Latest / Breaking The Meta / Missouri House District 63: The Auto Worker Fighting Back in 2026
Transcript
- Breaking The Meta: Hello everyone and welcome to Breaking the Meta. Today we are sitting down with Donald Looney who is running for Missouri's House of Representatives District 63. Hello Donald, how are you doing? Donald Looney: Hello, I'm doing good today. Doing good today. Breaking The Meta: Good, good, glad to hear it. So don't you spend a little time telling us ⁓ a bit yourself? Let us get to know you a little bit and why you decided to run for Missouri's House of Representatives. Donald Looney: Okay, well, that's an easy one. You're making this really easy. So, ⁓ again, I'm Donald Looney. ⁓ People who know me call me Don. I'm a proud dues paying member of UAW Local 2250. So, I'm an auto worker. ⁓ In my spare time, I do a lot of work with the local. ⁓ I've been the chair of our legislative committee, been the chair of our member to member program, just kind of, you know, building a Breaking The Meta: I, you know, I try. Donald Looney: communication up amongst the union membership. In my spare time, I get the privilege of serving as the chairman for the St. Charles County Democratic Central Committee. I'm involved with a number of nonprofits out here and that all kind of started after, you know, the Ferguson situation. And this is kind of why I started, you know, getting deeper involved in politics because I just didn't see, you know, in Missouri. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Donald Looney: They like to call us a red state. But, you know, just Piper, who you all know, good friend, we like to say it's an uncontested state because we just can't find Democrats who are willing to run for office. And so I looked around and asked the famous question. Why not? Right. Why not? And so that's kind of how I started. I started with a couple of school board elections, but I landed at. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Donald Looney: the height of the culture wars with you know CRT and DEI and all the kitty litter rumors. So ⁓ that kind of swept the nation and you know when you have a face like mine that kind of represented all of those bad things that people didn't want. So ⁓ I ran a great campaign, ⁓ you know inspired and informational campaign got a lot of conversation started but I couldn't quite get it over the finish line because I feel like the culture wars did me in. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Donald Looney: But I stayed engaged and involved and like I said, now I'm the chairman of the county party here and you know, spend a lot of time recruiting and cultivating and training candidates to run for office. And this year, the seat where I live was going to go uncontested and I just I couldn't stand for it. And you know, why not now? Right. ⁓ You know, I'm a labor guy. ⁓ Union membership is more popular than it's ever been. Shout out to Gen Z, because those kids are all anti-gay in the unions, you know. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Donald Looney: So yeah, just, you know, it's now's the time, right? With the state of everything in the country, somebody's got to fight back and who better than, you know, a guy who works for a living every day. Breaking The Meta: There you go. Sounds good to me. ⁓ So just to give people that are listening a little idea about your district as you've gone around and interacted with people, ⁓ what are the pain points of your district? What are the things that people in general are talking to you about that they need ⁓ help from the Missouri House with? Donald Looney: Mm-hmm. Okay, well, right now in Missouri, one of the big things is affordability. ⁓ You know, and they say it's a hoax, but we were seeing, you know, local tax hikes to pay for infrastructure. We're seeing just prices of everything, you know, raise up. And then that also leads into, ⁓ you know, the manufacturing crisis and the job losses. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Donald Looney: Our unemployment is is it fluctuates in Missouri anywhere from three to seven percent. A lot of time, y'all can fact check me on that. But it's kind of up and down because those, you know, those manufacturers here at one point in time, St. Louis was like a manufacturing hub. You know, we got railways that go through here. We were like a smaller version of what was happening in Detroit for a while. ⁓ You know, but we've had we have plant closures, you know. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Donald Looney: think there was a Kellogg plant that just laid off a bunch of people. That's the first one that comes to mind, but we're just seeing a lot of that. And so folks are really worried about kitchen, what we call kitchen table issues, right? Like, how am going to put food on the table? How am I going to make sure that I can pay doctor bills? And will I ever be able to send my kid to college? Right. And then those kids that are coming out of college are wondering, you know, can I find a decent job in the workforce? Breaking The Meta: Mm. Yeah. Donald Looney: And then will I ever be able to afford getting out of my parents house? You know, so those are kind of the issues that we're hearing right. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Not that Missouri is. unique when it comes to what I'm about to talk about. But I've definitely heard a lot regarding the Missouri ⁓ Senate House of Representatives, all that stuff in regards to things like accountability and and that Missouri is definitely not unique in that it's it's state, federal, both sides of the aisle. It doesn't matter. ⁓ It's an issue. It's an issue that we're all that a lot of citizens in this country, a lot of constituents Donald Looney: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Breaking The Meta: are upset about or the lack of accountability from our politicians. So my question to you is, ⁓ what does accountability look like to you? What does that mean to you? And how do you want to be held accountable by the people of your district if you become their representative? Donald Looney: Mm-hmm. Well, ⁓ accountability starts with with ⁓ relationship building. You know, you have to have a connection and in roots in the community where you work, where we're serving, right? ⁓ Because you can't really effectively hold someone accountable if a relationship there doesn't exist, right? If you're just going to look at it on the surface and say, I don't like that guy, you're never going to want to have the conversation. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Donald Looney: Right. And if you don't have the conversation and you're not able to communicate with that representative and say, hey, this is what we said we needed versus this is what you've done. Right. ⁓ A good example of that in Missouri is, you know, our initiative petition process we have here. Right. A lot of ⁓ more progressive minded folks ⁓ have kind of. I want to say in effect, maybe there's been a little bit of a divestiture from the two party system. ⁓ We find a way to pass ballot initiatives that will be deemed progressive, right? ⁓ But it's still been kind of hard to get Democrats on the ballot and elected in the office. Last cycle, two of those initiatives is specifically ⁓ Amendment 3, which enshrined abortion rights into our Constitution. And we had a statute measure. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Donald Looney: ⁓ Healthy Families and Fair Wages Act that gave made the minimum wage $15 and offered earn paid sick time. Well, the legislature started the next session and basically unraveled all of those petition initiatives, right? And when we have conversations about as to why would you just go against the will of the people in that way, ⁓ the conversation starts to talk about, you know, businesses. and how it's going to impact businesses starts to talk about, you know, they lead into the tropes and the stereotypes. Well, you know, we can't just give everybody sick days, you know, and it's like, why not? so, so, you know, I mean, you can't write because for me, you know, in most employment situations, folks who don't have Breaking The Meta: ⁓ Yeah, like just can't do it. Well. Yeah. Donald Looney: sick time right now are you know fast food workers. They're your convenience store workers. ⁓ They're your folks who work at restaurants and bars right and I feel like if you can't afford. $80 a day. You know which is probably what a person who makes about $15 an hour would make right if you can't pay a guy to stay home, so he doesn't get the rest of your workforce sick. you need to really look at your business practices. You need to look at your accounting and figure out what's going on. Because we're talking about $80 for a day for a person to stay home when they know they're sick. You know what mean? ⁓ And so, you know, it's things like that. And when we don't get good answers, that's an example of what accountability should not look like, right? ⁓ And, you know, also accountability would look like when we come to see you at the state capitol. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Donald Looney: you're not conveniently busy or out of the office. You know what mean? And some of them just flat out lock their doors and won't let you in. know, so that's what accountability looks like for me. Breaking The Meta: Yep. Yeah. It's pretty amazing to me what I have heard from doing this, amount of representatives that either have never done town halls, never available, never talked to their constituents. And the crazy part is this isn't new. it feels like when I'm having these conversations that these discussions I'm having should be these Donald Looney: Mm-hmm. Breaking The Meta: wild ideas and it's like they're not really it's just we haven't experienced it in so long that that we're just it almost feels like a new concept. Donald Looney: Right, right. Well, and that's kind of the thing here in Missouri going back to relationship building and that accountability part, right? You can't hold a person accountable if they never show up in the state that they represent or in the district that they represent, right? ⁓ And then when they do show up, they're having closed door private ⁓ invite only meetings. You know, they're not answering the phones and things of that nature. We can't get a hold of them. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Donald Looney: So not only is it we're in a state that's uncontested, but we really feel like we're underrepresented because they're telling us, you know what they're going to do even with the gerrymandering maps, right? They've gotten so bold with this thing that you know, they just want to follow the marching orders and and when these maps they they drew these maps you could see that they are literally trying to pick their voters and shrink the areas where voters that don't support those people that are in office right now. So we're really dire straits here. again, that's why I said I couldn't I couldn't sit by I enjoy, you know, recruiting candidates, training candidates and all of that, right. But it was time to get in the game myself. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. So obviously, there's an issue that we interact with a lot in this country, this idea of division, whether or not we actually are as divided as we have been made to feel in some cases, at least. ⁓ Things like affordability, a lot of the things that you're talking about in your district, those are things that Donald Looney: Mm-hmm. Breaking The Meta: both sides of the aisle are dealing with, especially if you're not in that top 10 % of the country. ⁓ What is it like in your district when you walk around and you interact with people that may lean Republican ⁓ or just have always grown up voting Republican and they interact with you and they see that you've got a D next to your name? What are those conversations been like? Donald Looney: Right. Right. Well, so it's been interesting for me. I'll say that the folks on the other side of the aisle love to have a conversation, right? We'll talk and I've had some healthy debates. I've had some toxic debates, right? But when we get down to the brass tacks and the facts of it all, ⁓ the conversation shifts to either culture war issues or Breaking The Meta: Mm. Donald Looney: talking points that they get from pundits. ⁓ And so, you know, I've, I've stopped spitting out and spewing statistics, ⁓ because those are easy to debate, right? But when you talk about the real life American experience, right? ⁓ So for me, public education is a big thing, right? Right along with workers rights, because I'm a union member. ⁓ I believe public education is like the foundation of our society. And Breaking The Meta: Hmm. Absolutely. Donald Looney: In the district that I live in, we have new families moving into this district all the time because we have a good public school system ⁓ and there's still space for them to build new housing. Right. So, you know, we're having debates on what kind of housing, right? ⁓ Builders find it easier to throw up multi-family dwellings, right? Or apartments. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Donald Looney: Well, then we have, you know, the folks who want those to be luxury apartments. So they're pricing folks out of the market, right? ⁓ As when we get to single family dwellings, well, we know where the housing market is right now, right? I'm not again, I don't do statistics. So we won't talk about how the hearts and marketing looks, but those are still homes that is challenging for people to afford ⁓ to live into move into right. On one hand, that's great, right? Because we got some huge employers here in Wentzville. You know, MasterCard is right up the road. Breaking The Meta: Yeah, absolutely. Donald Looney: I'm at General Motors. We have a couple hospitals in our school district is probably the second largest employer in the town where we are. So all of these things are attractive until people land here and they see the pricing of things right and we're really attractive because we're so Saint Louis adjacent. Like I said, we're about 20 to 25 minutes away so you can go catch a cars game. can catch a blues game. Go see a play at the Fox and all of these things and you can still you know drive 20 minutes west and go back to your Breaking The Meta: Yep. Donald Looney: comfortable suburban lifestyle. ⁓ But we're also a working class town, right? We have a lot of union folks here, folks in the trades, ⁓ nurses, know, all the workers like myself, all these people live here. So we have an interesting mix up. I like to say if you just look at the demographics of Wentzville, you see kind of a snapshot of what not just middle America looks like, but what the entire nation looks like. And a lot of the things that happen in this little Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Mm. Donald Looney: town kind of mirror some of the things you see around the country. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Donald Looney: I hope I answered the question there. don't know if I landed it. Breaking The Meta: Honestly, the goal is to hear about you and what you're thinking. And I think you did that. So I appreciate that. ⁓ In the end, you are right. You talked about the idea of sometimes it's always difficult when you're talking with people when they go to these topics that are very ⁓ Donald Looney: Yeah. Okay. Breaking The Meta: culture warish in some way, shape or form. ⁓ The reality is that in general, as I said right before I asked the question, we're all dealing with a lot of the same problems. ⁓ We may not agree on how to get there, but if we can't start at a point of agreement of it being a problem in the first place, there's nowhere else we can go, right? Donald Looney: Yes. Right, right. Well, and that's again, that leads to the challenge that we have, you know, especially in a town like this one where, know, you have working class folks with folks who consider themselves more fluent, right? ⁓ We have to argue over if the affordability itself is a problem. Right. Some people feel like, well, if you can't afford it, you're not working hard enough. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Mmm. Yup. Donald Looney: Right. Some people say I'm working my tail off and I still can't afford it. It's not fair. Right. So instead of trying to fix the actual problem, which is the prices of your groceries, the prices of your gasoline, ⁓ you know, the cost of utilities and things of that nature. Right. And saying, hey, this is not affordable or this is affordable. You know, they say, well, you're not doing enough. You know, so so I feel like that that whole concept of rugged individualism has just Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Donald Looney: poisoned our entire society, you know, because if you step away from that, then they want to throw labels on you. And it's like, no, I just I just care about people, you know, and for me, it's more so the kids because I'm I'm looking past those parents and looking at the family that they're trying to raise. Right. Or can they even afford to to start a family? Right. I mean, there are so many layers to all of it, you know, and I don't know if we have time to go into all of it, but there used to be a time. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Donald Looney: ⁓ Well, I'll say this. I'll point to the last time in my lifetime that I remember conversation actually being about fixing a problem instead of acknowledging if a thing is or isn't a problem. And that was before that was in Obama's maybe second term when he ran against Mitt Romney and we were talking about the Affordable Care Act, right? So there was Obama Care and a lot of folks don't remember, but there was a Romney Care plan. