5 questions for state Senator Jill Schupp, who is running for a seat in the U.S. House

Jill Schupp likes to say that politics found her. The Missouri State Senator, a Democrat, is hoping to unseat U.S. Representative Ann Wagner, a Republican, in Missouri’s highly contested second congressional district race next week. Schupp has served in the state House of Representatives and on her city council—but it was a run for school board that got her started in public service. 

“I ran for school board because there were problems in my kids’ schools, and I couldn’t get anybody to pay attention or solve them. It was a very contentious race, but I won,” she says. And when she arrived, the people with whom she had differences rolled up their sleeves, and they worked together with Schupp. She ran on six platforms; in the six years she served, she accomplished all of them. “Some of those people who had worked hardest against me are some of my big supporters today,” she says. “It just goes to show you that if you’re willing to work with people who don’t always agree with you, you can have really good outcomes.” 

If elected to Congress, Schupp’s immediate priority would be overcoming the COVID-19 virus. “The pandemic has wreaked havoc on our country and around the world,” she says. “I see the pandemic and the virus as our common enemy. This should be done in a bipartisan fashion—we need to listen to health experts, listen to scientists and researchers, and figure out what we need to put into place to get rid of the virus. That needs to happen so that we can safely reopen all of our schools and so that we can safely start to rebuild our economy. That is job one.” St. Louis Magazine asked Schupp five more questions about her platforms, below. Her answers have been edited and condensed for length. 

A news alert just went out stating that Missouri is regularly reporting more than 1,500 new cases of COVID-19 each day. Is there one mandate that you would choose to implement now to protect people?

I wish I could tell you that I had the answers, but I do know where to find them. We’ve seen just such a lack of leadership on this. We need to go to the health experts. We need to go to the epidemiologists. We need to go to the scientists and researchers and listen to them and to put in place those things they tell us to put in place to overcome this virus. As the weather starts to get cooler and people are spending more time indoors with each other, what we know is that this virus is more easily transmitted. We can look at the numbers and that data and that research, and we need to take it to heart and say, “OK, we are doing something wrong here.”… I will tell you that if the researchers and the doctors said to me, “If you wear a mask when you are around someone, it will keep that person across the room from getting sick or dying,” I’m going to be the first one with a mask on. … I don’t know what the mandates will be, but I would imagine that wearing masks may be among them. Wearing a mask should not be political—it should be about health and safety. 

During President Donald Trump’s town hall moderated by NBC News, he again stated he wanted to replace the Affordable Care Act with another health care plan. You’ve stated you want to protect and improve the ACA. If Trump is re-elected, what would that look like, and why not support something like Medicare for All?

There was a time when the Republican party held the majority in the House and the Senate and the presidency, and they didn’t come up with a plan that was better than the Affordable Care Act, when they had the ability to put into place whatever they wanted. I feel like, instead, they’re using the Affordable Care Act as a talking point, something to rail against all the time when we need to be making sure that people have access to the health care that they need. 

Medicare for All—there are a lot of problems. One is it’s just going to be probably prohibitively expensive. But [some] people are very happy staying on their private health insurance. Oftentimes, it’s supplied through their place of employment, and we want to be able to allow them to do that. Employers often like attracting the best talent by offering the benefit of insurance. I don’t want to take that away from people. At the same time, I think we do need to put into place a public option for those people who are looking for an affordable way to access health care.

How would you improve the Affordable Care Act?

Before August, when the voting public decided to pass the expansion of Medicaid in the state of Missouri, I was able to get a bill passed in the legislature that I had authored that said that if you are a woman who has given birth, you may suffer from postpartum depression, and if you’re a low-income woman and don’t have insurance that covers it on your own, [you’ll receive treatment for up to a year after the baby’s birth under Medicaid]. When [a low-income woman is] pregnant, she can earn a little bit more and still stay on Medicaid through the pregnancy and up to 60 days afterward. If you are a person who suffers from postpartum depression, that may not even be identified in those first 60 days. But, even when it is, the mental health treatment that you need may need to go on for much longer than 60 days. … We need to do this, not just for postpartum depression, but we want new moms to be able to take care of their babies and to get their own health care that they need for an entire year after giving birth. So I think that would be a great addition to the Affordable Care Act.

On the subject of women, a new report revealed that due to the economic impact of COVID-19, more than 860,000 women dropped out of the workforce in August and September. How would you help them get back to work? 

Again, the first thing we need to do is overcome this virus. We also need to make sure that people have affordable childcare, so that they can go back to work. And that’s a real problem, and it’s a real problem for a lot of women. Frankly, it’s a problem for the childcare professionals, and it has been for a long time. … What things do we need to put into place in order to get us through this virus? Let’s make sure that these pharmaceutical companies who are working on a vaccine are able to do that and do it in a way that is safe, and that when it is ready, it is safe for people to take. Let’s be talking about what we’ve learned about the economy and with so many people working from home, what that looks like going forward. There are certain jobs, and so many of them are jobs that are held by women, where working from home is not going to be the way to work. Women tend to be the childcare providers. Women tend to be the people that work, for the most part, in our nursing homes, and in our places where face-to-face interaction is required. We need to provide the childcare services at a reasonable cost so our members of the community, in large part women, can get back to work. We need to be doing all these things together. I think that the federal government has a role in this. It can help provide the roadmap and advice by bringing everybody to the table. When I say everybody, I’m talking about health care providers, researchers, working families, moms, daycare providers, all of those people who are so deeply affected by this virus. They need to have a seat at the table to help figure out the process for providing vaccinations for people in the community and for each state. 

The state will end up being the one to decide how those vaccines are given out within the state, but let’s provide some guidance. … Let’s have the plan in place. Let’s be working on this now, so as soon as that vaccine is available, we are ready to go. 

What else would you like voters to know about you?

I think it’s important for your readers to know that when I grew up in this area, I had hard-working parents, and they really taught me from an early age to value hard work and also community. They taught me that I needed to work with others even if I liked them or didn’t like them, agreed with them or not, but that’s how you got things done. You figured out what ways you could find common ground. I never really planned to get into public service. I was doing a lot of volunteering in my community from a young age. When I was in college, I volunteered at a crisis intervention center. When I came home and started working, I volunteered in a juvenile detention center. I worked with seniors. I worked with little kids. My parents taught me that being involved in the community mattered. 

Editor’s note: Congresswoman Ann Wagner declined an interview with St. Louis Magazine.