Morning Edition; Audrey Richards

It's morning edition on KRPS, I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro. Campaign election season isn't full swing in case you haven't noticed, and while many of the names on the ballot are familiar, there is at least one candidate whose name will not appear on the ballot. First time candidate, Audrey Richards is running as an independent in Missouri 7 Congressional District. I spoke with Richards last week at the Joplin Public Library, both of us wearing masks. I first asked Audrey to introduce herself to potential voters, and while she is running for Congress. Yeah, so my name is Audrey Richards, and I'm a boring and raised Southwest Missouri, and I was born here in Joplin, and I was raised in Kimberling, SIGGI. So small town life is my vibe. And I decided to run basically because it was pretty obvious that the two-pargay system is more interesting and maintaining power than actually solving people's problems. And especially in small town America, there's not enough votes or enough money for a lot of them to care. And so it kind of became one of those things where someone has to step up to the plate, and nobody else was, so it's going to be me.

And it's not like I'm not qualified, because I went to George Washington, King University, I have a degree in political science. I worked six years at the U.S. Treasury Department, so I've got very hands-on bureaucratic experience as well as an academic understanding of things. So I figured, well, we'll do it because somebody needs to step up. And speaking of stepping up, writing candidate, relating the campaign season, is this something that was on your radar, though, because become a writing candidate late in the game, I think we're 42 days away today as we record the interview, is this something that you aspire to do? No, initially my wrong was independent candidate, and here in Southwest Missouri you need to get 5,930 signatures on a petition to get your name on the ballot. So it's not like you can just walk up to the Secretary of State and be like, hey, put my name on. Oh, if it were so easy. But you have to get all of those signatures, and they have to be ink on paper, so they have to be physically signing the paper, and you have to watch them do it. So I was out here, I got about halfway there, and then Karoga virus hit, and two months

we couldn't go outside, and I talked to the Secretary of State's office, and there were some, basically there was no way for them from what I understood, or without some kind of executive action by the governor, or by our legislators, who had zero interest because they're all Democrats or Republicans, to actually change the law and extend the deadline, or put the signatures online, which would have been so much easier, or to just decrease the over on the birth signatures required. There was no interest really in doing any of that, and I tried my best, but, you know, with that whole situation, even after we were allowed to go outside, it was like, I don't know if I'm asymptomatic or anything, I'm not going to go knocking on doors and plugging people at risk like that. So it became pretty apparent, and probably the middle of July, I think I wasn't going to meet the end of the July deadline. So we ended up just a second, hey, we'll go as a reggae, because we deserve a lot better than what we've got, and, you know, I'm going to fight till the end, regardless of what

route that takes. And this is a seven district, I believe, Billy Long runs in, and one of the unique things I think about the seven district is how big it is. Yes. Now, you drove up from Branson today, how long does that take you? That is a two hour drive. And you could drive for another hour, and still be in this district, you know? Oh, yeah, yeah. So, and we've been everywhere, and that's one of the things I think that differentiates us from Billy Long, is we've been, literally, to nine counties in this district, everywhere from Null down in the southwest corner, all the way up to Senneca, Nio Show, and just you don't have to be a big town. We've been to Senneca, Null, Reed Spring, that's where I went to school. So I'm a little, got a special place in the heart there, but, and we've been obviously Branson, Branson West, you know, Castell, Monet, we've been everywhere, and we're talking to people everywhere, because, you know, just because you're from Mungat doesn't mean you have the same problems as people in Chaplain, and so, getting that wide array of perspective is really important, especially because somebody like me, who's not, you know, running

on a party platform. I just have my Sega Videals, and I want to understand how that relates to everybody else. So what are some of your priorities, or what do you hope to get accomplished if elected? So are the three pillars of my campaign, are education, infrastructure, and getting big money out of politics. So education is my number one thing, as I've said before, I went to school at Reed Spring, but even, like, down the road, half an hour in Branson, their school system has so much more money and access to resources because of the tourism, silver dollars, ciggy, all of that. So it really kind of, it's a stark contrast, and I knew that whenever I went to GW, I was kind of behind the rest of my classmates, who would all go on to charter schools, magnet schools, really fancy public schools, boarding schools, and, like, oh god, like, I don't have the same logical comprehension or anything, because I was kind of a nerd. I didn't have to work really hard in order to understand things that we were being taught. And so I never learned how to learn, or learned how to, like, understand things. So when they're presenting me information, I'm not familiar with, at the college level,

