If Democrats went into a lab and created a dream politician to take on Republicans in a purplish-bordering-on-red state, it’s doubtful they could come up with anyone better than Missouri Senate candidate Jason Kander. A 35-year-old former state representative and the current Secretary of State, Kander enlisted in the Army National Guard following 9/11 and then, after getting his law degree from Georgetown, volunteered to serve in Afghanistan. In September, he drew national attention for this campaign ad, in which he defended his support of background checks for gun purchases all while assembling a rifle—blindfolded.
Now, with little more than a month to go before election day, polls show Kander in a dead heat with GOP incumbent Roy Blunt, who most political prognosticators assumed was a shoo-in for reelection. Yet, the venerable Cook Political Report recently moved the Missouri Senate race from “leans Republican” to “toss-up.” What makes Kander’s rise in the polls even more remarkable is that he’s doing it in a state that Donald Trump should win with ease, which means that some of Kander’s support is coming not just from Democrats but from Trump supporters, as well. In an election year in which Democrats are desperately hoping to take back the U.S. Senate, how ironic would it be if the candidate who puts them over the top is one who relies on some of the same disenchanted voters pulling the lever for the most polarizing Republican presidential candidate in 60 years? Ahead of his debate with Blunt this Friday, I recently spoke with Kander about his campaign ad, what Democrats can learn from him about how to talk about guns, and whether he could work with a President Trump.
GQ: Could you tell me a little bit about the genesis of the ad? Was it your idea?
Jason Kander: It was a team effort. Senator Blunt had been attacking me on guns, because I support background checks, and I mentioned in passing to my team that I could probably assemble a rifle a lot faster than Senator Blunt, and they were like, “Well, can you do it blindfolded?” I laughed and said, “Well, I’ve done it in the dark a lot. It’s all muscle memory, so probably.” From there, we knew exactly what we wanted to say. The point of the ad is that part of protecting the Second Amendment is making sure that criminals and suspected terrorists don’t have the same access to guns as the rest of us.
How many takes did it take to do?
I got it on the first take, but like anything else, you do a bunch of takes because they want to do different things with focus and lighting.
Did they use the first take or did they use a subsequent take?
I don’t know which take they used. But putting together the rifle is obviously the easy part for me. If there was a hard part it was just memorizing the script once you had written it.
Not only did you have to do the gun, you had to memorize the script, since you couldn’t obviously read a prompter.
Right. There’s no prompter on the inside of the blindfold. And you had to make sure that you had the lines memorized, and it’s obviously easier when you know what you want to say, and we wrote it together, so it’s always easier to memorize something that comes from you. But, for me, anybody who’s spent a few years in the service, particularly in the Army or the Marines, and they have something like that, putting the rifle together is the easier part. Memorizing the script is harder.
Is there anything from that ad or the way you’re talking about Second Amendment issues that you think your fellow Democrats can learn from?
We’ve had a really great response from people on both sides of the aisle in Missouri about the ad because people recognize that the reason 90 percent of the country agrees on background checks is because it’s just commonsense. It’s bipartisan and just commonsense. So the response has been, from people on every side of the issue, has been more along the lines of, “Thank you for being honest about your opinion on this, rather than trying to just sort of play something on TV.” It’s also about not backing down to someone who is bullying you. And obviously I am somebody who’s pretty comfortable with guns and pretty experienced with guns, and I’m a supporter of the Second Amendment, and I’m not going to stand by and let somebody like Senator Blunt say that just because I don’t want somebody who comes over here from Syria and is a suspected terrorist to have the same chance to buy a gun that Senator Blunt and I have makes me somehow opposed to the Second Amendment.
Did you at any point think you might get the NRA endorsement? Or was that something that you always assumed was off the table?
No. I think they made pretty clear that if you support background checks they’re not going to support you.
Do you feel that the NRA is out of step with gun owners?
I would just say that in Missouri 86 percent of the state agrees with me on background checks. If there’s anybody who thinks that making sure suspected terrorists can have the same rights to buy a gun that you and I have, [they’re] out of step with the [rest of the] state.
You’re in a very tight race and Missouri is one of the rare states where the Republican Senate candidate is running behind Trump. So, for your support to be what it is, you must be getting some Trump voters. Why do you think that’s the case?
We’re definitely getting support from people who are voting for both candidates for president, people on both sides of that. We’ve had events where we’ll be walking out of a rally and there’s a rather loud argument going on between Trump supporters and Clinton supporters and they all just walked out of our rally. And that’s because what’s been going on in the country over the last decade plus has been a situation where the gridlock in Congress is becoming reflected by gridlock in our national conversation, and it’s unfortunately settled into this place where we are losing the ability to have an honest and authentic conversation with one another as a country.
