Blog: Alexi on KMOX in St. Louis

Statement

As part of his 16-stop Illinois Jobs Tour last week, Alexi joined hosts Doug and Debbie on KMOX's Total Information A.M. During his interview, Alexi explained why he's running for Senate and discussed his plans to create jobs and keep corporate money out of our elections.

In Mascoutah, Springfield and Carbondale, both Alexi and Senator Dick Dubin spoke about the need to enact fair economic policies that benefit all Americans, not just the top 2%.

Debbie: We- as you probably know, a huge chunk of our listening audience is in the metro east. And things are a little different in Southern Illinois than they are in the Chicago- it's almost-I grew up in Chicago, so I can say that Chicago is almost its own little part of the world, and then there's the rest of Illinois. How do you avoid being seen as part of that Chicago Democratic machine? We have the whole Governor Blagojevich thing, that whole trial over- and you know the whole trial about the Senate seat that you're running for. How do you- what would you say to people here in Southern Illinois about how you are different from that?

Alexi: Well the folks in Southern Illinois know me because when I ran the first time, when I ran State Treasurer, I actually ran against the machine. I ran against the Democratic Party. I ran as an outsider. I was endorsed by essentially no one except our now President. I ran against the party, their slated candidate. We were able to win. We talked about fresh leadership. And since I've been the State Treasurer, we've worked well with everyone -- Democrats, Republicans. We've spent a lot of time downstate. We opened the first-ever downstate office, satellite office, of the State Treasurer's office in Mount Vernon, Illinois. We've spent a lot of time focusing on economic development, financial literacy, our Smart Women, Smart Money programs.

The bigger problem to me when we talk about the US Senate, is the ability of special interests and federal lobbyists to decide what takes place -- every piece of legislation. I was very proud, guys, to be the first candidate in the history of the state of Illinois to run for the US Senate not to take money from federal lobbyists and corporate PACs. The first ever.

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