Ray Hartmann Is Running for Congress to Oust Ann Wagner

On tonight's episode of Nine PBS' Donnybrook, longtime panelist Ray Hartmann made a surprising announcement: He is retiring from the show — and journalism, too.

The Riverfront Times'  founder and longtime columnist before starting his St. Louis Insider Substack, Hartmann seldom, if ever, misses a week on the show he helped to launch. Of the five current panelists, he and Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan are the only two who were there at the show's debut in 1987.

But he has good reason to give up his soapbox: Hartmann is running for Congress. Tomorrow, he says, he will file the paperwork in Jefferson City to challenge U.S. Representative Ann Wagner (R-Ballwin).

"I really think this is the most important election of our lives," he says. "This is not a fire drill. It's a fire. Women in our community and in the Second Congressional District are facing the loss of reproductive freedom — that's the biggest single issue of our time. And God forbid, if Donald Trump wins the election, we need someone who will stand up to him, not enable him."

Hartmann is a longtime critic of Wagner, as even a cursory reading of his past columns makes clear. He says, "No matter what she says about Trump — and sometimes she'll say something — she always comes back to enabling him."

Hartmann mentions the fact that Wagner's fellow member of Missouri's Republican delegation, Josh Hawley, had to chastise Wagner last week for suggesting the bill that would make St. Louisans exposed to radioactive nuclear waste due to the feds' malfeasance was too expensive. "We need somebody who will fight for the district," he says. "On multiple occasions, she's either calling for less money to be involved or not do it at all unless there's a pay-for," he says. "I've never heard of anybody abandoning the people of their own district like that."

Hartmann has had a long career in journalism after founding the Riverfront Times as a 24-year-old, and there's a long record of him staking out positions not just on Donnybrook panels but also in the columns he's written for the RFT. Is he worried that opposition researchers will pore over his old columns looking for statements that might embarrass him?

"No," he says, laughing. "It's about time somebody read them."

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