And it worries all of us. There’s this creeping sense of concern that I always summarize as people feeling, “What if this is permanent?” That’s what they’re asking themselves. And it really worries everybody. I’m the first millennial ever elected to a statewide office in this country and a lot of people in my generation look at this and instead of saying, “What if this is permanent?” they say, “I guess this is what it is.” Because it’s the only version of American politics that they’ve seen, and it really disturbs me, for all generations. For me, I’m just somebody who has been willing to put my life on the line, so the idea that this is the greatest system in the world and it can only be made better means that I can’t accept the idea that this is what it is or that this is permanent. So that’s what got me to run in the first place.
When you have somebody like Donald Trump, who is unfit to be president but is also running his entire candidacy on a message that basically says someone like Senator Blunt, who’s been in Washington for 20 years is the problem, people are looking for authenticity and they’re looking for people who will look at a system that’s not working and say it is not working.
Do you have any insight or advice for Secretary Clinton on her problem with millennials?
No, I don’t. I think if you look at the polls of the last few days and compare her to Trump, it looks to me like she’s doing awfully well with millennials.
But a lot of the undecided and third-party voters are millennials, and it does seem like that is a big question: why people in your generation are not necessarily going for her right now? In part, perhaps, because some of the same things you say about Senator Blunt are the way people feel about Senator Clinton. Trump said it during the first debate, obviously: 30 years, things like that.
The difference is, not everybody who goes to Washington becomes Washington. Senator Blunt is just sort of the exact picture of that. But I’ll tell you what I tell about anybody, whether it’s about getting support from millennials or anybody else, I just tell everybody the same thing, which is: you have to be yourself, you have to be authentic, because voters are a whole lot smarter than people give them credit for, and voters can tell if somebody is saying something to them that they don’t themselves believe, and that’s really the first test that every candidate has to get offer. If you’re out there saying something that you don’t personally believe, then it doesn’t really matter if a voter agrees with what you’re saying. If they don’t believe that you believe it, then they’re not going to listen to you anyway. And that’s the same advice I would give anybody.
What is Blunt saying that you don’t think he really believes? Where do you diagnose him as being inauthentic?
Well, for one thing, I would be very interested, not that this would ever happen, but I’d be very interested in seeing what exactly Senator Blunt would actually say about Donald Trump if he were asked about it while hooked to a lie detector test. I mean, Donald Trump’s entire candidacy is built on the idea that folks who have gone to Washington and become Washington are the problem, and Senator Blunt is a guy who—you just don’t get more Washington than him. So now he’s starting to flip-flop on positions he’s held a long time. Senator Blunt has never seen a bad trade deal that he didn’t fall completely in love with, and all of a sudden he’s sending signals that he’s going to flip-flop on the [Trans-Pacific Partnership]. Look, Senator Blunt has been in politics a very long time and he has definitely mastered the Washington way of talking where he gets done and nobody’s sure about exactly what he said. But in 2016, in a year when people are looking at the state of our politics and demanding more authenticity, that’s not gonna fly.
Do you find it awkward in any way to be getting support from Trump voters while at the same time not thinking that he’s qualified?
I’ve been pretty candid about Donald Trump. And I also understand why people are so interested in changing the system that they don’t think is working.
Could you work with a President Trump if you make it to the Senate?
I could work with anybody. This is why we need more veterans in Congress. We have the fewest veterans in Congress right now that we’ve had since World War II. And it is not a coincidence that at the same time we seem to have the fewest people in both parties who have voluntarily done something harder in their life than run for reelection. The military is a group of people that come together from different perspectives and backgrounds and places, and get a job done because they have a mission. If you were to describe Congress to somebody who came here from another planet and you described it the way I just described the military, one would think that would make a lot of sense. But unfortunately, the way Congress is right now, you would have to add in the idea that so many of these people are working in their own self-interest or are more worried about their reelection than anything else. And if you’re going to be objective about it, there’s no reason why it can’t have the same sense of purpose and mission that the military does. And when you have more people who have had that experience, of serving in uniform and putting the mission first, you’re just going to get a group of people who are going to work together a lot better.
Do you think that Blunt’s own actions during Vietnam are grist for this campaign?
I don’t judge anybody who chose not to serve during Vietnam, at all. It’s a different time and I don’t judge anybody for the decision they made. Senator Blunt had said for years that he didn’t go to Vietnam because he had a high draft number and never mentioned his deferments or that that seems to be the main reason that he didn’t go. And no matter what the subject area is, somebody who spent years misleading me is not somebody I’m going to trust.
This interview was condensed and edited.