BOONVILLE — A Cooper County man plans to run as a Democrat next year against Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Harrisonville, with a platform of expanding public health insurance and curbing farm subsidies.

Erich Arvidson, who lives just outside Boonville, plans to campaign on nights and weekends, working around his job as a loan officer at Veterans United in Columbia, he said.

Arvidson filed paperwork July 14 with the Federal Elections Commission to raise money for the race. As of Monday, he’s the only Democrat to officially file to challenge Hartzler.

Other Democratic candidates plan to run in the district, but they have not formally announced yet, Missouri Democratic Party Executive Director Lauren Gepford wrote in an email. Candidates have until March 31 to file for the primary elections in August 2020.

A Republican, Neal Gist, is planning to challenge Hartzler in the 2020 GOP primary.

The Democratic nominee will face five-term incumbent Hartzler, who has raised $414,159 for her re-election bid and had $478,790 on hand on June 30, according to FEC filings.

Hartzler won the most recent election in 2018 with 65 percent of the vote, defeating Democratic challenger Renee Hoagenson. She earned 68 percent of the vote in both 2014 and 2016.

Arvidson, who has raised $1,007, according to FEC filings, said he thinks he represents a “more average Missourian” than previous challengers. His mother was a waitress, his father a mechanic, and they lived on food stamps for most of his life, he said. He understands issues that rural and lower-income Missourians face better than some previous challengers, he said.

“And I think Vicky Hartzler’s growing increasingly out of touch with that,” he said.

Arvidson is originally from Delta, a town southeast Missouri about the size of Prairie Home. He met his wife while attending the University of Missouri. Arvidson was working full-time at a selling televisions while he was a communications student, and he left school to start working full-time as a loan officer because he needed the stability and benefits of a career, he said.

The couple moved to the Boonville area about 4 years ago.

Health care access is a main focus of Arvidson’s campaign. Treatment of basic medical needs, including preventive care and any care a doctor deems necessary, is a right, and everybody should have access to it, Arvidson said.

Arvidson supports something “similar to Medicare for all,” that makes more people eligible for federally managed and funded health insurance plans, he said. Private insurance programs aren’t based on what is best for the patient, because they are managed by for-profit companies, he said.

Arvidson’s father, a mechanic who didn’t have health insurance, died in February after being sick through the winter. During his illness, Arvidson and his sister had to make decisions about his father’s treatment based on what he could afford, rather than what he needed, the candidate said.

“Would it have added 20 years onto his life? Probably not,” Arvidson said. “But we would have had more time with him for sure.”

Arvidson also said he believes there needs to be reform of federal farm subsidies, which overwhelmingly go to the largest producers. Larger farms require greater investment, but they’re also able to take more risks because federal subsidies serve as a safety net, he said.

Internet connectivity is another focus for Arvidson, who said he’d want to see more federal subsidies for fiber-optic internet services like Co-Mo Electric has done in Cooper County and other parts of central Missouri.

He wants more job training programs as a way to make sure people are ready for new, computer-centric careers and skilled trades. Having internet access is a key component of that, too. It would also let people in rural areas work remotely on things like web design, he said.

Arvidson also believes the federal government needs to fund more smaller road and bridge projects that aren’t being taken care of on the state or local level. Local tax bases are drying up and communities are struggling to keep up roads, which is hurting business, creating a negative loop, he said.

Something like the $82 million federal grant issued last week for construction of the Missouri River Bridge at Rocheport could work on a smaller scale, paying for bridge repairs on lettered state highways, he said. The result would be making rural areas more livable, he said.

bcrowley@gatehousemedia.com