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm. Donald Looney: And if you look down those plans, there were little nuances that were different between the two of them. But the debate in the political sphere was which plan was better, not if we need a plan at all. You know what saying? And that's kind of where we've gotten to. Do we need health care? You know, do we need to do this? Should health care be affordable? Like these are the types of questions that we're dealing with here in Missouri. You know, do these folks deserve a $15 minimum wage? Right. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Donald Looney: You know, do these folks deserve earn sick time? Should someone have a right to any of these things when, you know, as elected officials, our objective should be to get into the room, the halls of legislature and reach some type of compromise to where we can solve what the problems are in our society. But what we see here in Missouri is a lot of folks reaching out and creating problems to solve. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Donald Looney: You know, there's a couple bills in the legislature right now that are just hilarious. And I wish I was there to debate on the floor with them now, but, know, I will be soon enough. like, ⁓ there's one that wants to limit ⁓ electronic instruction to 30 percent of the time that children are in the classroom. And if you're asking me in 2026, that's like the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Breaking The Meta: There you go. Donald Looney: Right? Where AI is taking over the zeitgeist, right? There are screens everywhere in your home, your refrigerator, your microwave, if not your car, right? And I get it. You say kids are spending too much time on tablets and they're becoming zombies. Okay, great. But just like everything else, these are tools that we can utilize to perfect and improve education. We shouldn't be limiting. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Donald Looney: restricting those kinds of things. You know, I'm saying that for those folks in Missouri, that's HB 2230. Call your legislators and tell them it's Breaking The Meta: There you go. Yeah, it's interesting. It almost feels as though the discussion has become, what does American society look like now? Not how can we help the people that are in American society? Like should society, should American society even be want, should American society want to help people? Not how can we help people in society? Donald Looney: Right. Right, right. And that's the thing. That's the beauty of democracy ⁓ because it allows space for those conversations, but it's so fragile. Right. And there's so much political apathy that if we don't get our population to enjoy in these basic freedoms, outline or to join in and take part in these basic freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights. Right. Like right now, you're exercising your first amendment rights, freedom of press. I'm exercising my freedom of speech. Right. All of these things, if we don't all participate and get involved in these things, we're at risk of losing that democracy. And I know those folks like that were a constitutional republic. Yes, but we still have to vote for our representatives. You know what mean? It's anyway, I'm not even going to. Breaking The Meta: as I will now, as I will always say, a constitutional republic is a form of democracy. let's do a little future casting. You we get through primaries, we get through general election, you win. Twenty twenty seven comes around and you get sworn in as a representative of Missouri's 64th District. Donald Looney: Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Breaking The Meta: What's the first thing you do? Donald Looney: Well, that's a great question and I've got an answer for it. The first thing that I want to do would be to secure paid maternity leave for teachers. Okay, that's one thing that they don't have. I'll be here all night if I try to explain to you how it works. Okay, but I think that's just atrocious that teachers are still responsible for writing, creating. Breaking The Meta: Perfect. Mmm Ha ha ha! Yeah. Donald Looney: and facilitating lesson plans while they're on maternity leave right and or if it's a you know a ⁓ male teacher he's doing that while he's at home during baby bonding time. ⁓ It's like you're not even really on leave right so that would be the other thing the second thing would be in Missouri we're hemorrhaging teachers we're losing them in droves and that's probably not unique to Missouri but teachers. Breaking The Meta: Hmm Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. I wish it were, I wish we could say it was. It's happening in a lot of states, especially Southern states right now. Donald Looney: Yeah. Yeah, but those teachers need. The compensation and the resources that they need to be effective in the classroom, and it all goes back to it affects everything else, because when your classroom sizes of your student to teacher ratio increases, studies show that that has a direct impact on your graduation rates, right? Other studies will show you that graduation rates. have an effect on crime in your community. Other studies will show that that crime in your community has an effect on your property values. Okay. And when your property values get low in this society that we live in, that's when corporations and public services start divesting from wherever community that we're in there. So for me, it all starts with making sure that our teachers are compensated well and that they have the resources that they need. to be effective in teaching our children. Breaking The Meta: If anyone who has listened this far ⁓ gets all the way here, if there was one or two things that you would want to make sure that anyone who finishes this podcast and walks away remembers about you and your