OntheWilderSide

Midge Potts

Tuesday was the first day for Missouri political hopefuls to register to run for office in the August primary election. While the recognized parties will hold primaries, the Progressive Party of Missouri will circulate petitions to gather 10,000 verified signatures in order to gain ballot access. Midge Potts, the Co-Chair of the Progressive Party of Missouri, as well as a delegate to the Green Party of the United States National Committee, announced in June 2009 that she would seek the US Senate seat being vacated by Kit Bond. Tuesday she released a statement proclaiming that she intends to run a non-traditional campaign by walking the state in order to discuss issues of concern to Missourians in their own communities.

Potts said:

In 1976, Joe Teasdale, a then unknown entity in the Missouri political arena, walked the state on his way to winning the governor’s race against Republican incumbent, Kit Bond,. I intend on replicating the feat of ‘Walking Joe’ by winning the hearts and minds of Missouri voters in a series of walks and bike rides that will highlight a number of issues leading up to the November 2nd general election.  The only way an alternative party candidate can compete against the special interest money spent by career politicians such as Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan, is to bypass traditional campaign outreach through directly engaging people with innovative ideas and raw creativity.

In her statement, Potts described plans for her first walk which will begin on April 10th at the Ameren Nuclear Power plant near Fulton, and will end on May 1st, the anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with a rally at the Honeywell nuke bomb parts factory in Kansas City.

Potts added:

I want to highlight the need for the Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act which has been introduced into Congress by Washington DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. Now is the time to divert the more than fifty billion dollars American taxpayers spend each year on maintaining the US nuclear arsenal into retooling facilities, such as the KC Honeywell plant, to build green technologies.

She announced that she will hold a press conference in Columbia on April 10th before traveling 30 miles to Calloway county where she will begin her walk.

Midge Potts, co-chair of the Progressive Party of Missouri, is the party’s candidate for U.S. Senator in 2010. She and other party members are circulating petitions to get Ms. Potts and other Progressive Party candidates on the Missouri ballot this year.

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