Every year, 34 Missouri citizens go to Jefferson City to fill the State Senate. One hundred and sixty-three Missourians travel from districts across the state to make up the Missouri House. Every state representative and senator has their own story and path into politics, and every campaign is different. KSMU spoke with three local politicians on the campaign trail this year to get a sense of what it takes to go from an interest in what's happening in your community to deciding to run for office and actually making it happen. All three candidates are in the running for Senate District 30.
Melanie Stinnett, State Representative, District 133, Republican candidate: I ran a small business here in Springfield providing speech, occupational physical therapy, and it was really through my journey in small business that I found some challenges with the state, with regulations and other things that limited the care that I could provide to children. So, I started going up to the Capitol and just trying to get to know people and figure out how I could impact change. That journey really led me to meet some people in politics. And they, over time, said, you know, maybe you should consider running for office. And it just became really apparent to me that my voice was a little bit unique.
Cecil Ince, Libertarian candidate: I've petitioned several times for mayor back in the day when I first started. City council. I tried to do a bid for governor. I ran for Missouri Secretary of State against Catherine Hanaway and Robin Carnahan. I ran for county commissioner, associate county commissioner against Lincoln Hough, and pulled in in a two-way race, over 29% of the vote. So, I've had several elections that I've been involved in. When I came to the Libertarian Party, I was like, wow, I'm home.
Betsy Fogle, State Representative, District 135, Democratic candidate: I worked at a place called Jordan Valley Community Health Center and had been to Jefferson City advocating for things like postpartum expansion for moms on Medicaid and substance use assistance. And had someone not believed in me and called me, I wouldn't have ever thought to run for office on my own. So, I've tried to turn around and do that to the next generation or the next group of people who love this place enough to want to fight for it to be better. I had mentors who believed in me. Representative Crystal Quade called me and asked me if I'd ever thought about running for office, and that's how I got involved in politics in the first place.
Stinnett: So, talking to folks here in Springfield that have run campaigns before or done that sort of thing, and figuring out how you put a team together, how you develop a campaign message, and all of those things kind of came next after that. There's a lot of decisions made in the early days of a campaign when you're talking about what it looks like, so what are your signs look like? What do you want people to feel when they see your signs? What size signs do you want? You know, it's just my name, but the logo component, what it looks like, I think people do spend more time on than people realize, and I think it does make a difference.
Ince: You make a declaration of candidacy online or in paper with the party and you file with the Missouri Ethics Commission of your intentions to run. You've got to file other documentation. The first day of filing comes around, you go to either if it's a county wide office, you go to the county clerk's office or your election authority and you file that documentation. Your filing fee goes to your party and then your name appears on the ballot.
Fogle: Knocking doors is a really great way of actually getting to know people, learning about what issues are important to people. I can tell you where every bus stop is in House District 135, where every pothole is in House District 135, where every individual is struggling to pay their medical debt or that's struggling with paying their bills. And those memories stay with you, of course. And you don't get those memories unless you go out and knock doors. I've always built my campaigns in a way that allowed me to say whatever I believe, regardless of political party, and we are so thankful for the infrastructure support from the different entities that support candidates here in Missouri. But all of this is stuff that we build out sitting around this table, and it's a lot of my campaign manager and I, you know, writing TV scripts and cutting turf. And I think people think campaigns are glamorous. But as you can see, not a lot of glamour happening here. A lot of blood, sweat and tears and a lot of grit.
Stinnett: I had no idea when I started running for office the first time, I thought, oh, you know, I'll go out on the weekends, it'll not be too hard to get through a neighborhood. It takes a lot of time, especially if you're there to listen. As much as I didn't know what door knocking would be like, I had no idea what fundraising for a campaign would look like. It's a lot of phone calls, calling people, making meetings, coffee meetings. Oftentimes you have three coffee meetings and two lunch meetings in a day just to try to get all of the meetings in because you want people to get to know you as a candidate and feel confident in supporting you.
Ince: A lot of times people, they will ask me about what party I am or they haven't heard me, heard of me before, but I get a lot of mixed different questions about taxation because of the ballot measures that were in the primary and where I stand on where I stood on the phasing out of the income tax. I've even had people ask me questions about abortion, and I don't stand on either side of that. There's (an) outreach committee with the Missouri Libertarian Party. The Missouri Libertarian Party hosts a booth in at the state fair every year. We also get involved in other community events, setting up tables. And, you know, a lot of that outreach is very important to the growth of the party. It's a very important to getting out the vote, getting people registered to vote.
Fogle: We live in a state here in Missouri where we have candidate committees that have campaign contribution limits of $2,400 preprimary and then $2,400 after. So, any one individual can give that amount to any candidate that's on the ballot for state Senate. We also live in a state where we have PACs, kind of unchecked campaign contributions can come into a PACs for candidates.
Stinnett: PACs, because of laws in the State of Missouri, there's no coordination with them. So, the messaging that comes out of them isn't something that we have control over. Whether we support or don't support kind of how they message things is irrelevant because of state law. I have had people in past campaigns call me and say, you know, you need to take that negative ad down and I have to share with them, you know, that's unfortunately not something I can do. I, by law, can't call them and tell them what to do. So, it is something I kind of wish more people knew about because I think it's a challenge in a campaign.
Fogle: One of the things that I hear a lot is that, you know, that people like me or the other individuals in the race maybe somehow stand to profit from being in, in office. And maybe that's true in, you know, in Washington D.C. or maybe there's some truth to that. But here at the state level, regardless of political ideology, no one's doing this to, you know, personally profit. No one's making money off of this. I think everybody, and I can have some very strong policy disagreements with friends on the other side of the aisle, and sometimes friends within my own party, but I do believe that most people get involved in this because they want to make their community better, and they want to make things around them better. This is an avenue of doing that. And I think it's hard for me when I'm knocking doors and people will say, oh man, you just must hate every Republican, or you must just whatever. What people don't see in Jefferson City is all the times that we have worked together across party lines to do good things.
Stinnett: We can get focused on national politics and talking about these big name politicians. But when somebody is running for a House seat, for a Senate seat, for these county seats, these are your neighbors. These are people that you can see at the grocery store. These are the people that, you know, their kids go to school with your kids at the neighborhood school, and those people are taking time away from their life, their job. Many of us have full-time jobs that we're working in addition to doing this type of campaign work. And I think an understanding of that, that that sacrifice is happening. And it's your neighbor who maybe you wouldn't have expected to get involved, who's decided to do that and invest the time.
Ince: I believe at the end of the day, we all go home, we all eat dinner, we all go to bed the same, you know, maybe not the same, but you know, we are all human and we all want what's best for our families, for ourselves, for our community. I have to really be considerate of my family and my other responsibilities and obligations in order to honor my commitment to run as a candidate. But I will always be a father, a husband and a son first.
Fogle: My advice to anybody putting their name on the ballot is to make sure that you're not losing sight of the reason why you did this in the first place because it can — campaigns can get pretty ugly.