campaign, what would it be? Donald Looney: Mm-hmm. that this this campaign is for the people. Okay, one of my one of my favorite social media hashtags has been the people's campaign. ⁓ I believe I built a campaign on a platform shaped by the people that I've been on the ground organizing with on the ground being an activist with people I work with every day from my union brothers and sisters to just folks in the community and the things that they're seeing, you know, whether it's it's living wages. you know, sick time and maternity leave, ⁓ you know, bolstering public education. Like, these are the things that the people in the community are caring about. And this campaign is for the people ⁓ by the people because I'm not, you know, outside of a couple of labor unions, I'm not looking for big corporate donors. I'm not looking for big thing. This is the grassroots effort. ⁓ It's boots on the ground. It's hands on the plow. This is a people's campaign. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yeah. If anyone wants to learn more about you or support you, where can they find you? Donald Looney: Mm-hmm. Right now, ⁓ the best place to do be do that, I'm sorry, would be ⁓ across any of your favorite social media platforms. ⁓ It's Looney for Missouri. That's Looney like Looney Tunes, the number four state of Missouri. All right. And that's that's where all the social media platforms are. ⁓ I've kind of been rolling this thing out, ⁓ treating it like a rollout for like a big Hollywood premiere movie. Right. So ⁓ every week and every month, there's something new that I'm launching. I'm taking my time with the website because that's going to be the hub of that communication piece. So that'll be on the way really soon. We're almost there. I'm a creative and somewhat of a perfectionist. So I keep sitting back and saying, no, no, no, it's got to be like this. So that's why it's not launched yet. Ali is working really hard and she's done a great job. But right now, social media would be the best. Yes. Breaking The Meta: hahahaha Well, just in case this comes out after that goes up, what's the address going to be so we can make sure they can find it at the time? Donnelloonie.com, okay, perfect. Donald Looney: Mm-hmm. Website will be donnelloonie.com. Yes, it'll be donnelloonie.com. But right now, Looney from Missouri works for Breaking The Meta: Perfect. ⁓ Donald, thanks for coming on here and letting us learn about you and your campaign and what you hope to do for the people of your district. I really do appreciate it. Donald Looney: Hey, thanks for having me. You know, I started this thing saying I was going to put the solid back in solidarity and so that that's what we're doing. Like I said, this is the people's campaign for those who have listened and made it this far. I want to thank you for pressing play. Yeah. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. And I want to thank you all as well who got this far. On my end, if you like what we do here, if you like what this podcast does, please subscribe. Hit all the buttons down below. It really does help me ⁓ be able to keep doing what I'm doing. hit that like, subscribe, all that stuff. That's right. That's right. ⁓ And just in case you're new to what we're doing here, ⁓ I believe that there are Donald Looney: Yes, hit the like, subscribe, all of that. Breaking The Meta: not even believe. know that there are some amazing people just like Donald that are running ⁓ progressive candidates that don't take PAC money, that don't want to take PAC money, that want to change the status quo around us, that want to have real change, the kind of change that we talk about ⁓ constantly that we need. ⁓ Unfortunately, because they're not doing things like taking PAC money, they need other ways to to, ⁓ they need other kinds of help. One of those things is visibility and name recognition that you can't get as easily when you can't just buy airtime and other things like that. if you're watching this, please ⁓ share it, support it. Please do it with anyone that we're watching. There's some amazing, amazing candidates that are running for office across this country that really love this country. We're talking veterans, moms, dads, teachers, ⁓ business owners. ⁓ scientists. For some reason, there are a lot of biomedical engineers that are running for office this year, at least that I've talked to, which is just, I never thought that would happen, but it's happening, which is really cool. So. Donald Looney: What? No. Yeah, well, our environment is under attack, too. I mean, and that's why they're looking at it. You know, we got I got a great friend and if you don't mind, I'll plug her, but she's Bethany. She's running the Missouri's Congressional District three ⁓ and she's a biochemist, you know, a scientist. I mean, you know, I tell her, was like, you would like the smartest person that I know. And it is amazing that you're you're coming down from your your scholarly tower. Breaking The Meta: Sure. Donald Looney: you know, to get in the trenches on politics, but there are tons of those people all over the place, man. You're absolutely right. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. So please like, share, support, watch the people that might not even be in your district because it helps get their visibility up. It helps potentially push what they're talking about to people in their district just by watching it. ⁓ for those of you that have watched this, please thank you. ⁓ Just in case you're new to this platform, to this podcast, Breaking the Meta is all about ⁓ making, having hard conversations that need to be had, breaking that status quo. and making sure that all people, no matter their race, religion, gender, or identity, get rights, respect, dignity, and safety. So again, Donald, thanks for coming on here and being with us. And for everyone else, we'll see you next time. I'm breaking the meta. Bye, guys.