Courtesy of Spencer Toder
Spencer Toder
Media coverage of the Missouri U.S. Senate race to fill retiring Senator Roy Blunt’s seat often leaves out Spencer Toder. True, Toder, a Democrat, hasn’t raised as much money as the party frontrunners, heiress Trudy Busch Valentine and Marine veteran Lucas Kunce, both of whom are polling behind Republican candidates. But, Toder says, “we’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by saying that the only thing that matters is money because we end up with politicians whose only focus is money.”
Instead, Toder, one of the St. Louis Business Journal’s 30 under 30, has aimed his campaign at adding value to the community. “There’s a public service element of politics that has been left behind that should be the focus of being a politician,” he says. His campaign has helped more than 10,000 Missourians enroll in Medicaid, as well as more than 600 families access the child tax credit, which brought in $300 a month per child for low-income families. He's raised more than $53,000 for Afghan refugees and filled two shipping containers with supplies for them. His campaign has also registered nearly a thousand Missourians to vote. He has shown up to events like community meetings, St. Louis PrideFest, and Juneteenth celebrations to ask questions and listen to community concerns. So far, his efforts are 80 percent self-funded from money that comes from his work in St. Louis real estate—specifically in the Cortex development in St. Louis’ Central Corridor—and business ventures like Atrial Innovations, where Toder is CEO. Atrial Innovations is a health care technology company that develops solutions to congenital heart defects.
With 500 volunteers across the state, 1,200 yard signs requested and placed, and text banking that’s reached 1 million Missourians on behalf of the campaign, Toder seems to be gaining recognition. He's touting fresh endorsements from STL Young Democrats, Pro-Choice Missouri, and Our Revolution Kansas City. Toder says that there are about 5,000 Democratic donors in Missouri, and the guiding advice for candidates is to spend 25–40 hours calling those wealthy patrons. “Well, then I’m not talking to the other 4.6 million voters,” Toder says. “Those people need help, and they feel like no one’s listening.”
So that’s what he’s focusing on. “I am going to put all my life savings into this, and I am going to find a way to make an impact on as many lives as possible,” he says. “It’s a very different kind of campaign, but we’re earning votes instead of trying to advertise to get them.”
What is he promising supporters?
On climate change and renewable energy
Toder’s now 2-and-a-half-year-old son—and the future of other children—propelled him to seek office. “We’re putting him in a world where he’s going to fight wars over water, and that’s unacceptable,” Toder told the Missouri Independent. “And we have the solutions. We just don’t have the political willpower.”
Central to Toder’s platform is a plan to address climate change, which would also bring good-paying jobs back to Missouri. He wants Missouri to be a net exporter of solar energy with an exponentially ramped-up wind power sector. Currently, the state derives 74 percent of electricity from high-polluting coal-fired power plants that use coal sourced out of state. Missouri spends billions purchasing and importing coal, and ash pollution is allowed to contaminate the water supply. “Why would we continue to ship money to West Virginia and Wyoming and let jobs be built in West Virginia and Wyoming that pollute our planet?” Toder asks.
Missouri is one of the highest wind resource states, but it fails to take advantage of it. Toder estimates that in Northwest Missouri, farmers who add a windmill to their property can add about $12,000–$18,000 in annual income. And there are seeds where Toder wants to grow a forest: In 2020, total wind power capacity doubled in Missouri from 1,000 to 2,000 megawatts.
Per the IPCC Climate Report, putting up windmills and laying down solar panels to get off fossil fuels isn’t an optional do-gooder extra—it’s an ecological imperative that is also great for labor. Infrastructure upgrades require installation, management, and maintenance for systems-wide equipment. Cleaning oceans, planting trees, improving the air and water—these are basic job sources for all kinds of communities. “My wife and I do conservation as a hobby,” Toder says. “We’ve planted over 40 acres of previously dilapidated fields with Missouri native wildflowers.” (The Toders are beekeepers as well.)
