Democratic U.S. Congressional Candidate Missa Eaton spoke at Mercyhurst University in the Mercy Heritage room on Tuesday, Oct. 23. The town hall format discussion was sponsored by the Center for Applied Politics. Eaton is running for a seat in Pennsylvanian’s third congressional district, in which Erie and six other counties are located.

Eaton started off the evening with her personal history. She discussed how she went from retail to real estate, even owning her own cosmetics business. She eventually went back to school and entered the education field, where she has spent her last 15 years, eight of which as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Penn State Shenango.

She said she believes that this wide range of experiences would make her a great representative of Pennsylvania’s third district.

“I’m not just sitting in an ivory tower…I feel like I’ve been where a majority of the district has been,” Eaton said.

She said she went through college as a single mother and lost her home, along with 1,200 others in her county, in just that month.

She also talked about her modest roots, that her father worked in a meat packing plant before going off to serve in Vietnam and that her mother was a secretary.

Eaton then gave a brief overview of her running platform. She is a self described centrist Democrat. She would like to invest in all levels of education because, as she said, “every dollar we invest in our education comes back eight or nine times.”

She would like to protect seniors and veterans to support things like social security and Medicare. She believes in sustainable energy and affordable access to health care.

When Eaton was asked about the biggest difference between herself and the incumbent Congressman Mike Kelley, she responded with, “I think we need to have fair taxation, and I believe he thinks we need to have no taxation.”

When asked on how he believed the event went, Brian Ripley, Ph.D., a Mercyhurst political science professor said, “I think it’s great for students to have the opportunity to meet these people and ask questions. I think it’s great to have these events and we have to have more in the future.”

Mercyhurst Center for Applied Politics (MCAP) extended the same initiation to speak to Representative Mike Kelley, but he was unable to make it due to scheduling constraints. MCAP is non-partisan and does not endorse any candidate.