Last week, U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner boasted about her work securing funds for the Missouri Department of Transportation. She posted a photo on Facebook of her visit with MoDOT’s St. Louis district engineer and said she’d personally arrived to deliver the good news about $42 million in funding for upgrades to I-70 near St. Louis Lambert International Airport.
The only problem? Wagner voted against the source of the funding, a 2021 bill called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That Biden-era bill funded highway projects from 2022 to 2026. It received support from Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), among 18 other GOP senators and 13 House members.
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In her Facebook post, Wagner seemed to try to get around her “no” vote by mentioning a letter she sent in support of the funding in June. “I am always proud to work with local stakeholders to ensure your tax dollars are improving the St. Louis region,” she wrote.
Arthur Bryant, a spokesman for Wagner, initially pushed back on the no vote by suggesting the $42 million came from a February 2026 bill, one in which Wagner voted yes. U.S. Department of Transportation documents, however, tie the money to the program’s fiscal year 2026 funding, which came from the 2021 bill.
Bryant noted that Wagner voted for the 2015 legislation that originally created the program, called Infrastructure for Rebuilding America, or INFRA. Of her 2021 “no” vote, he wrote, “The Biden Infrastructure Bill is 1,039 pages, of which just 10 pages—less than 1 percent—involves the INFRA program, a program that Ann Wagner voted to create. To equate over 1,000 pages creating hundreds of different programs to the reauthorization of a single program that Ann Wagner voted to create and repeatedly voted to fund for years is completely disingenuous.”
Wagner’s challenger, Fred Wellman, didn’t mince words.
“Ann Wagner has spent 13 years in Congress, and she’s still taking credit for investments funded by a law she voted against,” Wellman tells SLM. “If she had a record that helped Missouri families get ahead, she’d be running on it. Instead, families are struggling with high costs while she takes a victory lap. They need someone who shows up when it’s time to do the work, not just when it’s time to take credit.”
Despite Democrats’ ardent hopes, Wagner has seemingly cruised to reelection every two years despite making few appearances in her district that are open to the general public. But after almost 13 years in Washington, she’s in what appears to be an unexpectedly competitive race. Democrats are banking on a blue wave, as some polls suggest that even GOP strongholds across the U.S. are now in play. And in Missouri, a Republican-backed effort to redraw congressional maps to favor Wagner, among others, was recently defeated in court. The most recently publicly available poll of the district seems to show Wagner in a dead heat with Wellman.
A new ad released by Wagner’s campaign seeks to paint the congresswoman as an outsider, blasting the “corruption” that “runs deep in Washington” before proclaiming, “Ann Wagner is fighting back against Washington for us.”
Wagner has plenty of money to run that ad—and others. She’s raised $3.4 million this cycle, well above Wellman’s $1.1 million (both totals are through August 2026). Wellman, too, had a hard-fought primary, and as of August had just $242,000 cash on hand. New fundraising reports are due October 15.
