A well-known Missouri State University graduate lent his voice to Senate candidate Lucas Kunce’s recent advertising campaign.
Actor John Goodman voiced the ad, “Family Values or Something Else,” in which Goodman tells voters they can vote for family values with Kunce or “something else” with Senator Josh Hawley. The ad also highlights Goodman and Kunce’s shared background, something the Democratic candidate has emphasized throughout the campaign.
“Lucas and I both learned that family values are really about people being there for each other and doing the right thing in good times and bad,” Goodman said in the video.
The video takes aim at Senator Josh Hawley’s voting record, which included voting against artificial insemination, raising the minimum wage in 2021, and blocking a bill to expand health care for veterans exposed to burn pits.
“Family values didn’t mean cruelty. They didn’t mean false patriotism. They didn’t mean telling people how to live or family profits,” Goodman said in the ad. “They didn’t mean leaving people behind or making life harder for hard-working people, and they certainly didn’t mean robbing people. None of those are family values. That’s something else.”
Abigail Jackson, spokeswoman for Hawley’s campaign, questioned Kunce’s definition of “family values,” pointing to previous talking points Hawley raised at his rally in the Ozarks last week.
“Kunce’s idea of ’family values’ is allowing men into girls’ bathrooms, destroying girls’ sports and destroying family farms by banning gasoline and diesel,” Jackson said. “Kunce is good for Hollywood liberals and bad for Missourians. It’s crazy, but it’s Kunce.”
Kunce supports transgender rights. He also advocates for “putting working people back in power” by abolishing foreign agricultural monopolies. Kunce advocates for decarbonizing the U.S. energy grid, which would end the use of fossil fuels to combat climate change and reduce dependence on foreign energy trade.
Goodman is not the first celebrity to speak out in support of Kunce. Jon Hamm, a St. Louis native, did a voiceover for a Kunce commercial in 2023.
More: “We are taking America back”: Senator Josh Hawley launches re-election campaign in Ozark
Who is John Goodman?
John Goodman is an award-winning actor who was born in Afton and attended what was then Southwest Missouri State University in the 1970s. He came to the university to play football but fell in love with acting, according to an MSU biography written as part of the school’s Onward and Upward campaign.
“I was very fortunate to discover this passion at Missouri State University, where there were great, caring people teaching me,” Goodman said. “They opened doors for me. They taught me to use my eyes and ears. I learned to observe life honestly so I could apply it in my craft and later in my life.”
From 2023: John Goodman will not appear in person at Missouri State University’s graduation ceremony on December 15, but will only appear via video
Goodman is best known for his role in the television series “Roseanne,” for which he won a Golden Globe in 1993. He has also appeared in numerous Coen brothers films, including “The Big Lebowski,” and provided the voice of James P. “Sulley” Sullivan in the 2001 Pixar film “Monsters, Inc.”
Goodman led the university’s largest and most recent fundraising campaign and is a longtime supporter of the arts and theater; an amphitheater and the permanent home of the Tent Theater are named after him.
