My Four Pillars

1. An economy that works for all of us.

2. Better schools and more educational opportunities.

3. Lower cost of living.

4. A fair deal on AI, data centers, and big tech.

Back to status quo isn't good enough.

We have to move forward. We must elect progressive candidates, and they must deliver on their promises.

An economy that works for all of us

For decades, workers in this district and across America have increased their productivity while receiving a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. Where has the money gone? It certainly hasn’t trickled down.

Wealth disparity is hitting a critical threshold. Billionaires do not work 1000x times harder than you. Their wealth isn't possible without our labor. We must correct the broken system before more of our jobs are automated or relocated.

How'd we get here?

Capital gains are taxed at half the rate of an hour clocked in, monopolies have swallowed family farms, pharmacies, hospitals, and main streets, and the cost of putting groceries on the table or sending a kid to Mizzou keeps climbing.

The deal we were promised (that hard work would be enough) has been quietly rewritten without our consent.

I'm running to rebuild an economy that rewards the people who do the work — not just the people who own shares.

From the family farmer in rural Missouri to the line cook in St. Charles to the nurse in Columbia to the freelancer running her own business out of a spare bedroom, we deserve a country that treats our work like it matters.

What I'll fight for:

• Increasing the minimum wage and closing the tax loopholes favored by billionaires

• Protecting your right to organize by passing the PRO Act

• Restoring competition and ending corporate consolidation

Better schools and more educational opportunities

Public schools in Missouri and across the United States are being asked to do more with less while politicians play games with budgets and stoke the flames of culture war issues.

We can't stand by and let the next generation hand over their critical thinking skills to big tech. We need to prepare our students to think for themselves and equip them with essential 21st-century skills, especially media literacy.

College is more expensive, and many of the jobs that higher education has focused on are disappearing. According to Gallup, 71% of student loan borrowers have delayed a major life event due to rising tuition costs. 

This means that so many young people are skipping or delaying starting a family, buying a house, starting a business, and moving out of their parents’ home.

We’re being squeezed. And it’s not as simple as the rich getting richer, it’s the richest of the rich getting exponentially richer. 

Quality education for all is an absolute necessity for a democracy, so why has our system refused to pay our teachers, improve our schools, and fund higher ed? Simply put, it’s because the wealthy donor class wants to get the best government they can buy. They want government programs and the broader economy to serve their interests. 

A well-educated society would be harder to distract with culture war diversions. We have to demand better education to continue the project of civilization and leave our children’s generation better than ours.

What I'll fight for:

• Fully funded public schools

• Putting our students' and teachers' interests above big tech

• Tuition-free community college, trade schools, and registered apprenticeships

Lower cost of living

The cost of living shouldn't cost this much. The working class is following the plan we were given. Many of us went to college, entered the workforce, and started families. Yet, we feel perpetually behind.

Childcare costs more than rent. Starter homes are out of reach for many. A trip to the emergency room can wipe out a month (or more) of careful budgeting.

This Gallup poll found that over 40% of respondents are worried that inflated prices will cause them to not afford routine healthcare costs, cover their monthly bills, or afford college. Your health, your baseline standard of living, and your education. These foundational pieces of life should not move out of reach of everyday Americans while billionaires pull in record profits and layoff workers.

Markets are an economic tool. When abused and consolidated to form monopolies (or more commonly oligopolies), consumer prices skyrocket along with share prices.

The basics of feeding your kids, raising them, keeping a roof over their heads, and keeping them healthy should not be a luxury in this country.

A better America will no longer be a place where healthcare expenses are the number one cause of bankruptcies, where anyone skips necessary medication to feed their family, and where childcare costs more than a paycheck.

What I’ll fight for:

• Medicare for All

• An end to price-gouging monopolies

• Increase first-time home buyer incentives

A fair deal on AI, data centers, and big tech 

A handful of tech companies are trying to build super-sized data centers in rural America. They don’t want the noise, water, and air pollution in their neighborhoods, and neither do we.

I’m so proud of the way the St. Charles city community organized and pressured the city council to permanently ban data centers. We can hear out any company’s pitch for new construction, but many of these planned data centers are looking to draw power from our grid, water from our aquifers, and tax breaks from our communities. 

That’s simply too high a price to pay without tangible, long-term benefits. We can’t let big tech treat Missouri or any other state like a free resource extraction zone.

When we identify a need for something like a new data center, the company building it needs to be responsible for its energy needs. We cannot allow the cost to shift to our utility bills. In Congress, I’ll for a strict cap on state and local tax abatements for data centers that don’t deliver permanent, full-time jobs for their community. We cannot trade hundreds of millions in school and hospital funding for a building with 12 employees.

Missouri is becoming a destination for data center development, and that means MO-3 families, MO-3 farms, MO-3 schools, and MO-3 utility bills are now in the path of decisions being made in boardrooms in California, Seattle, and Washington. In this same moment, recent grads in Columbia are watching AI eat away the entry-level jobs they trained for, parents in St. Charles are watching their kids' attention get strip-mined by apps, and small business owners across the district are wondering how they're supposed to compete with platforms that already have all of their data. This is not somebody else's fight. It's already here.

What I’ll fight for:

• Big tech regulations and an AI bill of rights

• Protecting our natural resources

• Innovation that benefits all of humanity