Roughly 200 supporters flocked to a southwest Missouri veterans charity, the Warrior's Journey, for the sake of Hawley’s re-election bid.
A recent polling average calculated by ABC News / 538 over the past month shows Hawley leading his challenger, populist Democrat Lucas Kunce, by 10 percentage points. But some individual polls in recent times show a more narrow gap between the Republican and the Democrat. For context, back in 2018 Hawley bested then-incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill by 5.8 percentage points.
Ozarks Public Radio asked Hawley at the rally what he’d say to voters still undecided at this stage of the race.
Hawley said, "Well we’ve got to close our border. My opponent’s for open borders. He wants amnesty for illegals. He wants Social Security and Medicare for illegals. We can’t do that.
“My opponent wants to shut down all of our energy production, make us dependent on China. We can’t do that.
“I mean, my opponent wants men in women’s locker rooms, men in women’s sports. We can’t do that. It’s crazy stuff. It’s nuts. He’s had four years, his policies have been in power, he and Kamala. They’ve wrecked this country. We’ve got to turn it around.”
Both major candidates have hit the campaign trail in recent days. Hawley was in Joplin and Branson before arriving in Springfield on Monday. And their campaigns exchanged barbs over the use of private jets and whom they’ll vote for in the U.S. presidential race.
Ozarks Public Radio news partner the Missouri Independent covered a Jefferson City rally by Kunce on Saturday. The Marine veteran reportedly told supporters, “While I spent 13 years in and out of war zones overseas, Josh Hawley and his political buddies were literally waging war on the people I’d signed up to serve right here at home."
