Wayne

An email I sent soon after I started the campaign for Missouri Attorney General.

A few weeks ago, I got a really great email.

Then he saw a photo of Toby, one of Missouri’s most notorious house dogs. And he thought about his dog who passed away recently. So he sat down to write me an email.

He said he has lived in Mid-MO just about his whole life. He used to be a Democrat, but he felt the party left him behind, that he didn’t belong anymore. There weren’t a lot of Democrats near him, his friends were all Republican, and just about everybody who ran for office was Republican too. So that’s what he became. He’d been voting Republican for many years.

He is also very involved with his church, and his faith is an important part of his life. He said abortion was his biggest voting issue, and that my position would likely determine whether he could support me or not. He asked about a handful of other issues too and hoped that I would write back when I had time.

I did write back a few days later. My email was long too. I talked about dogs, told him I knew what it felt like to lose them after so many years and hoped that he was feeling better. I told him why I was running, that I was focused on making sure we have a good government because of how foundational that is to getting anything else done. I said I was sorry that he felt like he didn’t belong in his old party anymore. And I answered his question about abortion.

I told him that I understood if I would lose his vote, but that he deserved to know where I stand. And I told him that I would fight hard to prevent folks from exploiting our differences to keep us divided, that I think we’d find we believed in a lot of the same things if we actually sat down and had conversations with each other. I offered to come meet him and his friends any time.

I didn’t get an email back.

So yesterday, when I was in Columbia and then Jefferson City for meetings, I called him.

“Hello?”
“Hi. This is Elad Gross. I’m running for Attorney General. You sent me an email a few weeks ago.”
“… Nu uh.”
“I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to do that. I wrote you a long one back. I hope you got it.”
“I did. I was very impressed with what you wrote.”
“Well, thank you. I’m in the area today. If you have time later this afternoon, I’d be happy to swing by.”
“To visit me?”
“Yeah, absolutely.”
“I can’t this afternoon. I’m actually getting ready for a birthday party for a friend. But that’s really nice. Could you do me a favor?”
“Sure. What’s that?”
“Could you add me to your emails? I really liked what you had to say.”

Welcome to the email list.
And welcome to the Missouri that works for all of us. This is how we all win.

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