For all the big names Democratic leaders recruited to help them take back the Senate, the key to victory could be the candidate who recruited himself.

Just weeks after Democrats lost the chamber in 2014, a virtually unknown Missouri Democrat named Jason Kander hopped a plane to D.C. to meet Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Jon Tester and his wife, Sharla, at a high-end Washington haunt.


Kander was half the size of the towering Tester and, at 33, about half Tester’s age. But the pair had something in common: Both were Democrats from red states who had successfully outrun national political headwinds to win office, Tester as a senator and Kander as Missouri’s secretary of state. Kander explained he wanted to make a run at GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, a 20-year veteran of Washington politics who, Kander suspected, could be defeated if an energetic veteran like himself successfully harnessed a hunger for independent, anti-Washington politicians.

Missouri had initially sat low on the DSCC’s priorities for the 2016 election, and the relatively inexperienced Kander was, on paper, an unlikely candidate for the party committee’s support. But Kander has always excelled at getting people on his side, from a surprise win in a statewide race four years ago to an Army tour in Kabul, where the astute, plain-spoken Kander so impressed war-weathered Afghan officials that they later requested his presence in meetings set up by his commanding officer.

Tester was no different. He left his meeting with Kander newly encouraged that a Democrat could win Missouri and, in the process, expand Democrats’ Senate map. By February, when Kander announced his Senate bid in an emotional four-minute video featuring him talking about choosing to volunteer for deployment in Afghanistan, the DSCC was thrilled with its new “recruit” — though really, it was the other way around.

Today, Kander is the breakout Senate candidate of 2016 who grabbed national attention with a viral ad — conceived in large part by Kander himself, months before it aired — in which he defended his support for background checks while assembling an AR-15 rifle blindfolded. Kander has relentlessly attacked Blunt over his family’s work in lobbying, a contrast between the two politicians that has helped turn red-leaning Missouri into one of Democrats’ best hopes of gaining a Senate seat and, in the process, retaking the majority.

The battle for the Senate and the race for Missouri both remain in doubt with a week to go — six different races show the Democratic and Republican candidates just a few percentage points apart, and the latest survey in Missouri found Kander only 1 percentage point behind Blunt. If he wins, Kander could be the first millennial senator and a Democratic Party star to boot.

Kander’s success so far is maddening to Republicans who insist Kander is neither the political savant nor the nonpartisan outsider he has made himself out to be, nor is he moderate enough for red-leaning Missouri. “There aren’t enough organic grocery stores and skinny jeans” in Missouri to get Kander elected, as one GOP operative put it.

And yet Republicans are sinking increasing amounts of money into the state trying to knock Kander down. One recent ad showed Kander’s 35-year-old face morphing into those of twice-his-age Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton while a narrator said that “behind Kander’s fresh face is the same old liberal thinking.”

Kander’s response: a deadpan tweet linking the ad to the early-’90s face-morphing of “Black or White.”

“Reminds me of my second-favorite Michael Jackson video,” he wrote .

Kander’s short life story has been full of fast rises. He graduated from American University a year early in order to start Georgetown Law School at the same time as his high school girlfriend (and future wife) Diana, in 2002. As a law student, he signed up for the ROTC, became a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve, and voluntarily deployed to Afghanistan on a four-month tour when he was 25. Two years later, Kander won a four-way Democratic primary and became a state lawmaker, slipping into his Army uniform at the end of the week to work as a platoon trainer. At 31, Kander won his current position, as secretary of state, by fewer than 40,000 votes out of over 2.6 million cast. By 33, he had launched his Senate campaign.

Growing up in the Kansas City suburbs to parents who fostered kids and often played host to Kander’s friends, Kander was social but driven, a two-time state debate champion and national competitor skilled at speaking off the cuff and often flashing a laid-back smile.

“You got him in front of an audience, it’s like a light just went on,” said Melissa Reynolds, Kander’s high school debate coach. He told peers he’d be president someday, Reynolds said.

Kander maintains he has no role models in politics, a fitting outlook for a candidate running against insiders and next to two historically unpopular presidential candidates. Sitting in a cottage-like coffee shop recently in Troy, Missouri, Kander said he’s looked up to his parents, former Kansas City Royals player George Brett and higher-ups in the military, who could stay poised while going days without sleep and “always kept it light.”

After an event and an interview in Troy, Kander charged up the street to the local Democratic headquarters, where an aide said he didn’t need to give remarks but Kander piped up anyway. He joked about “binge-watching” children’s television on Netflix with his young son, railed against Washington dysfunction and gave a brief pitch: Roy Blunt has special interests’ support, Kander said, but “I have you.”

The latest survey in Missouri found Sen. Jason Kander only 1 percentage point behind Sen. Roy Blunt. | Getty

After graduating from law school, Kander deployed for a voluntary four-month tour in Kabul, where he was often tasked with winning the trust of Afghan officials who held key information about corruption and drug-trafficking. He put in days outside the wire drinking tea, trading jokes and listening to stories about the country’s history from the older Afghans. He gave away blue-and-white Kansas City Royals hats and Gates barbecue sauce his mom sent him as gifts, and chatted in Russian — a skill Kander had previously learned in order to woo his wife’s immigrant family, but has since forgotten — with those who could understand it.

Afghan officials came to request the Mulāzim — Arabic for “lieutenant” — at meetings set up by his commanding officer, retired Col. John McCracken.

