Don Coover, Democratic candidate for the 2nd District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, spoke to a crowd of about 30 gathered at the Dr. John Silas Bass North Community Building Thursday.
The event marked the first meeting of the year for Allen County’s Blue Dot Club, a group formed last year by Allen County Democrats.
Republican Derek Schmidt currently holds the Congressional seat after easily defeating Democrat Nancy Boyda, 57% to 38%, in November 2024.
Coover, a West Point graduate and Army veteran, said he’s doing all he can to give Schmidt a run for his money. “I’m 75. I’m not going to do this for 20 years,” he said. “I’m doing this because I’m a patriot, not because I’m a mercenary.” 
Coover spent much of the meeting answering questions from attendees, inviting them to ask him anything. “Trust me, I can take it,” he said. “I’ve had my butt chewed out before by real professionals.”
Throughout the evening, one phrase he returned to often was, “This election is important.” Coover seemed genuinely furious at the current state of affairs.
“What we’re doing to the ag economy in Kansas has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “We have destroyed our markets for commodities that we’re paying people to produce. It’s crazy.”
Coover lives in rural Galesburg in Neosho County. He is a veterinarian and owns SEK Genetics, which focuses mostly on cattle. Coover said about 60% of the economic output in Kansas’s second district is ag-related, which, he said, makes the current tariffs especially damaging for the state.
“The tariffs that we’ve instituted have destroyed our overseas markets,” Coover said. “For years we’ve subsidized the overproduction of grains in this country so that we never run out of food. We have to have overseas markets for our excess production, but we’ve destroyed those markets with tariffs. And the fact that we have a leader that tells everyone in the U.N. that they’re going to hell — that’s a problem. And Congress isn’t standing up to this.”
Coover graduated from Erie High School in 1969. After his Army service ended, he graduated from Kansas State University’s veterinary school in 1986 and has been in Southeast Kansas ever since. He described himself as a “recovering Republican” before switching parties for good after January 6, 2021.
When asked about healthcare, Coover said he was in favor of extending the ACA subsidies, saying that “it’s the right thing to do so that we can get to a place that’s a heck of a lot better than what we have now.”
He hesitated when asked about Medicare for All. “I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of every piece of legislation,” Coover said, “but I can tell you that the U.S. is unique among industrialized first-world countries. We pay a very high price for a very poor product.”
Coover said he was against school vouchers and opposed redistricting efforts. “I’m not a big fan of big government, and I’m not a big fan of real small government either,” he said. “I think the government has a place in our society and has things it has to do and do well.”
He expressed frustration with the current administration’s efforts to take over Greenland and the ICE operations in Minneapolis.
“The reason we’re having all these,” Coover began, before stopping himself. “I should shut up,” he said, “but the reason Donald Trump keeps coming up with all these catastrophes is because if they dig up everything that’s in the Epstein files, Donald Trump is probably going to be in jail.”
The lightest moment of the evening came when someone asked for his thoughts on the Constitution. “I’m pretty much in favor of it,” Coover said with a grin.
