ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo–Conservative Republicans in the Missouri House and Senate lobbied hard during the past legislative session’s wrangling over new congressional district maps to build a second district that would be more favorable to the GOP over the next decade.
After attempts to create a map that would have likely favored Republicans by a 7-1 margin failed, a “6-2” map yielded a second district that extends from central and West St. Louis County into portions of St. Charles, Franklin and Warren counties.
U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner is seeking re-election in the Republican primary in a four-person field. Two Democrats are still in that party’s primary after Ben Samuels dropped out of the race.
Despite their generational differences, Trish Gunby and Ray Reed are roughly forty years apart by age--the candidates appear to share many of the same policy goals. Both want the Senate to end the filibuster and would codify abortion protections. Reed would vote to expand the Supreme Court, and is considering the idea of a 10-year term limit for Justices, subject to reconfirmation in the Senate. Gunby wants to study court expansion, term limits and a potential mandatory retirement age.
Reed would eliminate student debt, saying it could be done for the same cost of the 2017 Trump tax cut. Gunby supports free community college education and wants to study how to address student loan debt equitably.
Neither would immediately commit to voting for Nancy Pelosi in a leadership election.
“She has found a way to bring Democrats together in the House, so right now I'm supportive of the work she's done,” Gunby said, saying she would wait until she was elected and arrived in Washington. “I'm open to hearing from everyone,” she said. Reed praised Pelosi as the “greatest legislator of our time,” but said it was time for the party to elevate younger, more diverse stars, like U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY.
Where they appear to disagree most is the best way to run a campaign in a race to unseat Wagner, a five-term incumbent who in 2020 defeated State Sen. Jill Schupp in a race that garnered significant national Democratic party interest for the first time since Wagner was first elected in 2012.
Gunby is banking on her experience running as a State Representative, where she flipped a Republican seat representing parts of West County during a special election and then won the seat again in 2020.
“I believe I have a full-blown campaign machine and by that I mean top to bottom, not only as a candidate who I believe identifies more with the district that we're in, has been doing the hard work talking to voters,” Gunby said. “Fundraising is also a component of this--and so he hasn't filed an FEC or a fundraising report--so when you're up against somebody like Ann Wagner who has a lot of money behind her, she will use that to do negative mailers and negative ads, you have to be able to compete and so top to bottom I think I have the best campaign.” Gunby said her campaign is doing more vigorous door-to-door engagement than previous campaigns for the seat.
Reed, who worked for the Jay Nixon administration and on Democratic campaigns since 2018, told Spectrum News that the pandemic likely impacted Schupp’s ability to do the sort of in-person retail campaigning, but said Schupp wasn’t able to generate much broader national attention outside the district, something he sees repeating with Gunby so far.
“Are we remaining stagnant by trying the same things or are we going to move forward and try to build a better coalition and actually put up a fight against Republicans in this district,” Reed said, while praising Gunby’s work as a state lawmaker. “I think a lot of folks don't necessarily want someone who knows how to play the political game and knows the system, they want someone who will stop the system from playing games with their lives.”
“I believe that the real risk is to try the same thing we've been trying against Congresswoman Ann Wagner and somehow expect a different result. That makes absolutely no sense,” Reed said, adding that he also had volunteers on the ground making contact with voters, and would be filing a FEC report in July. Reed also points to the work he said he’d already done in Washington lobbying for the just-passed gun legislation in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting massacre.
While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has so far been quiet about its interest in the race compared to 2020, both Reed and Gunby expect an influx of investment from left-affiliated groups following the primary.
Missouri’s primary election is August 2.
