Elect Dave Raithel

A community is no healthier than the people who live in it. I believe in available health care for all us, and I believe that no one should go without basic health care for inability to pay. Sick people cannot go to work, and sick children do not grow up to be healthy citizens. I support and defend Medicaid coverage to all persons who cannot obtain health insurance through markets and the ACA.

Over the years that the Republican-led House left millions of federal dollars on the table rather than expand healthcare, we watched rural Missouri hospitals close. That is how Republicans should be known: The people who close hospitals, the people who don't want other people getting health care. Republicans prefer that a sick child go untreated than some "dead beat" get a prescription written - I am not one to punish the innocent on such obsessions.

Every Missouri child should have access to free, quality public education regardless of the City, Town, or Rural School District they reside.

I support universal early childhood education, I support investment in higher education and workforce training, available to all Missouri students - regardless of the City, Town, or Rural School District they reside.

I oppose charter schools, tax-funding sectarian schools, and "school choice" proposals that tell parents to flee failing school districts and leave the failed behind - at the rate of 3% per year per district. That's a Republican Plan: Grab yours and run away.

A strong and fair economy is one that works for everyone. I support the right of workers to form unions, and I support unions as they negotiate for the wages, benefits, and protections they deserve. I oppose "Right to Work" and support "Prevailing Wage."

I’ll work for policies that bring and keep good jobs in our state and keep our economy growing. I will not support policies that ask workers to make the rich richer at the expense of workers, their families, their communities.

The first duty of the Sovereign is to keep the peace. The peace cannot be kept if the Sovereign is not just. I support law enforcement officers in their difficult jobs when they act lawfully. I otherwise will not. I believe that "public safety" is underfunded and understaffed at all levels - whether that be the police, county health services, EMT services, the courts, the prosecutors, the defenders, the social workers. I believe that "defund the police" was a gauche phrase to underscore there are alternatives to using force when someone acts like they need help, of some kind....

I will support just sentences for violent criminals. I want to reduce our prison population and reintegrate people into society after their release. I support drug treatment courts and diversion programs finding alternative ways to rehabilitate non-violent criminals.

You may notice if you are reading these issue positions that some of them are still "under construction." My policy positions are not really at odds with the more general statements that the Democrats compose for use if needed or preferred. But there are specifics I mean to bring out, and I'd prefer my own words when doing so. This place is still under construction....

Republicans are obsessed with all things between the legs of strangers. They give no one respect of privacy, and they rob strangers of their dignity. The Dobb's ruling is a moral abomination and an insult to any thinking person. I will work for and support amending the Missouri Constitution to declare abortion for health care and family planning is an inalienable right of women.

My goodness, I need to compose an issue statement on Non-Discrimination (whether for race or creed or sexuality) now that the Republicans in Jefferson City have threatened every school and agency in the state that if as employers they make it sound like they want diversity, or understood matters of equity, or might overtly include outsiders - then somebody might be in trouble. Promoting diversity and equity and inclusion is bad, very bad, in Republican Land, where Collective Responsibility is identical to Collective Guilt, and the latter we all know is wrong. But nobody is responsible to do anything about the wrongs of the past that harm us till this day.