Marshall Works of Springfield is running a grassroots campaign to secure the Republican nomination for Missouri 7th Congressional District seat in Tuesday’s primary elections.



After 38 years in the insurance business, Works said he is running for office for the first time ever because someone needs to step up to help fix congress.



“The way I look at it, the current way of thinking hasn’t had such good results,” said Works. “A recent Gallup poll showed a seven percent approval rating of this Congress, which is an all-time low for any Congress. Even (President) Obama had a 29 percent approval rating, and when Congress’ is a quarter of someone who’s been designated as the worst president since World War II, that’s actually depressing that these are the people representing us, and frankly, I think I can do better. I certainly can’t do worse.”



If elected, Works promised he will not ignore the white elephant in the room.



“We’ve got this ginormous federal debt that no one seems to want to deal with,” he said. “We have consistent trillion dollar deficits. Our economy has been hemorrhaging jobs. Our government is as inefficient as it possibly can be, now we’re taking on this ginormous cost of Obamacare. Our borders are leaking like a sieve, and no one seems to be addressing it, so that’s what I’m going to do.



“I realize I’m only one voice out of 435, and I realize as a freshman you probably don’t even have a full voice, but somebody has to do something. I can’t in good conscience sit on my hands and watch this train wreck continue.”



Works explained that Congress turned to the Simpson-Bowles Commission several years ago to find ways to cut the budget, and it found ways to cut without gutting the budget.



“And they did none of it,” he said. “They basically discounted the entire commission report.”

Works said Congress brought in two retired Congressmen to come up with the plan since Congress didn’t have the guts to draft such a plan, and then chose to ignore the roadmap they were given.



“Does the economy have to totally collapse before these guys get it?” he asked. “Half the country doesn’t pay income tax, and yet we seem to be arguing over things that we’ve been arguing about for years. Let’s look at what’s wrong right now and deal with it. If we keep having the same arguments over and over, each party standing in their respective corner, pointing fingers and throwing rocks at the other guys, somebody’s got to go in, somebody who is able and willing to negotiate.”



Works maintained that what separates both sides is much smaller than what unites us, but leaders never spend any time talking about how to do things.



“It’s why we can’t do things,” he said, “and that’s got to change.”



He said there are many things to clean up in a Congress that only spends about 30 hours a week on the job.



“Their total inability to police themselves from an ethics standpoint, from a term limits standpoint, it’s just amazing,” he said. “They exempted themselves from Obamacare, anything from my perspective that’s good enough for us should be good enough for them, and I don’t see them showing leadership at all, it’s more of a narcissistic response. ‘Here, we know what’s better for you.’ But it’s not best for us. ‘Do what we say, don’t do what we do.’”



He said our tangled foreign affairs could be stronger had the president not gone on a worldwide apology tour for being who we are.



“But yet, all these people from all these other countries want to come here and be a part of us,” he said. “So I don’t know what we feel obligated to apologize for. We have an economic and political system here that allows people to do and be all they can be, and that’s not true in every other country. So to be apologizing for all the bad things we are, that’s ridiculous. We ought to start with being proud of what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished, and go from there.”



Stating that it takes a village to raise a child, Works proclaimed, “It’s going to take everybody to get me elected. I’m fighting an incumbent, and the power of incumbency. I’m competing against somebody who has already raised $800,000 in campaign funds and a guy who has name recognition all over the district. I have none of those three, so in addition to the people who actually believe the way I do, that we can and have to do better, I have to have disgruntled Republicans join with me. I have to have Democrats, I have to have Libertarians, I have to have Independents, who say, ‘You know what, enough is enough, we’ve got to do something here.’ And until that group gets motivated, I don’t know if it can happen.”



Works said roughly 30 percent of the people who voted in the last couple of general elections actually voted in the preceding primaries, and just a shade over 50 percent of registered voters participated in the general elections, so a small percentage of Americans are making the decisions for all.



“So it’s really going to take some motivated people to make a change,” he said. “We’ve got to decide what we’ve got isn’t working, and they’ve got to do something about it, lip service doesn’t get it done. They have to take action.”



Works is paired on the Republican ticket against incumbent 7th District Congressman Billy Long in Tuesday’s primary elections.



