On the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome 1^st Congressional District Republican nominee Steve Bailey to the program.

Bailey is running against incumbent U.S. Rep. Lacy Clay in a district that takes in all of St. Louis and some of St. Louis County. Clay, D-St. Louis, was a guest on Politically Speaking a few days ago.

Bailey is a southern Illinois native who was a personal injury attorney for a number of years. He transitioned into higher education, and teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

While Bailey has never held elected office, he’s run several times for Congress. In 1998, he received more than 25 percent of the vote in a two-person Democratic primary against then-U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt. When then-U.S. Rep. William Clay, decided against running for the 1^st District seat in 2000, Bailey was one of a number of candidates to seek the Democratic nomination. He ended up getting 2 percent of the vote in a race that Lacy Clay won in a landslide.

Earlier this year, Bailey won a GOP primary against fellow Republican Paul Berry III. He will face an uphill battle to unseat Clay, because the 1^st District is solidly Democratic.

Here’s what Bailey had to say during the show:

• Bailey was for many years a “Hubert Humphrey Democrat.” But he said he started gravitating toward the GOP a few years, culminating in a complete party switch.
• He says he runs for office because “always in the back of my mind, I’ve harbored some desire to make a big political splash. ... Congress is something that I sort of trained for,” he said.
• If he were to get elected, Bailey said he would put his training as a lawyer to good use. Specifically, he’d want to look at America’s tax code – which he says is needlessly complicated. “I studied it heavily in law school," he said. "And my professor sort of jokingly referred to this one section that had 733 words, seven semi-colons, four colons, 17 commas and not a single period.”
• Bailey said that while he has nothing against the Clay family, he wonders if it’s good for the St. Louis area that either William Clay or Lacy Clay occupied the 1^st Congressional District seat for nearly 50 years.

Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: @jrosenbaum

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter: @jmannies

Follow Steven Bailey on Twitter: @bailey4rep1

Music: “Take Me Home” by Phil Collins 

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