{"id":1254,"date":"2017-02-23T21:08:22","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T21:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westcountydemocrats.org\/?p=1254"},"modified":"2017-02-23T22:33:50","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T22:33:50","slug":"forum-held-to-discuss-congressional-district-2-and-ann-wagners-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/?p=1254","title":{"rendered":"Forum Held To Discuss Congressional District 2 and Ann Wagner’s Vulnerability"},"content":{"rendered":"

On February 22, at the St. Louis County Library headquarters, a forum featuring Bill Otto and Glenn Koenen was conducted by Kirkwood Citizens for Progress. \u00a0 <\/span>Brian Humphrey led the forum on opening strategies for defeating Ann Wagner in the 2018 elections<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill and Glenn described to the audience of about 80 people their respective experiences during their own campaigns for the Congressional District 2 seat.\u00a0 <\/span>Both agreed that Ann Wagner is the \u201cinvisible candidate.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>She repeatedly refused to debate Glenn during the 2012 race even pulling out of a fourth scheduled debate at the eleventh hour.\u00a0 <\/span>She refused to meet face-to-face on the debate stage with Bill.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both agreed with several in the audience that Congressperson Wagner goes out of her way to avoid the public, even so far as placing her office in an obscure, out of the way location, never scheduling town hall meetings, and generally being inaccessible to citizens.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cAnn Wagner does not care about here constituents, just the corporations that support her like Edward Jones, Wells Fargo, and Met Life.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Both former candidates agreed. <\/span><\/p>\n

Both men also agreed Wagner is not likely to be the candidate the Republican Party picks to challenge Claire McCaskill in 2018.\u00a0 <\/span>Several speculated that new Attorney General Josh Hawley or another out-state party hack might get the nod. \u00a0 <\/span>So it becomes doubly important to begin a campaign to unseat her now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speculation aside, two other themes emerged from the meeting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

First was an idea to conduct and film a debate with Ann using a surrogate stand-in for her \u2013 given she will not show up.\u00a0 <\/span>Allow the surrogate to speak as if she were Ann, articulating Ann\u2019s positions as presented in her Newsletter, her only source of one-way communication with voters.\u00a0 <\/span>Place it on You Tube. This idea received vigorous applause.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The other theme that garnered discussion was that Democrats need to damage the brand of the Republican Party and Ann Wagner now, in early 2017, and keep at it relentlessly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

No one announced his or her candidacy for the Dem Party nomination to challenge Ann, or whoever, in 2018. <\/span><\/p>\n

Submitted by Mark Kumming, WCD Member<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 22, at the St. Louis County Library headquarters, a forum featuring Bill Otto and Glenn Koenen was conducted by Kirkwood Citizens for Progress. \u00a0 Brian Humphrey led the forum on opening strategies for defeating Ann Wagner in the Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democratic-candidates","category-driving-change"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7ZWUT-ke","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1261,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions\/1261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}