What Congress Really SHOULD Look And Sound Like-- Meet Morgan Harper

The Columbus, Ohio congressional district is safely blue. Trump wasn't even able to get 30% of the vote in 2016 and the PVI is D+19. It's the kind of district Democrats should be looking to for strong progressive leadership from bold thought-leaders. Instead, the incumbent there, Joyce Beatty, is a longtime crooked political hack and careerist. This cycle, Beatty is getting a powerful progressive primary challenge from former CFPB official Morgan Harper. She worked protecting consumers from the very financial institutions who had gone ago bought Beatty lock stock and barrel.

The industries that gave given Beatty, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, the most money, are all industries overseen by her committee: insurance companies, commercial banks, real estate, securities and investments, and finance/credit companies. AOC's first big statement when she got to Congress was the urge that Democrats outlaw that kind of corrupt behavior. Meanwhile, Beatty has taken $1,411,281 from the Finance sector since 2013-- and over $2 million in corporate PAC money over her four terms. Franklin County deserves better.

Morgan Harper is a 36-year-old reformer and progressive with no ties to the incompetent and fully corrupt Ohio Democratic Party. She's running on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, Jobs Guarantee, tuition-free public college, universal child care, racial justice, affordable housing and a living wage-- all things that separate old line liberals, like Pelosi, Hoyer and their clique from today's progressives. The Ohio Democratic establishment has all but destroyed the Democratic Party in the state. Many people say it is the worst state party in America with one corrupt idiot following another as chair, each losing more and more of the state to the Republicans. But they would much rather fight progressives-- who they routinely trash-- than Republicans. Morgan is savvy, well-educated and seems to have a large and effective network, all of which she's going to need to win this battle. Below is her first DWT guest post. If you like what you see-- in her writing and in the interview-- please consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on the thermometer above.





The Economy Is Booming-- But For Whom?
by Morgan Harper

I'm running for Congress because the Third Congressional District of Ohio, like our entire country, is at a precipice. We can continue down the same road pretending we're solving the problems that plague us, or we be bold now and deliver real change.

The city in which I was born is a microcosm of why working class people don't trust the Establishment. Yes, the economy is booming in Central Ohio like no other region in the state. But booming for whom? This is the second most economically segregated place in the country. The unemployment rate is hovering around 3%, yet roughly 30% of Black and Latinx families live under the poverty line. According to Franklin County's own report, many of the concentrated areas of extreme poverty have experienced "no change" in the poverty rate in the past 40 years. 60% of our neighborhoods have only gotten poorer over the same time period. Columbus, like the country as a whole, is expanding in ways that benefit fewer and fewer at the very top, while wages remain stagnant and cost of living continues to rise for everyone else.

The city now has more renters than homeowners. Unfortunately, rents will continue to rise in the coming years as our leaders have failed to build enough new housing units to match the everyday influx of new residents, and as the federal government long ago abdicated its duty to provide housing as a human right. Between 2012 and 2017, home prices in Central Ohio have risen by an average of nearly six percent annually, while household income has increased by just over one percent annually during this same period. Gentrification, nearly stagnant wages, and an affordable housing shortage is making far too many people in Central Ohio housing-unstable.

I'm running for Congress to deliver the bold policy solutions needed to correct our country's course. Fighting against the menace in the White House is the baseline for any Democrat. If we are to return the Democratic Party to its historic roots of defending working-class Americans, we cannot continue electing millionaire politicians who are beholden to real estate developers and other corporate interests who line their political pockets.

Ohio Congressional District 3 is an oddity in state electoral politics in that it's a powerful seat that's impossible for a Republican to win. Democratic voters deserve an unbought and unbossed Member of Congress who will go all out to drive forward America's need for structural change. We deserve an advocate that can harness new media to leverage the national debate around national rent stabilization policies. We deserve a Congressional representative that will stand in solidarity with 800 public school teachers when they picket a City Council meeting; that will work for the 25% of children in Columbus living in poverty; and that will address the profoundly unjust racial history in our country that has resulted in black families having an average of $9,000 in net wealth after centuries of living here. We need a representative that will fight to ensure everyone who calls Central Ohio home can, at the very least, meet their basic needs and live a stable life.

Growing up on the east side of Columbus, I never envisioned myself one day running for Congress. But, I could no longer sit on the sidelines while millionaire politicians, only interested in ceremonial leadership, fail to deliver results for people who actually have to work for a living.

Defeating an electoral machine is never easy, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I am not a career politician bankrolled by special interest groups. My funding and power come from people who agree the status quo is untenable. Together, we can move Central Ohio away from "the way things have always been done," away from the political machine that has killed any awareness of what Congress does and any hope that real people have of the federal government delivering change for the many and not just the few.