groups organized like the Farm Bureau from hosting debates. The law cited by Kunce says groups that endorse and back candidates financially cannot host debate.

“Lucas does not wish to expose the Farm Bureau or your members to unnecessary risk,” Caleb Cavaretta, Kunce campaign manager wrote.

During their back-and-forth, Hawley accused Kunce of trying to intimidate the Farm Bureau.

“Threatening the Farm Bureau with legal action is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever heard in a farm state,” Hawley said. “It’s unreal.”

“It’s unreal because it’s a lie,” Kunce said. “We didn’t threaten the Farm Bureau.”

The letter states the law could only be enforced by the Federal Election Commission and there is no allowance for a private lawsuit over alleged violations of the campaign finance law.

Kunce is making a second bid for the Senate after losing the 2022 Democratic primary. He is the best-funded Democrat in a statewide race and the only one with television ads airing.

Hawley, who defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018, used Thursday morning’s meeting in a fundraising appeal sent out about an hour after it ended.

“This run-in doesn’t change the fact that Democrat Lucas Kunce is sitting on a jackpot of cash, and so far, his campaign has outraised me 2:1 this year,” Hawley told supporters.

There are two other candidates running – Jared Young, on the ballot after petitioning to form a new political party, the Better Party, and W.C. Young of the Libertarian Party.

The back-and-forth on debates between Hawley and Kunce didn’t resolve anything.

“Let’s debate,” Hawley said.

“Let’s do it,” Kunce replied “We got all five, and I agreed to Fox News.”

“So, right over there,” Hawley said. 

“I’ll see you on Fox News, bro, we offered you a safe space,” Kunce replied.

One of the most substantive exchanges between the two was over union rights and worker protection.

Hawley, who supported the anti-union right to work effort as a candidate for attorney general in 2016, has done a complete turnaround since the overwhelming vote against right to work in the August 2018 primary.

“Missouri, No. 1, we voted not to be a right to work state,” Hawley said Thursday, explaining his position. “No. 2, I don’t think it’s fair to ask union organizers that organize for people who are not putting in union dues. When you get a union contract, it’s for all the workers in the shop, in the organization, that if a bunch of those people don’t pay dues, and yet they get the benefit of the contract, I just think that’s not fair.” 

Hawley has won the support of the national Teamsters Union, which gave his campaign $5,000 in March from its PAC.

Hawley also promoted his proposal to increase the national minimum wage to $15 an hour at companies that have more than $1 billion in annual receipts.

“We ought to be raising the national minimum wage and protecting workers,” Hawley said.

Kunce, who has taken $80,000 in donations from16 different union PACs, said Hawley’s love of unions is an election-year conversion.

When the Senate voted in 2022 on the CHIPS Act, Kunce said, then-U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt supported requiring prevailing wages to be paid on projects initiated under the law while Hawley opposed it.

Prevailing wages are required on major public construction projects to prevent unfair competition between union and non-union contractors.

“He was a right to work candidate,” Kunce said. “He doesn’t believe in labor. In fact, he’s called half of labor hostage takers…He’s tried to remake himself in an election year because he knows that taking away our rights is not something that people want, and he’s scared about it.”