Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander wants to replace Roy Blunt in the U.S. Senate.
This week the Democrat is riding a bus to 50 Missouri communities, pushing the message that changing the current culture and political gridlock in Congress requires changing the people who represent us there.
"All across the state on Monday Missourians went to work," Kander told about three dozen people gathered on a Lincoln University parking lot. "What they did not do was say, 'Despite the fact that I don't have everything done that I'm supposed to get done, I'm going to go ahead and just leave my job for seven weeks.'"
But, Kander added, that is what Congress has done.
"We are in Week Two of a seven-week vacation that Congress has decided to take," he argued, even though the U.S. House and Senate have yet to agree on solutions to the health threat of the mosquito-borne Zika virus "which could put women in Missouri at risk of giving birth to children with profound birth defects (that) is just a few weeks away from coming to Missouri."
He said Congress' summer recess is happening even though "ISIS is the greatest threat to our country and to freedom-loving countries around the world," and the national lawmakers haven't acted on a new authorization for military force.
And, Kander said, the Senate has yet to even hold a single hearing on President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Blunt hasn't even scheduled a meeting with Garland, Kander said, but has found time to attend fundraisers for his re-election effort, "because that's what his party told him to do."
Along with many other Senate Republicans, Blunt has said the Senate should wait to see who voters choose in November as the next president, giving that person the right to fill the vacancy.
During a brief news conference with reporters, Kander didn't comment on that reasoning, nor did he say the Senate isn't doing its constitutional job.
"I'm saying that the very minimum Missourians expect of Sen. Blunt is to actually speak to the gentleman who was nominated to the United States Supreme Court," Kander explained.
All of that, Kander said, "is decidedly ridiculous. It's totally unacceptable. If Missourians don't do their jobs, they get fired - and we shouldn't accept anything less from members of Congress."
Kander's campaign includes regular references to his military service, which included service as a military intelligence officer in Afghanistan and as a leadership instructor at Fort Leonard Wood.
"There was no time when I had the luxury of just deciding I could throw my hands in the air and say, 'It's too hard. I give up,'" Kander said.
But he accused Congress of taking that attitude and urged voters to replace incumbents with "more folks who understand" college should be more affordable, the middle class "needs a tax cut more than a multi-national corporation needs another tax loophole," and women and men should be paid equally for the same jobs.
Kander told reporters his bus tour is about trying to talk with as many Missourians as possible, and he couldn't do that if he had gone to the Democrats' national convention this week.
Kander is one of four Democrats on next Tuesday's primary election ballot - the others are Chief Wana Dubie, Cori Bush and Robert Mack.
Blunt also is one of four candidates on next week's Republican primary ballot. The others are Kristi Nichols, Bernie Mowinski and Ryan D. Luethy.
The winners of the Democrat and Republican primaries will face the winner of the Libertarian primary between Jonathan Dine and Herschel L. Young and the Constitution Party candidate Fred Ryman who has no primary opponent.
Additionally, Patrick Lee, of Ashland, filed last week as a write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate seat on the Nov. 8 general election ballot.
