New Year’s Eve inspires us to reflect back and plan forward. For me and our family, 2024 was one of the busiest, most demanding years we’ve lived through. But when it flipped to 2025 a year ago today, I didn’t process it at all. Like many of you, I moved swiftly into 2025 with a mix of nervousness and expectation, watching a new administration prepare to take power and already seeing the early signs of what was to come. By January, things had already piled up in an avalanche that just hasn’t seemed to slow down once.
I know I’m not alone in that feeling. Many of you have shared it with me over the past months over social media, sometimes with anger, sometimes disappointment, sometimes disbelief. I read those messages. I feel them too.
Despite the national political storm, our family was fortunate because 2025 brought us something small but beautiful. We welcomed our fourth son into our family, Lukie, or “Cookie,” as Harvey calls him. Little Lukie arrived healthy and full of light, and watching all of our boys as they grow has become the highlight of our days.
And only now, with a bit of distance, have I found the space to look back and begin to process 2024, and I want to share with you my thoughts as the wife of a candidate who has been asked if I thought all that time campaigning was lost with the campaign.
My husband, Lucas, ran a Democratic U.S. Senate campaign in the Midwest, in Missouri, what some call a deeply red State. I joined him on the campaign trail and we spent our days listening to people across the state: on porches, in union halls, in churches, at town halls and local events. Lucas and his amazing team worked relentlessly day and night to get to as many people as possible with the resources we got from every corner of the state, and from many of you nationally. I am grateful for every single donation, for believing in us, for showing up every day with us.
In the end, we lost, in one of the biggest red waves in history.
The morning after losing has a particular quiet to it.
Not the dramatic kind, no shattered glass, no raised voices. Just the ordinary hum of life continuing as if nothing important had happened. Coffee brewed. Kids needing breakfast. Emails still coming in. And somewhere underneath it all, the lingering question:
Was it foolish to care this much?
The 2024 election didn’t just end our campaign, though, it marked the beginning of a new era, one where Democrats lost the presidency and lost both chambers. And beyond the headlines, something more fragile slipped even further away: faith. Faith that participation is valuable. That effort matters. Faith that politics can still be a place where good intentions aren’t quietly punished.
I’ve heard people say, “I almost don’t believe anymore,” and they don’t say it angrily. They say it tired. As if belief itself has become an expense they can no longer afford.
And they say it with good reason. It’s hard to believe in the system anymore. To the point that many of us are wondering if we’ve all just been spinning our wheels and wasting our time. I mean, somehow, even today, with things as bad as they are, it seems like the Democratic Party can’t gain any traction. And if we win in 2026, which I do think will happen, it seems like it will be because we backed into it rather than because we seized the moment.
This is why campaigns like the one we ran, and many more across the country in red states, have brought me to what might sound like a radical conclusion:
Even though we lost, we didn’t lose our time.
The time spent organizing. The time spent listening. The time spent showing up in places where it would have been easier not to. The time spent believing that a different kind of politics was possible. Investing that time in red midwestern communities showed us the way that Democrats can seize the next election. By delivering the kind of politics we read about that make us feel heard and hopeful for the future. The kind that leaves a world filled with opportunities for our children to thrive.
We spread that message across Missouri and outperformed the national ticket significantly — against an incumbent Senator who outspent us by a ton. There is a message and a way that works. And we aren’t the only ones in a red state or district who have shown what it can do, even when it’s hard.
For me, being a part of that effort is far from a waste. And the type of cynicism that buries Democrats depends on convincing us that it was.
I know this because running blue in the heartland requires a particular humility. Not the performative humility of a slogan, but the quieter kind, the kind that understands the math may not be in your favor and still knocks on the door anyway. Still introduces itself. Still asks people what they need and listens to the answer, even when their beliefs don’t align with yours.
Running blue in the heartland isn’t ideological. It’s relational.
Most days on the trail weren’t about persuasion. They were about recognition. About reminding people that politics wasn’t something happening somewhere else, done by people who didn’t know their roads, their schools, their fears. It was happening right there, on their porches, in towns that national conversations too often overlook.
We talked to people who disagreed with us entirely, who were tired of being told that they were voting against their own interests. I talked to people who had stopped voting altogether because they were exhausted, and still, opened the door to hear us out.
Again and again, I heard versions of the same sentence:
“I just don’t think anyone’s really fighting for us.”
That sentiment didn’t belong to one party. It belonged to people who had learned to expect very little and to be disappointed anyway. Lucas, being a Marine veteran, understands what it means to fight, for his country, for principle, for others. We took those words seriously and gave everything we had.
I believe that if the Democratic Party wants to win again, it must be more aggressive, not cruel, not careless, but convicted. And I don’t just mean that it should be equally mean on twitter or something. People respond to clarity and courage far more than caution and calibration. Decency without urgency often reads as distance.
And in the vacuum that the Democratic Party hasn’t been able to fill with clarity, hope, and conviction, division has become powerful because it’s easy. It asks nothing of us but allegiance and anger. Hope asks more. It asks us to stay open when retreat would be simpler. To refuse the lie that trying was foolish. To believe that time spent striving toward something better still counts, even when the result breaks your heart.
I’m writing this because, in the current political climate fueled by division, I don’t want caring to become something we apologize for. People want their representatives to care. We learned that over and over again out there in red communities. It was the biggest differentiator between the way people perceived us and our opponent. What I want is for candidates to run with clear passionate conviction that is believable and doesn’t sound calculated.
We can be convincing and compassionate at the same time, steadfast without being apologetic.
It’s not foolish to care, even against the steepest odds, as long as we take the time to learn and not let it go. Some of the best lessons are hard-earned.
There is hope in 2026. As we think about the year to come, I hope it brings you joy, hope, happiness, health, and community. We will continue to show up, and we will keep trying.
I’ve quoted my husband before on this, but as Lucas often says:
“Keep fighting. Never stop.”
Love,
Marilyn Kunce