“We’re talking fellows who had 30 years in combat, fought the Russians, we’re not sure where their loyalties [lay] anyway, but they liked Jason,” says McCracken.

At home, Kander poured the same energy into knocking on 20,000 doors himself during his first run for the state legislature in 2008 and emphasized that in politics, “your perspective isn’t enough — you have to talk to people.” During his 2012 secretary of state campaign, Kander put 90,000 miles on campaign manager Abe Rakov’s Ford Escape so he could stop into county fairs and approach voters cold.

Before launching his Senate bid in February 2015, Kander was laying groundwork for how to outmessage Blunt by painting him as a tired career politician, including the seeds of the famous gun ad. More than a year later, under the guidance of Democratic ad-maker Mark Putnam, Kander ran more than a dozen takes of himself assembling an AR-15 blindfolded in an empty auto factory in Kansas City, while saying he believes in background checks “so terrorists don’t get their hands on one of these.” The result racked up more than a million YouTube views — and ratcheted up Kander’s name ID in Washington.

It also highlighted Kander’s progressivism. In a break with some of his would-be Senate Democratic colleagues from red states, Kander is unabashedly pro-background checks on guns. He’s also pro-choice, supports equal pay for equal work and wants to mandate paid sick leave.

Kander is betting that being up front with voters is more important than sharing their views, and that voters care more about the identity contrast between him and Blunt than their sizable differences on policy. “If you’re just honest with people, they don’t have to agree with you,” Kander said in Troy, the seat of Lincoln County, which Mitt Romney won by 29 points in 2012.

At campaign stops in Missouri, Democrats were thrilled by Kander. A college Democrat at Missouri State University gushed that Kander is “something else.” A voter in Troy said he seems to “understand where different people are coming from.”

Kander’s friends and allies also offer glowing reviews. Sen. Claire McCaskill describes him as “the real deal.” His campaign manager, Rakov, said Kander is “the most genuine person I ever met.” (“It does sound really corny,” Rakov added.)

Underpinning Kander’s charm are carefully curated narratives — the “insider-versus-outsider” race Kander has run from the start; the clear-eyed desire to clean up Congress — that Kander and staff reinforce in virtually every stump speech, television ad and interview. Campaign surrogates who spoke with POLITICO for this story all presented the same highlights on Kander: He’s bright, disciplined and poised to bring about a new generation of leadership in Washington. Other calls to Kander allies less closely affiliated with the campaign went unreturned.

The whole shtick, and Kander’s neatly woven life story, are just “a little too perfect,” one Democrat said — and perhaps a sign he isn’t ready for prime time.

GOP operatives see a hypocrite. Kander has spent eight years (nearly one-quarter of his life) in elected office but is running as an outsider, they note, and he’s crusading against Washington while raising money from special interests and cozying up to politicians who are as establishment as anyone. “Politician Jason Kander, trial lawyer Jason Kander,” a recent National Republican Senatorial Committee ad narrator says. “Both look out for — Jason Kander.”

An old website bio for his wife, Diana, describes her work as similar to lobbying — yet Kander hasn’t taken much heat over the issue, while he tirelessly attacks Blunt’s family for its lobbying work.

“Jason Kander’s outsider persona falls apart quickly as soon as he’s forced to defend his record,” NRSC spokesman Greg Blair said. “As a lawmaker, Kander has supported partisan left-wing policies at every opportunity, making it clear that he’d be Hillary Clinton’s senator, not Missouri’s."

Kander constantly asserts that he is, as McCaskill put it, “the real deal,” and he’s released Army records with glowing accounts of his time in the service. In Troy, he talked about how people were responding well to the “authenticity they see in our message” and said that “even when people disagree with me they know my position is genuine.” Later, on the phone, Kander volunteered that he’s not in the race for a title, and achieving the rank of captain in the Army is the only one that’s ever meant anything to him anyway.

“I’m in this to do things that I think are important,” Kander said.

The 2016 elections have discouraged Missouri Democrats. Though the state used to be a bellwether, this cycle Donald Trump has consistently outpolled Hillary Clinton, who didn’t even make a run at Missouri and now features in attack ads against Kander and Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee, Chris Koster.

But on a recent Friday in Kansas City, an overflow crowd of more than 1,000 people gathered to see Kander and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Standing under a 20-foot “Jason Kander for U.S. Senate” screen, Kander delivered a mashup of red-state veteran politics and Warren’s trademark progressive onslaughts about Republicans protecting the wealthy over students and the middle class.

“I obviously did not volunteer to go to Afghanistan solely to protect the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans,” Kander told the crowd. “For far too long, Congress has been focused on the CEOs, the millionaires, the billionaires.”

Win or lose on Election Day, Missouri operatives of both parties speculate, Kander has won: He’s drawn widespread attention and will find another, successful opportunity to run for federal office soon, or perhaps a post in a Clinton administration. If he wins, a role as one of the Democratic Party’s young stars seems assured.

Warren took the stage after Kander and delivered a sweeping 25-minute case on his behalf: that Kander will stand up for working people, fight to make college more affordable, help confirm a new Supreme Court justice. But Warren’s shortest, simplest point was the one that explained how Kander has gotten this far.

“I really wanted to be here today because I like Jason Kander,” Warren said. “I mean, it’s just the truth.”