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Political Note #289 Kate Schroder OH CD 01
2020 General Election
Health Care. Health Care. Africa. Health Care
It’s personal. In 2011 Kate Schroder https://kateforcongress.com/was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The original diagnosis was made on a visit home. By her father, an oncologist, to whom she showed a couple of lumps on her neck. He sent her back to DC to deal with the disease with her doctors and her health care services.
There she was in DC. A health care specialist. Her father a doctor. Most of Kate Schroder’s family working in health care. With great health insurance. Despite that, she recalls “hundreds of hours talking with tons of different companies” to make sure that her insurance worked for her. She came away understanding that she was “at the mercy of the health care system.” The system is imperfect and much too complex. An important part of a health care system fix would be to make the system simpler, easier to cope with.
It’s her education. Kate Schroder is a graduate of Roman Catholic elementary and high schools and Indiana University. Her practical adult education was in Washington. She went to work for Indiana Senator Evan Bayh and then home to work for the Cincinnati City Council. Interested in using business-type data to make decisions about her health care interest, she decided on an MBA and went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
It’s her profession. Kate Schroder’a first health care job was exactly right for her. She worked as a consultant for the Advisory Board which describes itself helping “health care organizations worldwide to improve performance using a combination of research and data.” In 2007, she joined the Clinton Health Access Initiative as the Zambia Country Director. She returned to the United States in 2009 to become Director of the organization’s Pediatric Initiative, was Promoted to be the Senior Director of Essential Medicines in 2011, the same year her cancer was identified. In 2013, she returned home to Cincinnati remaining in that role and then becoming Vice President of Essential Medicines.
It’s her family. In Cincinnati, she married John Juech, Cincinnati’s Budget Director, later the City’s Assistant City Manager. They had two children. In 2019, Kate Schroder resigned from the Clinton Health Access Initiative to run for Congress. In April, she won the Democratic primary with a roughly 2-1 margin. She has in front of her an incumbent Republican Congressman who may be weakened by scandal.
Thanks to the Ohio legislature’s gerrymandering, Incumbent Steve Chabot’s financial scandal might not cripple his candidacy. In 2011, he thanked the Ohio legislature for adding conservative Warren County to his district. In 2016, Trump carried Warren County 2-1. In 2018, with the help of Warren County he won by a 4 % margin.
Like most gerrymandered districts, OH 01 looks peculiar. It is a large rectangle northeast of Cincinnati and south of Dayton attached at its southwestern tip to the northeastern tip of the section of the district which borders Indiana and Kentucky and includes part of Hamilton County (Cincinnati). The gerrymandering has left a partly urban district that is 70% white and 20% black. Steve Chabot argues that current district organization is helpful to Cincinnati. Two Members of Congress from the area gets the area more representation. OK, if you like Steve Chabot’s views and scandals. As the suburbsmbecome more Democratic, the district may get tougher Chabot. The 4%.margin in 2018 may be a clue.
Scandals can hurt. Will Chabot’s scandal hurt enough to be a factor in a Democratic victory. Complaints in 2017 that Chabot had paid $150,000 to his son-in-law’s business were not enough to defeat him in 2018. Will the 2019 discovery of $125,000 in missing campaign funds have an effect on his election in 2020. In this case, Chabot blamed discrepancies on his long time advisor and friend and campaign treasurer, James Schwartz and Schwartz’s son Jamie.. Jamie Schwartz’s businesses are now defunct. His father insists neither of the Schwartzes are any longer involved in the Chabot campaign. Jamie can’t be found. Chabot complains that criticism of hm is blaming the victim.
Kate Schroder says “Chabot is accountable for dollars entrusted with him….[Taxpayers and donors deserve to know the truth.” The financial scandal alone cannot defeat Chabot. Kate Schroder will need to test how attractive Chabot’s views still are in the district. Chabot does occasionally go beyond conventional Republican views. In 2002, he urged schools to teach religion-based intelligent design as the basis for the development of humans in addition to natural selection. In 2011, he asked compliant Cincinnati police to confiscate a private citizen’s camera at a town-hall meeting that was otherwise recorded by main stream media. The cop who complied was disciplined. In general though, Chabot’s positions and actions have been conventional for Republicans. He was a manager in Bill Clinton’s impeachment. He voted against impeaching Donald Trump. Several times, he voted to end the Affordable Care Act.
It’s the core of her campaign. Kate Schroder’s chance to succeed in ousting Steve Chabot will come back to health care. That is a sentence that could have been written even without a Covid-19 pandemic. With the pandemic, with a Republican governor who had been at odds with the President Trump over Covid=19, health care issues now pervades everyone’s life. In September and October, where will the pandemic be in Ohio, in nearby Kentucky and Indiana? Will covid-19 have magically disappeared? Will Ohio’s economy be thriving? Will Donald Trump be on the way out along with Republican Members of Congress and Senators?
Kate Schroder https://kateforcongress.com/ needs your help in her campaign. She will need to be an effective campaigner on a variety of issues, not only health care. But health care issues pervade our lives right now. If they still do in the fall, with our help, she can make up that 4% deficit and more.
Below are Congressional seats Democrats are trying to flip from incumbent Republicans. The ones with asterisks ran in 2018* In 2018, Democrats flipped 40 Republican seats in the House. Let’s flip 20 more.
Arizona 06 Hiral Tipirneni* to beat incumbent David Schweikert
Arkansas 02. Joyce Elliott to beat incumbent French Hill
California 50 Ammar Campa-Hajjar* to win this now open Rep seat
Florida 16 Margaret Good to beat incumbent Vern Buchanan
Illinois 13 Betsy Dirksen Londrigen* to beat incumbent Rodney Davis
Indiana 05 Christina Hale to win this open Republican seat
Iowa 04 JD Scholten* to beat incumbent Steve King
Kansas 02 Michelle De La Isla to beat incumbent Steve Watkins
Michigan 03. Hillary Scholten to defeat the Republican nominee. The incumbent independent is looking to run for President as an independent.
Michigan 06 Jon Hoadley to beat incumbent Fred Upton
Minnesota 01 Dan Feehan* to beat incumbent Jim Hagedorn
Missouri 02 Jill Schupp to beat incumbent Ann Wagner
Montana AL Kathleen Williams* to win this open Republican seat
New York 02 Jackie Gordon to win this open Republican seat
New York 21 Tedra Cobb* to beat incumbent Elise Stefanic
New York 24 Dana Balter* to beat incumbent John Katko
North Carolina 09. Cynthia Wallace to beat incumbent Dan Bishop
Ohio 01 Kate Schroder to beat incumbent Steve Chabot
Pennsylvania 10 Eugene DePasquale to beat incumbent Scott Perry
Texas 02 Sima Ladjervardian to beat incumbent Dan Crenshaw
Texas 21 Wendy Davis to beat incumbent Chip Roy
Texas 22 Sri Preston Kalkuri to win this open Republican seat
Texas 23 Gina Ortiz Jones* to win this open Republican seat
Washington 03 Carolyn Long* to beat incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler
Occasionally, I make errors. Here’s one. I wrote a Note supporting Mike Larsen. I thought his combination of humor, Hollywood experience, and capacity to bring in resources would be just the thing for defeating Jim Jordon. It was not even the thing for the Democratic Primary. He can in third.
