Why I'm Running for the U.S. Senate

Topeka, Kan. - Charles Schollenberger's remarks to the Democratic Action Committee, McFarland’s Restaurant

Good evening. I want to thank Debbie Snow for the invitation to speak to you this evening. Topeka and Shawnee County will always have a special place in my heart.

It was here, at the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Site, that I declared my candidacy a little more than two months ago. This came after eight months of touring Kansas, talking to hundreds of Democrats around the state.

I received a lot of encouragement during my travels around the state. Many Democrats desperately wanted a U.S. Senate nominee. Many were thankful to have one. And I was honored to have the privilege of running for this high office.

I want to talk a little bit tonight about why I am running. Earlier in my life I had desired to make a career in politics. I had been very active in student government in high school and waged a campaign to lower the voting age to 18, organized the first community-wide Earth Day celebration our town in 1970, helped elect an anti-Vietnam war Democrat to Congress while in college, and wrote position papers for John Glenn’s first successful U.S. Senate campaign (yes, it even took a national hero like John Glenn three times to get elected, but that’s another story).

In 1976 – at age 24 - I ran for state representative in a crowded Democratic primary. While I didn’t win, I gained valuable experience. And then the little problem of earning a living crept up on me. As much as I enjoyed politics, I had to eat. So I pursued journalism as a career. And this was very gratifying. Journalism, in which you work long hours for little pay, is a form of public service, in my opinion. It provides voters with vital information that they need to make decisions at the ballot box. It also trains reporters that there are at least two sides to every story.

So why do I run for the U. S. Senate?

First, I want to give back to my country some of the blessings that it has bestowed upon me. I believe that my career experience has given me the insight to make wise decisions for our country’s future. One of my earliest memories of a news event as a child was the panic created by the launch of the first artificial earth satellite – Sputnik – by the Russians in 1957.

I watched as Sputnik spawned an arms race and then a race to the moon. As an eight-year-old I remember watching the famous 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates on television. Two years later I remember wondering, along with many others, if the world would end in a nuclear holocaust during the Cuban missile crisis.

A year after that came President Kennedy’s tragic death, which made a profound impact upon me, at age 11, when this talented and charismatic leader was taken from us in his prime. Kennedy’s death set me on the path toward a career in politics and journalism.

Not long after President Kennedy was killed the Vietnam war escalated and we found ourselves doubting the word or our own government and working to end the war. We experienced the brief brilliant promise of Robert Kennedy, which also ended in tragedy, as well as the inspiring message of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I stood at Dr. King’s grave in Atlanta, at age 16, a little more than a week after his death in 1968. A year later I took my first jet airplane trip to Cape Canaveral, Florida, to personally watch the lift-off of Apollo 11, the mission that put man’s first footsteps on the moon.

The Congressman I helped to elect served on the House Judiciary Committee and voted to impeach Nixon. I interned in this Congressman’s office on Capitol Hill during Watergate. After the turbulent Vietnam war ended there came a long period of stagnation in the country, exemplified by the Reagan and Bush years.

In the George W. Bush years, some tragic mistakes were again made in foreign policy. And then last year the forces of change once again broke through with the election of President Obama. President Obama’s election reinvigorated my long-standing interest in holding elective office and led me to seek this office.

I have lived through the Cold War, the Space Race, Vietnam, Watergate, the Gulf War, 9/11, Iraq, and now Afghanistan, from which I’ve called for a withdrawal no later than the end of 2012. I want to apply the lessons I learned in those years for the future good of our country.

I want to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. Senate giants – Teddy Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Frank Church, George McGovern, and Eugene McCarthy – to name a few – and carry on the work that they started in health care, in civil rights, in oversight of government, in the feeding of the poor of this country, and in the bringing of peace to our world.

Second, I am running for the U.S. Senate for the opportunity it presents to promote change in our country. I am very worried about the influence that the lobbyists and special interests have in our government. I believe that our democracy is threatened by these influences.

I believe it is time to enact landmark changes in health care, financial reform, and to create jobs in wind energy, animal health and bio-defense in Kansas. Because until we enact comprehensive health care reform, vast numbers of our citizens are not safe from bankruptcy when they get sick.

Because, until comprehensive financial reforms are enacted, your pension and retirement funds are not safe from wild roller coaster rides in the stock market. Because, until we get a better hand on controlling pollution, the very air we breathe, and the water we drink, is threatened by it.

Because, until we enact publicly-financed federal elections, your Congressman and U.S. Senators, are bought and paid for by the special interests even before they arrive in Washington. For instance, my two Republican opponents already have campaign war chests of $1.5 million and $3 million a piece. Every dollar they get from special interests represents a dollar pledged against the public interest.

They’ve never seen a reform proposal they liked, and probably never will. So they vote “no” most of the time. Do we want our next U.S. Senator to be voting “no” on vital reforms in the next six years as our present ones do? If not, we need to work hard to elect someone who will vote to support reform.

So we’re waging a grassroots, people’s campaign… We’re trying to wage a new type of campaign to change the elective process. We will carry on no matter how much money we have. This means that we are beholden to no one except the public interest.

In addition, we’ve called for a series of three U.S. Senatorial debates next year under the auspices of The Dole Institute, to be carried live through all of Kansas by public television for the first time in our state’s history. So today I challenge the Republican nominee to three televised debates next year: one after the primary in August, another in late September and a final one in late October just prior to the election.

Third among my reasons for running is to make this campaign a referendum against Big Money domination of our federal electoral process, to show people nationally that low budget campaigns can succeed despite almost everyone’s expectation that they can’t.

Shawnee County, as the state’s third largest concentration of Democratic voters, will play a key role in our strategy. We need your help. We need your contributions and help in arranging fundraisers. We need a county coordinator to be our eyes and ears here, to help us arrange speeches before civic groups and arrange news media interviews. We need volunteers to help organize neighborhood meetings and canvassing and get-out the vote. Please sign up to help us either here or at our website, www.schollenberger2010.com.

In your very hands, my fellow Democrats, lies the outcome of this election. We can rally and support change, or we can sit back and let the forces of Big Money and television attack ads once again win the game. We can win this race if we unify and pull behind a candidate who will make a difference. We invite you to join us in our crusade for a better Kansas and a better America.

Thanks for your kind attention.