Toder’s platform also includes rural broadband solutions like Starlink, and ways to slash gas and electricity costs while avoiding climate catastrophes like those that hit Texas’ energy grid in 2021. “The best thing we could do with our ARPA funds is take control of our energy companies, and invest in renewable energy and own our own utilities," Toder says. "It is disgusting that we let people from around this country—who have no interest in what is happening with our regular lives in Missouri—profit just so we can run our refrigerators.
“There are tons of amazing business solutions, and we just don’t have the political will or creativity to get into them right now. But they’re there.”
On health care
Part of Toder's platform is Medicare for All, or instituting one nationwide health insurance plan for all Americans. But how to pay for it? “We’re already more than paying for it now,” Toder responds. “We pay twice what most developed nations pay for substandard care.”
Toder says that to fund Medicare for All, taxes may go up, especially for the wealthy. “But your quality of care goes up," he says. "Your take-home income goes up, because instead of spending all your money on insurance, deductibles, premiums, out-of-pocket expenses, and prescription drugs, you have more money in your pocket.” Monthly insurance bills can increase without reason. Rates can double, and you can’t vote the insurance company CEO out. Medicare for All makes the government a negotiator in health care services, and targets price gouging and run-away costs because the government doesn’t have to be focused on shareholder profits. It can be focused on care, with prime examples in Canada, the NHS in the UK, and most developed nations. “Every time we get rid of the friction and the overhead and the cost between the person giving care and the person receiving care, we take bloat out of the system.” Most don’t realize how much bloat is in the U.S. health care system until you look at the shocking costs of having a baby or breaking a leg. Health care costs are the number one cause of bankruptcy for American families.
While health care costs continue to rise, access is disappearing in rural areas. Since 2005, eight rural Missouri hospitals have closed with a loss of 351 beds. “One of my neighbors at my farm fell off a horse and broke his wrist,” Toder says. “He didn’t pay for Obamacare, because he thought that was communist. He went to the local veterinarian, and the veterinarian set his wrist and put a pin in it. That should not happen in an industrialized nation.”
These are things Toder hears in Franklin County, where the neighbors look out for each other’s property, fish, and play poker together. When Toder told a neighbor he was running for U.S. Senate, “They said, ‘Why? There’s so many other good Republican candidates running.’”
“And I said, ‘Well, I’m running as a Democrat,’” Toder says. “They’re like, ‘You’re a what? Well, Spencer, you’re gonna be the first Democrat I ever voted for.’”
On voting rights
In Missouri, Democrats tend to lose at the state level. For decades, Missouri senate elections see a moderate Democrat strategy seeking lukewarm Republicans and swing voters through modeled competency and status-quo governance. It is mostly unsuccessful, especially as of late, and with the help of extreme gerrymandering, that strategy has created an electoral map awash in red with three little blue counties—Kansas City, Columbia, and St. Louis.
Toder says that this has not created good leadership for Missouri. “I can tell you fewer than 10 things Roy Blunt has done to help this state in the last 20 years,” he says. That’s because Missouri senators are not accountable to the largest population centers—they’re accountable to rural districts that host uncompetitive elections. The only way to change that is to vote for fair maps representing all Missourians, but voter suppression laws—like what Missouri House Republicans passed in 2021—demand a photo ID and other requirements. Voters without this documentation are disproportionately low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities. These suppression laws make real democracy—where every Missourian gets their say—impossible. “Nature will start healing if we pass voting rights legislation,” Toder says. “If we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act. But unless we do that, our democracy is going to die. And I truly believe that, and that is what motivated me to run.”
Toder has pledged to donate 10 percent of the funds he raises in the general election to bolstering the Democratic Party’s infrastructure. But in the run-up to the primary, his challenge comes down to broadcasting. How far the message—“doing well by doing good”—gets out depends on word of mouth, social media, and text banking.
Missouri’s U.S. Senate primary will take place August 2.
