On Saturday statewide candidates were traveling, dropping in, and speaking at events across the state. Judy Baker, the Democtaic Party nominee for State Treasurer, made one such stop on Saturday evening at a picnic sponsored by Cass County Democrats in Belton, Missouri.
Judy Baker (D): ….I’m Judy Baker and I’m running for Treasurer of the State of Missouri. A lot of you don’t know me ‘cause I see new faces and I met some new people.
And the most important thing for you to do is remember my name when you’re talking with your neighbors and when you go into the voting booth. So I’m gonna make you say my name. What is my name? [voices: “Judy Baker.”] I’m gonna make you say it at the end, too, so don’t forget it.
I want to tell you little bit about my race, about me. Uh, but mostly I want to talk with you about we’re gonna do this together. Uh, I am the sixth race down [on the ballot] and the most important thing for us to do is, of course, other people go into the booth, right, and they vote for president and they vote for governor and vote for their United States senator and they get all the way down to Gordon [Christensen] [laughter] and then they start dropping off. Our most important thing to do if we want to sweep this state blue, and I do mean sweep it, all, all of the statewide races we’re gonna have to get people down the ticket and care about the person in number six. That’s me. All the way down the ticket.
So that’s what I’m asking you to do, is to talk about folks all the way down the ticket. Okay, not just me, but all of us, all the way down the ticket. And we’ll do our job to help you be proud of who you’re talking about.
So I talked with you back in June or so, when we were at that dinner, about the State of Missouri and the poverty that we have and we have children who are food insecure and we have people who can’t save for their future and what we’re going to do about it. And we talked, remember we talked about, is that the Missouri we want? And you said, no. And that we’re going to build the Missouri that we want together. And I’m continuing that quest.
I’m working under a banner of build access, build lives. I love audience participation, so I’m gonna say build access. You say build lives. Build access [voices: “Build lives.”]. What do I mean by that? I men, a lot of what labor has done for us, what unions and collective bargaining has done for us, is to give us weekends, and to give us paid time off, and to give us health care, to give us retirements, and to give us a collective voice.
Building assets in one’s life is having those things. And how do you save for a future if, if you don’t have health care? How do you save for college if you don’t have a good education? I mean these are the things that are fundamental to us building assets in our lives. As State Treasurer I’m gonna make my whole tenure there about economic opportunity for all and how we help Missourians build assets. Build assets, build lives. That’s what we’re going to do.
Now, my opponent is so very different in this regard. My opponent is talking about Trump, it’s almost like he’s adopted Trump tactics. Do we love Donald Trump? [voices: “No.”] He has Trump tactics. And he’s already started attacking me which probably means that I’m closer than I think to him [laughter]. He probably has internal polling that shows that he’s got to start attacking me so early. Which makes me feel good. [laughter] Sort of.
He has started talking in the same vein as Trump. He’s trying to scare people. He’s trying to make them anxious, he’s trying to make them feel like, you know, Democrats don’t have anything going on. I’m here to tell you today that we in this country, in this state, do not need fear. We need courage. They are breeding fear and anxiety. It’s just making us weak. If they think they’re making us stronger by making us afraid they are dead wrong. We need courage and optimism in this state and that’s I’m spreading everywhere I go.
As state treasurer I want to do children’s savings accounts so children learn to save early and they get financial literacy [inaudible] for K-12 so they can build a future and start talking to their parent’s about it. What I’m I gonna be when I grow up? I’ve heard a, a joke just recently that a person, when asked, you know, uh, some, some folks at an elementary school, what do you want to be when you grow up? And they said, you know, a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, and a firefighter, and a police officer, and, you know, kind of all the, the usual and they got to one little kid that was very, very, uh, nicely dressed . What do you want to be when you grow up? He says, a lobbyist. [laughter] That’s what my opponent wishes everyone would grow up to be because he has taken so much money from so many people [inaudible] favors. We’re gonna make sure that the people who vote, are voting know what he does. Hoe he votes for lobbyists and doesn’t take care of people.
That’s what I’m gonna do and you know that. You know my heart and you know that my heart is as a public servant. And I will continue that as state treasurer.
Uh, so I’m gonna ask you to help. This really important that we get out and do what we need to do. I’m gonna tell you a short story. There was a man that was, uh, talking to his, his grandchildren and he was talking about his farther. And he said, my father used to go in town, um, and sell vegetables. That’s what his mother and dad made money on. We would go with them, we would go in town and sell vegetables and they, they got their chickens from a man named Freddie. And one day Freddie left the chickens while they were in town selling vegetables and all the chickens got away. And he says, aw, when I see Freddie I’m gonna make sure I give him a piece of my mind. He shouldn’t have left the chickens out on the doorstep. I had to send the kids all over the countryside to pick them up. And indeed when he did see Freddie again he says, why the heck did you do that? I had to send the kids out, they gathered up all the chickens, and they could only, they spent all afternoon, they could only find eleven. And Freddie said, well that’s actually pretty good. I only left six. [laughter]
So, that is to say there’s a lot more people who think like we do about these issues out there. We just gotta get them to the polls. We gotta go out, we gotta find them. If we don’t know what our limits are we can do better than we’ve ever done before. I’m asking you to do that [in audible] down that ticket also for the whole slate. All the way to Judy Baker for treasurer. What’s my name? [voices: “Judy Baker.”] Thank you all so very much [applause]….
