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| Gerrymandered District Thanks To Republican Control Of Both House In The Pennsylvania Capital! |
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| Missa Eaton, Smart As A Whip AND Has Ability! If She Does Not Make It This Time - She'll Be Back! |
This week’s #5in5 trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland
includes stops in districts represented by longtime lawmakers backed by
seasoned political consultants and well-funded campaigns.
But
we’ll also meet two first-time candidates, who felt compelled to launch
long-shot campaigns in hopes of ending the partisan gridlock in
Washington.
The first rookie candidate is
Missa Eaton, a former assistant professor of psychology at Penn State Shenango, who launched her campaign against
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) because she feels he’s too partisan for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District.
2chambers spoke with Eaton last week in between calls to voters from
her campaign office in Sharpsville, Pa. The interview is edited for
length and clarity.
2chambers: You’re a first-time candidate and an academic by training. Why did you want to run for Congress?
Eaton: I’m a believer in good government and I don’t see us
getting that. I don’t see our current congressman doing much to
represent our district. I thought it was time for someone who was smart,
and for someone who thinks about issues in complex ways.
I’ve been a single mom, going back to college, I’ve run my own
business, I’ve helped to, I was a coowner of a stock car race track. I
worked for other people, where I’ve worried where my next paycheck was
coming from. Worried about the solvency of my company
Are you suggesting that Mike Kelly isn’t smart?
I’m suggesting that Mr. Kelly has a set of dogmatic strategies that
he’s not willing to stray from. He is very hard-line and has taken very
hard-to-the-right, hard-line voters and taken hardline stances that show
me that he doesn’t understand where other people are.
We’re heavily union, heavily religious, with all kinds of interests
and interests of tourism in the north part and the south part, we have
lots of energy concerns everywhere, but what I see is a current
representative who’s not even speaking really pro-actively about the
businesses and he goes on and on about how he’s a businessman, but he’s
not even helping our businesses at a time when they could use help.
He wants to move $2 trillion into the military budget. He supported
Paul Ryan’s views on Medicare twice with his vote on that Ryan budget
and his district is aging. So how in the world would his district
survive if they were suddenly move into a vouchering system for
Medicare? I don’t see that he is even thinking about his district and
the people who live here.
He came to our community just a couple of months into his term and
said he wasn’t going to help us do anything, because the federal
government wasn’t going to help solve our problems. Well, the federal
government has some role to play. He also said he wasn’t going to take
any earmarks. But those types of appropriations are the way that those
federal tax dollars get back to our district. That’s wrong. It seems
like we’re paying him to do nothing for us, and that doesn’t seem like a
good business move to me. I don’t think he’d employ someone who wasn’t
going to do anything for him for very long.
Who is your favorite Republican?
Olympia Snowe.
She is a moderate, she is pro-women, she is very fair and she is not
someone who votes her party line. She’s bipartisan and willing to work
with people across the aisle to get things done. It’s sad to me that
this very far-to-the-right ideology has driven her from her public
service.
How about your favorite Pennsylvania Republican?
Do I have one of those? I honestly cannot tell you that I have a favorite Pennsylvania Republican.
You’re a professor right now?
I was through the end of June. I did not renew my contract with Penn
State, because sadly enough it’s difficult to run for office at this
level and keep a full-time job. I did that in the Spring, and it nearly
did me in.
So how do you support yourself?
It’s a back and forth. My husband started his own business there
years ago, and I supported us, and now he’s returning the favor.
Now that you’re a few months into this, how would you advise other wannabe first-time congressional candidates?
You can talk to everybody possible and you’ll never understand what it’s like to run for public office until you do it.
My true advice would be to surround yourself with experts on various
parts of a campaign early and figure out if you want to run as early as
possible. Talk to someone who’s held that particular position before,
and really get an honest accounting of what it means. I did that and I’m
so thankful that I did, because I have gone into this with pretty open
eyes and not disillusioned that I would get a lot of support and a lot
of continued support from state or national organizations and I’m happy
to have it, when it comes along, but you can’t count on it, because they
have too many irons in the fire and yours isn’t necessarily their
favorite all the time.
Who did you speak with?
I talked to Kathy Dahlkemper and I had worked on both of her
campaigns as a volunteer. And being a volunteer is very different than
being on the inside of the campaign. She was very honest with me about
what it would mean for me and my husband.
What did she tell you about your family?
That I wouldn’t be around as much. I have grown children, so I don’t
have children at home, so that’s more helpful to me, that’s probably a
very good thng. I totally admire women and men who do this when their
children are at home, because I saw my husband for an hour and a half
yesterday and that’s a Sunday. It can get pretty hairy when I leave home
early and don’t get back until late at night. He would not make that
decision for me, but we discussed whether we would have a marriage in
November, and we decided that we would. If you’re used to having a 50-50
marriage like we do, but when you’re doing this, it can be really
difficult.
I totally understand why women particularly are deterred by this work.
Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Follow Ed O’Keefe on Twitter: @edatpost
By
Ed O'Keefe
|
11:00 AM ET, 09/25/2012
She is right that Kelly is too partisan for our district. This is the guy who thought that August 1, when birth control started being covered by insurance by law, was just calamitous. Really, Mr. Kelly? You're against women's choice *and* birth control? So you want us back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant? I would not vote for Kelly even if it meant our district had *no* representation. Because
Kelly surely does not have the best interests of his female constituents at heart.