Writer Sarah Smarsh is mulling a run for Kansas’ open Senate seat in 2020 — and has met with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., about the race, the Kansas City Star reported Tuesday.
Smarsh, whose book “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,” was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award, also has met with Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the news outlet reported.
“I became a writer, in part, to hold government accountable and call out cultural attitudes and policies that harm disadvantaged groups—including the working-poor Kansas farming community I grew up in,” she told the Star in an email.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, announced in January he won’t seek re-election; Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.
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