I was, like, oh god. So Ace Eugen suddenly became C-student, and that was with effort, and so I didn't understand how to learn things. And I think that's the product if they're not having things, you know, enough, like, small class sizes. So there's more individualized attention, or more resources, dual-credit courses, AP courses, things that, you know, can push you further, a head when you're still at the high school level. But even then, it's not just that, it's, like, access to skills education, because, you know, welders are making a heck of a lot more than I am, so, you know, it's, you know, we can't just say that college is the only career path either. And yet, for so many people in these rural schools, they don't have access to things and it traps you in the cycle of, hey, I can't get a good job because I'm not egging, egging, egging up. And then I can't contribute, you know, to the economy, I can't work my way up and provide a better life for myself. And it's a whole cyclical thing that we're forcing people into simply because of, you know, the fact that they went to school somewhere, like, like, you know, Sennaka, or McGonald County, or wherever, instead of going to school and job-lingor, Springfield.

And that's really frustrating, and I don't think that's fair. I think that students should not have, that there, no students should suffer in their education because of learning abilities or because of where they grow up. And so that's my number one priority. Now, infrastructure is another huge priority that affects everybody in the district. So roads and bridges, we have the eighth worst in the nation. They're bad. I don't think I have to tell you that. So if anybody is ever driving on a farm road, they know. And it's really one of those things where I don't have to tell you that it's an issue because it is, but our representative has exhibited zero interest in solving that problem. So I also want to talk about Wi-Fi, right, because that's a key part of infrastructure. You see businesses, again, going back to small town communities, they, in order to keep up with just the business atmosphere of the country, you have to have Internet access. Well, a lot of places, even in Kimberly, Sugi, where I go up, they don't, because there's not a reliable, affordable way to get access to it. I talked to the Chamber of Commerce down there at Table Rock Lake, and they were like,

yeah, we had to seriously invest a lot of money, pay a very high monthly fee to get ingering it that is reliable, not even super fast. It's like a ridiculous fee for basic stuff, because there's no infrastructure, and we need to invest in small town communities, don't have the resources, the money, the tax coming in to invest in themselves like that. So they need help, and just to, you know, kind of keep pace with everybody else. And that also, we can go back to roads and bridges with that, because that's an economic issue, too, if people can't get here feeling like driving on the roads. So someplace like Branson, right? Branson's roads go like this, they are just topsy-turvy hills, and that's why I'm used to it, but tourists aren't used to it, right? And if our roads are crappy, and our bridges are crappy, well then what's them to stop, you know, to stop a tourist from saying, oh, we'll go get Pigeon Forge instead of Branson. It's an economic issue, it's a safety issue, and it's something that needs to be talked about. And finally, getting big money out of politics, it's basic. You know, you compare me and Billy Long in terms of where we get our money. I am a fundig, 100% by my own cash flow, which is mostly my retirement savings, and

then small dollar donations. My biggest donation was $500, and I like basically shot through the roof of the car whenever I saw that email. I was like, oh my god, someone really likes me. And that was very much appreciated. That was a donation from the school teacher. And he shoot, you know, that's the way the beautiful things about, I think, small dollar donations. People don't have a lot of expendable income, but what they have, if they're willing to put that toward me, honestly, that is the biggest honor. And I think, I don't think you find a lot of people doing that for Billy Long because people, everyday Americans are not as committed to him because he's not committed to helping them. And yet you look at Billy Long, and we go back to angering it, right? Billy Long's biggest goers, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Charger, it's like, why can't we get going? Maybe it's because these big companies don't want to invest in our communities, so instead they're investing in our representative to say, hey, don't make us do this. Don't, you know, don't pursue it. And he hasn't, because Billy Long can be bought, he has been bought, and you can't say

