By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
State Representative Brenda Shields of St. Joseph is running for re-election, facing the same opponent she faced two years ago.
Shields, a Republican, is running for her second term; opposed by Democrat Brady Lee O’Dell of St. Joseph. It’s a rematch from 2018.
Shields says the legislature must consider what to do to pay for road and bridge maintenance.
“I know that no one likes to pay additional tax and we will go back and we will cut government as much as we can, but at some point in time we’re going to have to realize that the cost of maintenance has gone up, we haven’t done anything since the early 1990’s on our gas tax,” Shields tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline.
Shields says when she goes to Jefferson City for a legislative session, she works to reflect the values of her district.
“When I am in the legislature, I don’t necessarily vote how I feel, I vote how I know my district feels,” Shields says.
O’Dell calls himself a blue-collar worker who first got into politics as a volunteer in the 2008 Barack Obama campaign. O’Dell says the more he saw of the state legislature, the more he didn’t like what was going on in Jefferson City.
“The more that politicians in Jeff City would reintroduce Right-to-Work or try and alter Clean Missouri to their own ends, it really kind of (ticked) me off,” O’Dell states on the KFEQ Hotline. “So, I said if nobody else is going to stand up to that than I’m going to try to.”
O’Dell says money plays too large a role in politics and he vows not to accept special interest campaign contributions.
“But I believe we need more people like myself that aren’t collecting those big checks and everything like that that can actually take phone calls more from their constituents than from their donor base and follow their will,” O’Dell says.
The 11th Missouri State Representative District is comprised of southern Buchanan and northern Platte Counties.