U.S. Senate candidate Kander makes stop in Columbia

Just one week after announcing he would not attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, U.S. Senate candidate and Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander made an appearance in Columbia as part of his state-wide bus tour.

“I just wanted to make sure I was here to talk to voters in Missouri and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Kander when he addressed his absence from the convention. “We’re getting all over the state to talk to Missourians about what we need to do to fix Congress because people are pretty dissatisfied with the approach Senator Blunt takes, putting special interests and his political party ahead of everything else.”

Kander said he does not support the breaks Congress takes between sessions, including the current seven week one. He said Tuesday that incumbent Missouri Senator Roy Blunt supports the long breaks, which Kander said are a “big problem” for the country.

“Senator Blunt is someone who said ‘yes, by all means let’s take seven weeks off when we haven’t dealt with Zika, or we haven’t dealt with ISIS,'” Kander said. “I take great exception to the idea that he didn’t say to his colleagues in the quote-on-quote- leadership of the Senate that this was a really bad idea and perhaps they should finish their work.”

Kander said he hopes to use his military background to unite lawmakers in Washington should he be elected.

“I’m going to take the same leadership style to the United States Senate that I learned in the United States Army,” he said. “When people from different backgrounds and different perspectives come together, they have a sense of mission and the job is to figure out what the mission is and do that mission, rather than fighting for your own career or your own paycheck.”

In a statement, the Missouri Republican Party criticized Kander’s decision to skip the convention as well as his close ties to Hillary Clinton, whom he opened for at a recent St. Louis campaign rally.

“Whether it’s in Kander’s home state of Kansas, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania or in Missouri, Jason Kander supports Hillary Clinton’s policies and his ambition is to rubberstamp her agenda in the United States Senate,” said Rich Chrismer, a spokesperson for the Republican Party, in the statement.

Kander has been Secretary of State since 2013.