that about me. I've not taken a single money from a pack, from a corporation, from a party. All of my money comes from me and small donors. And I think that's a massive difference. And so I think that all campaigns should be run like that. You should be very clear about where you get your money from, and dark money shouldn't be a thing. I would support the Disclosed Act, which requires people to, or all corporations to disclose whom they're spending their money on, where it goes. And then as part of the bidding process, federal contractors also would have to disclose whom they've given money to. So of course, then it's easier to connect the dots saying, oh, well, you got this selection because you gave money to someone, so. And it makes it just a lot more transparent, so I would support that as well. And just, it's easier to run a true and honest campaign when you're getting your money from every gay people. Follow up question. As a way to gauge, because you are new in the political game, to gauge where you align with none of, nobody aligns with one person all the time.

But when you see policies of the Partisan Administration and his person who's running against him, a state or utter, Galloway, who would you say that you align more with Galloway or Partisan, where something that they put forward, for instance, a couple of weeks Galloway campaign put out a statewide health care plan. A Partisan has issues too that he's trying to push along like the violent crime bills that we've had recently in the state senate. Who do you find yourself aligning with and agreeing with, or not agreeing with in Missouri politics right now? Well, the answer to that is actually really simple, because Mike Parsons' first budget coat was to education. And I told you that was my biggest thing. And to me, that's where we have to invest, that's investing in our future. It's investing in our kids, and they deserve a lot. They deserve to have good educations, and so I can't really support that if your instinct is to first cut education, then, you know, he's playing politically, you know, to an audience like, oh, we're caring about violent crime now. It's like, well, where is your violent crime stuff being during the entire year of your

administration? It's like election times coming around. This is a hot button issue. Let's just bring everybody back, and we're going to talk about nothing but this. We're going to waste your time on doing something that, not all of which is going to get passed. And it's frustrating because you're like, those things are not necessarily what we're affecting every day people. And that's, again, that's also a partisan issue though, because you look at Nicole Galloway, and I don't support a hunger person who wish he stands for either, and again, that's, I can say that because I'm independent, so. Right, exactly. I ask that question, so that voters can try to gauge where you line whether they, you know, would vote for you or not. And that's being one of the hardest things because people really try to put you in a box. They try to say, hey, are you reggae-blueing, and like, my color is purple, because I'm both. You know, they take policies from both that are going to help people. And I know that sounds cliché, but it's true. It's one of those things where I'm standing here and I'm saying I'm willing to help because nobody else is doing it for you, because they're going to keep forgetting about you, and

they're going to only focus on the people who give them money. And that's really frustrating, I think, for everybody in southwest Missouri. And whether that's typically long or it's you, Governor Parsing, who wasn't even elected to this office, it's like he's a step up from the last guy, but the bar's on the floor. So I don't know if I'll get in trouble for saying that, but you know, I'm not afraid to say that we should have a certain caliber of individual and power. And I don't think that Eric Grittens was particularly of that kind of caliber. So to me, it was really like, hey, if you're asking me about Nicole Galloway versus my Parsons, it's really not an issue, though, of personhood or of not personhood, but of personality. It's one of priority, and Nicole Galloway prioritizes education and infrastructure higher than Governor Parsing does, because Governor Parsing is really just doing, you know, whatever is politically expedient. And I don't, I don't like that. That's not how I operate. It's a person, or as a candidate, and I don't, I don't like it. Audrey Richards is running as a writing candidate in Missouri 7 Congressional District.

You could learn more about her campaign at AudreyFromAzari.com.