Former Josh Hawley supporter runs against him as independent. Does he have a chance?

Jared Young does not belong to a political party. He’s married with six young kids. He is frustrated with politics. He thinks the Democratic Party is too far left and the Republican Party is too far right.

So the 38-year-old from Webb City, just outside of Joplin, left his job as the chief acquisitions officer at a management consulting company in July to run for U.S. Senate as an independent.

“So many of us are frustrated with what Congress is right now,” Young told The Star. “We complain and we moan, but if we want something significantly different, we have to try something significantly different. Like voting for an independent.”

It is a tall order. If he collects the 10,000 signatures required to appear on the November ballot, Young will likely face Sen. Josh Hawley, the incumbent and one of the most popular politicians among Missouri Republicans, and Democrat Lucas Kunce, who has spent the past three years campaigning across the state and attempting to build name recognition.

Young has been campaigning for more than six months and has yet to break $500,000 in fundraising, in a state where he has very little name recognition.

Hawley is the overwhelming favorite to win. Young, who is positioning himself to appeal to a frustrated middle of the political electorate, is hoping to attract enough support not only to play spoiler for Hawley or Kunce, but to win a state that has twice voted overwhelmingly for former President Donald Trump.

Independent candidates typically struggle in the American political system, which is full of institutional advantages for people who run under the banner of a major political party. But Young’s campaign comes as voters appear to be increasingly disenchanted with the divisive and polarized state of modern politics.

The 2024 presidential election is on track to be a rematch between President Joe Biden and Trump – two largely unpopular candidates. Congress has been largely unable to pass significant legislation for the past year and is once again facing the prospect of a government shutdown.

In February, 42% of Americans considered themselves independent from a political party, according to monthly polling by Gallup, compared to 28% that considered themselves Republicans and 30% that considered themselves Democrats.

Most people who consider themselves independent tend to have views that line with a specific political party, according to Samara Klar, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies independent voters.

“Independents, just like Republicans and Democrats, are divided across the spectrum,” Klar said. “We’ve got moderate independents, liberal independents, conservative independents.”

Young is a center-right candidate. He received his undergraduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University and spent a few years living in Jordan. He was a Mormon missionary in Sweden before attending Harvard Law School.

After graduating he worked briefly at the firm Wiley Rein in Washington, before leaving for Missouri where he was CEO of Employer Advantage. While in Missouri, he impressed friends with his compassion. One friend, Dr. Joseph Sheppard, was impressed with Young’s efforts to support Afghani refugees who were placed in the Joplin area with babysitting services and furniture.

“I think that’s when Jared shines most, when people are in need,” Sheppard said. “He steps up.”

Young is both fiscally and socially conservative, though he says he believes he takes a more “compassionate” approach than Hawley. He believes abortion should be left up to the states, but supports the constitutional amendment that allows the procedure to be legal with some restrictions.

While he’s been unaffiliated with a political party at least as far back as 2010 in Utah, Young has traditionally voted for Republican candidates and voted for Hawley in 2018.

It wasn’t Hawley’s decision to object to the certification of the 2020 presidential election that cost him Young’s support. It wasn’t the raised fist or the television appearances that implied that the results of the election could be reversed, even though Republicans were only objecting to the results in two out of the 50 states.

It was Hawley’s response in the aftermath of the election. He said Hawley could have seen that his rhetoric went too far and tried to tack back toward the political center. Instead, Hawley has been leading the effort to reshape the Republican Party to look more like Trump’s populist base. He’s written op-eds about how the old Republican Party “is dead” and has appeared with striking union workers.

“I think what Josh Hawley has shown to me is that he is the consummate politician, he’s going to do whatever he thinks will help advance his political career,” Young said.

He’s also critical of Kunce, saying he hasn’t had much to show after campaigning for Senate in both 2022 and 2024.

“Lucas Kunce has a lot of admirable qualities, but he’s been campaigning basically for three years straight and has a ton of money and most people in Missouri still don’t know who he is,” Young said. “And so I just don’t think that’s going anywhere.”

Young sees himself as a home for a group of people who seem unable, or unwilling, to bow to the new iteration of the Republican Party: One crafted in the image of the reality TV star who spoke of American carnage and America first rather than the Hollywood star who called America a shining city on a hill.

There is little room for a Reaganesque conservative in a Republican primary in Missouri. The 2022 Republican primary featured an intense race for Trump’s endorsement. It was ultimately (partially) won by Sen. Eric Schmitt, who, with Hawley, has become a reliable vote for the burgeoning “MAGA” wing of Senate Republicans.

The shift in the party has come much to the chagrin of former Sen. Jack Danforth, who served in the Senate between 1976 and 1995. In 2022, Danforth led the charge in attempting to find a right of center independent to run for Senate. He commissioned a poll that found 28% of Missourians would support a generic independent candidate that year.

One arrived in the form of John Wood, an attorney who left his job as an attorney on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol to move to Missouri and run for Senate. He struggled to gain traction. While Wood was able to secure 22,000 signatures to appear on the ballot, he dropped out of the race shortly after Sen. Eric Schmitt won the Republican primary.

Danforth, who spent more than $6 million to help bankroll Wood’s fledgling campaign, said he has never heard of Young and would not recognize him if he walked into a room.

But he appeared open to supporting a candidate that he believes stands for a more traditional Republican Party that focuses on fiscal responsibility, the rule of law and the constitution.

“You’ve got sort of the populist Democrat running against the populist Republican,” Danforth said. “So in a way, what’s the difference, I guess. There’s a lot of room there for somebody that occupies the center. Nobody else is. And if you can raise the money to do it, maybe he would have a chance.”

So far, Young has largely had to self finance his campaign. While Hawley has raised $18.6 million for his campaign and Kunce has raised $5.4 million for his campaign, Young has raised just $302,315 – including more than $200,000 from his own wallet.

“That’s not gonna do it,” Danforth said, when told how much Young has raised.

Klar, the political scientist, said one of the bigger hurdles for independent candidates is proving that they’re actually running a viable campaign. Often, they’re seen by voters as “spoiler” candidates who could toss an election into the hands of opposing parties.

“People don’t like the idea of wasting their vote,” Klar said. “They don’t like the idea that they’re gonna vote for someone who has no chance, they’re throwing away their ballot. That’s a big hurdle for independents.”

While there are three independents in the Senate, most of them have won with some sort of institutional backing. Sens. Angus King, of Maine, and Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, both caucus with the Democratic Party and were able to win because the Democratic Party backed off of running a serious opponent in their states.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, became an independent after winning her seat as a Democrat and currently faces long prospects of being reelected in November against Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake.

While Young acknowledged his long odds in the race, he dismissed the idea that he was just in it to play spoiler for Hawley.

“What is there to spoil at this point?” Young said. “The parties are destroying our country. And so whether a Republican goes in or a Democrat goes in, even though I voted Republican most of my life at this point, I’m so disgusted with what both parties are doing that it doesn’t matter to me which one of those guys goes in if it’s not me.”

At the Capitol, Hawley dismissed a question about whether an independent candidate could affect his chances in November.

“All of these people are going to dump money in this race and try to beat me,” Hawley said. “And we’re going to show them about 69% of the vote.”