The Informed Voter Coalition is made up of these nonprofit organizations: Be Civil, Be Heard ; Drury University’s L.E. Meador Center for Politics & Citizenship; Junior League of Springfield; KSMU Ozarks Public Radio; Leadership Springfield; League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri; Missouri State University’s Office of Public Affairs; NAACP Springfield; Rosie; Show Me Christian County; Springfield Business Journal; Springfield-Greene County Library District; and the Springfield News-Leader.
You can hear the interviews recorded at KSMU by clicking on the "listen" button above or watch videos of the interviews recorded by Nathan Papes and Greta Cross of the Springfield News-Leader.
Candidates were interviewed individually and asked the same questions. They had one minute to introduce themselves and two minutes to respond to each question. Questions were submitted by Informed Voter Coalition partner organizations and were not provided to the candidates in advance. The order of the candidate interviews was determined by a random drawing.
Missouri House District 140
Good afternoon. I'm Rachel Campbell with Show-Me Christian County, one of the nonpartisan organizations that make up the Informed Voter Coalition. Today, we are featuring the race for Missouri House District 140. Candidates are Julia Curran and Jamie Gragg. However, Jamie Gragg declined our invitation to participate.
Julia Curran
I'd now like to introduce you to Julia Curran. Thank you so much for joining us.
"Well, thank you for having me."
Let's begin by having you introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this office.
"Thank you. Well, my name is Julia Curran. I've been a 20-year resident or more of Christian County. My husband Rob and I have raised our four children here. They are now adults and went through the Ozark High School. I've been a nurse for 35 years. I've always been a very strong advocate for people, and I see in Christian County that we haven't really had a representative that truly represents the voice of all the people, of all the constituents in Christian County. I see that there's a lot more possibility, a lot more things that we can do to help people with their everyday lives and that I want to be the representative that represents everybody in our community."
How would your professional expertise and previous experience inform your decision making as a legislator?
"Well, as a nurse, I've always been a problem solver. I know that it's important to get more complicated situations, the right people in the room to help you solve issues. I am a — I try to solve problems in a way that involves more people, if that's necessary. I think it's very important to involve the right people in the room. I see legislation sometimes done in a vacuum, and that doesn't really help the community. We need to involve the professionals that guide our community and are involved in the everyday work. And so I want to involve those people. I want to involve constituents, and I want to be available to listen to people and what those needs are. We have a great community in Christian County. There's a lot of people working very hard for its success, and we need to involve all those people."
In what ways have you actively collaborated with the communities in your district to understand their needs?
"Well, at the start of the campaign, what I did was I went to a lot of different community leaders and groups, and I introduced myself to them. I told them that I wanted to run for state representative, that I thought there was a lack of true representation in the community. And I asked them what they did for the community, what their policies were, what their projects were, and also how can the state help their goal in serving the community better? I specifically asked them what helps and what hurts, and what I find more is that they want to be involved in those legislative decisions, and that that really impacts our community, and we need to have representatives that listen to them. So I — that's one of the things that I did. And I found that, unfortunately, it was correct that there's a lot of people not being listened to, and they have a lot of good ideas, and we should trust our professionals who run the different departments and groups in our town. The other thing I did was I engaged in the community. I started with a book exchange to start conversations out in the community with different groups and activities."
Across the state, school districts serve as large employers in their communities. What steps, if any, do you think should be taken to address the teacher shortage in Missouri?
"Well, I think one of the things that we should do is teach — treat teachers with more respect. They are highly trained professionals. They are dedicated to educating our children. They are the foundation of our educational system, and we need to engage with them more and find out what it is that would inspire them to stay in their profession. I know as a nurse that oftentimes I felt that I wasn't being heard in my 30 years. We went through so many nursing shortages, and I think the root problem was always the same. We weren't going to the problem. We weren't addressing the problem with the person it was affecting. So we need to find out from teachers what they need, what they need to better — they want, they want to be effective educators. How do we help them do that? And people who feel like they're accomplishing their job and have support are people that are going to be happy and staying there and and do a much better job."
What do you believe to be the most pressing issues in your district, and how do you plan to address these key issues if elected?
"There's, I think, several different issues. And what I've been concentrating on is trying to find out how to engage more people. What I find is a lot of solving problems that don't exist and not enough of focusing on problems or concerns that people have. When I speak to young people, young families, I hear that there are issues regarding childcare. I find that most of their rent, most of their childcare dollars, equals the amount of their rent. I find that people are working really hard and not making a wage that helps them get ahead. I find that older people are being kind of pushed from their homes because of the cost of living, the high cost of insurance. There's so many things that we can do in our community, and none of those problems are being addressed. We just have some divisive issues being thrown out there at us. We have so much more in common, and I think that we're unstoppable when we realize exactly how much we have in common and not that much that divides us."
If elected, how do you plan to stay in touch with your constituents?
"By doing what I'm doing and being out there in the community and engaging with people who the legislation affects — the different departments, the local and the county government instead of — I hear all the time, 'we have to stay in our lanes.' No, there's one lane, and that should be to make a better and stronger community. And in order to do that, we cannot be in a vacuum up in Jeff City. We have to be consistently engaging, consistently asking people to come up on legislative days and really engaging with them, not just taking photo ops. We need to really work with people and hear what they have to say and listen, and not just wait for them to finish talking so we can continue speaking. We need to — in the end, I want to represent everybody in our community, whether you voted for me or not. In the end of the day, I want to be a representative that truly represents not just the people in eastern Christian County, but works for them every single day and helps them live better lives in our community."
All right, Julia Curran, that concludes our interview. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.
"Thank you very much."
Jamie Gragg
Jamie Gragg declined the Informed Voter Coalition’s invitation to participate in the interview.
