DAY FIFTY-ONE - JILL SCHUPP

Oct 19

Day Fifty-one | Jill Schupp | MO-02
789 Sawbuck Patriots | $8656 pledged today | $479,002 donated overall

Team:

THE SITUATION: Welcome to Missouri's second congressional district. We’ve sitting in some ritzy St. Louis suburbs today. It used to be FAR more R than it is now; after Missouri redistricting in 2010, the state shifted around and the Fightin’ Second went slightly more Dem. Even so, it’s been represented by Rs without interruption since the 1992 election.

The district is affluent, ninety percent white, and is a reliably R vote for President – with Gore, Kerry, Obama (twice) and Clinton getting only between 39 and 44 percent of the vote here. Since the nineties, elections for this seat in the House of Representatives have seen the D candidate top out at about 42 percent in all but one race, and the current incumbent has won three of her four last races by more than twenty percent.

But during this last election, the D challenger pulled in over 47% of the vote in a narrow loss. And he was a 30 year old, first-time candidate for office, running against a three-term incumbent with deep R roots. This much-closer-than-anticipated result illustrated a substantial shift in the district's politics, even though the demographics haven't moved in a visible way.

And this time around, the R is facing a more seasoned D; a sitting legislator who’s been elected eight times in local and statehouse races.

With the right attention and resources, this district can flip from red to blue this year. All we gotta do is, you know - DO IT.

THE OPPOSITION: Ann Wagner. Formerly a manager at Hallmark Cards and Ralston Purina, she was an R state party leader and heavy-hitting R fundraiser for senators and presidential candidates, before being named Ambassador to Luxembourg under Dubya. (That’s Geo. Bush II, if you’re not familiar with the nickname.)

Wagner ran for Republican National Committee chair in 2011, but lost to Reince Priebus. She ran for Congress in this district in 2012, and won. In 2016, she endorsed Donald Trump for President, then withdrew her endorsement for Donald Trump, then decided once again to support Donald Trump, because consistency. She hasn’t held a public, in-person town hall this year, which is understandable – but also, she hasn’t held one in SEVEN YEARS IN CONGRESS. (As one does.)

During her time in Congress, she has not sponsored or led many bills, preferring to work in the political realm rather than that of policy. She has done some interesting, VERY specific work on behalf of a few bills – some that protect retail investors and are so narrowly tailored to make one wonder whether they were eagerly desired by her constituents, or perhaps rather by special interests (HINT: IT WAS THE SPECIAL INTERESTS) and a bill that made it illegal to profit from sex trafficking. Because before she wrote that bill, all the laws showed that it was totally cool to profit from the illegal trade of sex trafficking, you know. (HINT: NO IT WASN’T.)

OUR CANDIDATE: State Senator Jill Schupp. She has worked as an educator and a small business executive for an ad agency. She has done her work in the trenches, elected multiple times as a member of a local school Board of Education, and then a local City Council, before winning seats in the state assembly and state senate. She’s running on a platform of ensuring access to quality healthcare, equality in educational opportunity, LGBTQ+ rights, climate change sanity, commonsense gun safety, and ethics. She’s got a history of communicating across the aisle to her R colleagues in the statehouse – an admirable quality during a time when isolation is prized over collaboration, and which has corroded our discourse.

This race is a toss-up – polls have it in a virtual tie at present, and the DC handicappers have no consensus on which way it’s gonna end up. But let’s join Biden, Obama, Warren, Giffords, the NWPC, the LCV, the Sierra Club, and EMILY’s List and put our backs (and bucks!) behind the MATH THAT SAYS SHE CAN WIN.

Sawbuck Patriots, it's go time: click HERE to send $10 (or more!) to support Jill's campaign. Our collective effort will invest $8656 today.

Thank you!

- Alex / www.sawbuckpatriots.com

Alex Clemens

DAY FIFTY-ONE - JILL SCHUPP

Sawbuck Patriots, it's go time: click HERE to send $10 (or more!) to support Jill's campaign. Our collective effort will invest $8656 today.

DAY FIFTY-TWO - MOE DAVIS

DAY FIFTY - NOOOOOORTH CAAAAAROLINA

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