During a small gathering at Roop Brothers Bar Wednesday, Delaware native Alaina Shearer (D), Liberty Township, kicked off her campaign to run for Ohio’s 12th Congressional District in the March 2020 Democratic primary election.
Shearer, going against the better judgment of party leaders, decided that Roops, 17 N. Union St., Delaware, represented the welcoming atmosphere much like the campaign she wants to run.
Shearer added she wanted to keep the atmosphere light and happy, so she called her friend of more than 20 years, Joshua Moore, owner of Roop Brothers Bar, and set up her kickoff campaign.
“Of all the places I could have chosen, right?” she said. “It’s because Roops is welcoming to all and has always been that way. It is much like a melting pot embodying what the country should be doing.”
Shearer, like most, was not happy with all the negativity of the 2016 campaigns.
“We’re different from one another and that is what makes us special as a country,” she said. “We need to come together to choose the best candidate.”
A day after the kickoff event, Brooke Wojdnski, a member of Shearer’s campaign staff, said, “It went really well. It was a good crowd, a bit of a mixed bag of people you might say.”
Wojdnski said she talked with Moore about the event and asked about the general reaction of the crowd after Shearer left.
“He said all the patrons had nothing but good things to say about her after she left,” Wojdnski recalled. “That was the whole idea, to hold the kickoff in a place of neutrality.”
According to Shearer’s biography on her website, Alaina2020.com, she grew up in Delaware where both of her parents owned small businesses.
“My first memories are of downtown Delaware,” she said.
Shearer added she is running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to bring people together to solve the country’s problems by using her experience to make the government function effectively for hardworking people and to ensure that children are much better off than the generations before them.
Shearer’s website states that she is a “leader of a national movement for women and a thought leader in bringing about cultural change.” She has zero tolerance for the behavior of today’s average Washington politician and is ready to meet the continued inaction and partisan fighting head-on with her “positive, action-oriented leadership.”
Shearer lives with her husband, Seth, and four children just outside of Powell in Liberty Township.
Ohio’s 12th Congressional District comprises Delaware County, Morrow County, and Licking County, along with parts of Franklin, Marion, Muskingum, and Richland counties. The district is represented by incumbent Troy Balderson (R), Zanesville, who was elected to his first full term in Congress in November 2018.
The filing deadline for the March 17 primary election is Dec. 18.
