Lucas Kunce is captaining a campaign against corporate power, foreign oligarchs, and Wall Street raiders. Can he convince Missourians that they share a common enemy? By Lee Harris
1. Nation Building
“Part of their economy is picking pecans off the ground. Old people pick pecans from under trees,” Lucas Kunce explains to me as we turn onto Braggadocio Road. It’s his third trip to Hayti Heights, a 537-person town in the cotton country of southeastern Missouri, and Kunce, a candidate for U.S. Senate, knows his way around. He met Mayor Catrina Robinson last year, and drove out to attend a town fundraiser. They were just sitting down to Polish sausage and bratwurst when Robinson said she had to step away. Kunce tagged along. Five times a day, Robinson drives around a circuit of four pumps that push sewage from one end of town to the other. Since she took office in 2019, only one pump has been working. To get wastewater moving, she uses hand-powered gas generators that work like lawnmower engines: You fill the tank with gas, pull the chain, and wait for the sewage to flow. 28 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022
“I swear to God, it was like I was in Iraq again,” says Kunce, a veteran of two wars who still serves in the Marine Corps Reserve. “When I’d drive around on missions in Iraq, I’d see all these gas-powered pumps all over the place, moving irrigation water, moving sewage. People would go out and crank them. It was just crazy to see right here in Missouri.” It has been 50 years since Hayti Heights, an all-Black town, split off from neighboring Hayti, which is about half white and has a handful of businesses. Hayti Heights’s economy is rudimentary. Besides the pecan pickers, one resident participates in a USDA program that sends her vegetable seeds. The town pays Hayti for water under an emergency contract, and also pays to empty sewage into a disputed lagoon. Robinson has been working to get the city’s finances in order to reclaim the municipal water system, which is currently in receivership. But much of her time is spent
manually running the wastewater pipes, fixing leaks and dusting spillage sites with lime when sewage bubbles up in residents’ front yards. People sometimes bootleg electricity by running a power cable to the water tower, which currently stands empty. Also complicating her efforts, Robinson said, most of the town’s records were destroyed when the city hall was twice set on fire. “It’s a town of firebugs,” Robinson said. “They’ll set fire to try and cover up anything.” There is a staggering amount of arson. Almost every corner shows some evidence of fire damage. The last commercial business in the Heights—a joint barber shop, tire shop, and lounge—closed after a 2019 fire that Robinson said was set deliberately. Even one of the gas generators was torched. In one especially bad week, Robinson said, a car, a business, and a house were set on fire. “Every night, something was burning.” Hayti Heights is the first place Kunce takes me during the three days I shadow
PHILIP BURKE
The War Nerd
