Missouri women: coming soon to a ballot near you
Hillary Shields is early, 25 minutes early to be exact.
She has parked her car across from the Uptown Arts Bar and is making her way on this Thursday, early March evening that happens to be International Women’s Day.
It has been less than four months since Shields narrowly lost a state senate seat to Republican Mike Cierpiot in her Lee’s Summit district. Her campaign ran on grit and the steady knuckle beat of volunteers who canvassed neighborhoods, many of the volunteers driving from all over the metro area to help.
Then a big, dark Republican money tsunami crashed local media markets while outspending Shields’ campaign 10 to 1. The ad campaign included a commercial that lied about Shields’ stance regarding a state lawmaker who made questionable comments about the president. “Since they didn’t have anything real they had to make stuff up.”
Shields was not deterred. She signed up to run again the day filing opened on Feb. 27. She will likely face Cierpiot again.
On this Thursday evening she joins a group of people tired of holding their breath while looking at their newsfeed and are moving beyond clicking “Interested” for an event on social media. They showed up to listen to 10 female candidates and office holders introduce themselves and drum up enthusiasm for local, state and national mid-term elections.
“It starts with the idea that a lot of people believe women are the biggest solution to what is going on,” Uptown Arts Bar owner Greg Patterson says before the event. “I am trying to support women who are progressive. Women are the key to changing politics in our country.”
No arguments inside the bar that night.
Shields took the stage first, acknowledging that she recognized faces of people who helped knock doors for her last fall. Like others she said she went through various stages after the 2016 election, including anger and denial.
“I never quite got to acceptance,” she says. “People were attacking my values, families in my community and attacking public schools.”
https://www.pitch.com/news/politics/article/20998533/missouri-women-coming-soon-to-a-ballot-near-you
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