Why I am running for the U.S. House of Representatives

I am a mother, a stepmother, and a grandmother of six all of them range in age from two to 10 years. I live in a modest home in North Port, Florida since retiring in 2016, with my two dogs; one of them a rescue. I have wanted to serve in Congress for as long as I can remember. I want my children, grandchildren, you and your loved ones to have the same rights and freedoms I had most of my adult life. With my work experience in public service, life experiences, and experience as a candidate, I have learned it and now I want to earn it - your vote. Experience is wisdom. “Our Diversity is or Strength, our Unity is our Power” - as Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi said in 2018. She is someone who heavily influenced my politics and gave me aspirations to learn about “the People’s House” and eventually run for the US House. Having been close to the pain so many Americans feel so often in my lifetime, I want a seat at the table. Elect me November 5, 2024 to be your U.S. Representative in Florida’s 18th Congressional District for the 119th Congress beginning in January 2025.

I ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms against Greg Steube. I could not let the MAGA Republican election denier run unopposed after the only Democratic candidate dropped out in February 2022.  I put my second home in New York up for sale the first week of March and did not look back. Considering I was a first time candidate with little name recognition that started in March of 2022, I did well, learned a lot, and beat all other first time candidates running against a Republican incumbent in a Red leaning U.S. House District.  I did not hit the ground in FL 17 until June after my house in NY sold.  Then, a Category 5 Hurricane, Ian derailed my campaign September 28, 2022 with the almost total destruction of my now only home. Insurance placed me 85 miles out of the district in temporary housing with two dogs and two cats, with only 41 days until Election Day and 10 days until Vote by Mail began.  After taking a little more than a year to rebuild my North Port home and visiting my family completing the road trip I took across county with my father and mother in 1973 and seeing many of the northwestern states I missed, I began my 2024 campaign on my birthday this year, October 21, 2023. I kept my promise to my Dad when I was 15; I saw America first. Now, I have time and experience on my side this campaign. However, I cannot do it alone. I need your help.

Our democracy is the number one issue on the ballot for 2024

We must defeat the MAGA Republicans in every zip code in our country before it is too late. We must take back the U.S. House of Representatives. We must finish the work Democrats and the Biden Administration started in 2021 enacting historic legislation that benefits the lives of every American. We are on a slippery slope to becoming an autocracy. They are chipping away at our fundamental freedoms some of them that took many years and cost many lives to attain. We cannot allow the minority extremists to take over our government.  They are  enabled by a bought and paid for Supreme Court, three of them appointed by the twice impeached, four time indicted, election denying, former loser President Trump and Speaker of the House that wants to continue the war against every day Americans along with Greg Steube and other MAGA Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate. My Priorities in 2024 are the same as they were for 2022 only the stakes are higher now. Number one is protecting our fundamental freedoms and our democratic Republic from the fascist MAGA Republicans and the execution of their Project 2025 plan led by the former disgraced President should he be elected in November 2024 to a 2nd term. That is why effective April 19, 2024 I took another leap of faith. I could not allow the Wolf in Sheep’s clothing MAGA Republican Scott Franklin run unopposed for a second term in the gerrymandered new 18th Congressional which used to be part of Congressional District 17 prior to April 22, 2022.  Congressional District 17 has two Democrats that declared after I did that will take each other on in the Primary on August 20, 2024 and one will emerge and take incumbent MAGA Republican Greg Steube in November. I wish them both well in defeating MAGA.  I will be taking on incumbent MAGA Republican Scott Franklin from now until I defeat him on November 5, 2024 with your support!

Not necessarily in this order or all-inclusive my priorities are the issues that affect ALL every day Americans, minorities, women, LGBTQ+, working class individuals and families, middle and low-income individuals and families, seniors, the disabled, the poor, and veterans. They are; Public Safety, common sense gun safety protection including Universal background checks and banning certain assault weapons, Public Health, Affordable Healthcare with a Public Option, Medicaid Expansion, Mental Health, the Opioid and Fentanyl epidemic, Election Security, Voting Rights, Caring for Veterans and Seniors, securing and improving Social Security and Medicare benefits for the future, Long-term care for Seniors and the disabled, codifying Roe v. Wade a women’s right to choose (1972 ERA), affordable Housing, Fighting Inflation and strengthening the Economy, Unions, Pro-labor, updating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), Student Loan Debt, and combatting Climate Change and protecting our Environment.

To read more about my Legislative Priorities click here

I will to be the U.S. Representative that responds to your concerns and priorities and what keeps you awake at night or wakes you up way too early. Your needs and those of your loved ones are my number one priority, unlike my opponent Scott Franklin.  I will work across the aisle with reasonable Republicans, the few that remain, willing to enact meaningful legislation to improve the lives of every day Americans rather than focus on endless debunked investigations, unconstitutional impeachments and culture wars. Democrats together with our President passed historical legislation in the first two years with a divided Congress but there is so much more we need to accomplish. Click on the envelope to send me an email, I always respond promptly and directly, follow me and message me on Facebook and Twitter, take action with me get involved, volunteer to help and please donate only what you can afford.  The MAGAs have large war chests for 2024 so please give what you can or donate your time if you cannot. I promise to fight for you. I am currently a member of most of the Florida Democratic statewide Caucuses currently active in the County of Sarasota (Environmental, Women’s, Black, Hispanic, LGBTQ+ Stonewall, Jewish, Public Education and Progressive) I also serve as the President of the Democratic Environmental Caucus of Sarasota County since September 2023.

More about Andrea Doria Kale

Early Childhood

I was born on October 21, 1958 in New York to a working middle class family striving to live the American Dream.  My mother Dorothy Trefilio, was a second generation Italian American, born an only child in Brooklyn NY in 1931 during the Great Depression and worked as a Legal Secretary all of her adult life. My father Joseph Kale was a third generation Croatian American born on the family farm in rural Pennsylvania in 1926, his sister, my Aunt Catherine was born in 1928 and they had a sister Josephine born in 1927 that died at 15 months from pneumonia. My Dad a World War II Navy Veteran worked as a Foreman at a Steel Company most of his adult life. My brother Joseph Kale Jr. was six years old when I was born. My mother worked so the family could afford our home in Long Island and my paternal grandmother took care of my brother and me. I spent all of my summers growing up at my grandmother’s home in rural Pennsylvania with my brother and my three first cousins. I was the baby and the only girl. I was smart and curious, could spell the word Encyclopedia when I was in Kindergarten, and was reading on the sixth Grade Reading level by the middle of 1st grade. My curiosity often got me in trouble. When I was two, I threw my Etch a Sketch out the kitchen window because I wanted to know what was inside of it. I was a straight A honor student, that barely had to study all the way through Junior High School. It was not until High School that I struggled when my family situation began to crumble. When my parents would get time off in the summer, they would pick my brother and me up and we would often go to vacation at my grandmother’s sister home in St. Petersburg, Florida. In the photo gallery, you see me at age six with the colorful Parrot at Busch Gardens in Tampa. In 1968, my mother decided she wanted to see the Florida Panhandle instead of visiting Aunt Albina in St. Pete so off we went only my brother stayed behind with grandma, Aunt Catherine and our three cousins. That summer I got my first impressions of life in politics. We stayed in an efficiency apartment in Panama City, Florida. I will never forget this it was a rainy day, so instead of being on the beach were inside watching TV while my mom cooked spaghetti dinner. Back then, there were only three TV channels and Public Television so there was not much on except for the Republican National Convention, held in Miami Beach Florida that year. They nominated Richard Nixon, who won the presidency only to resign in scandal and disgrace in his second term. There were other notable people in politics at that convention and I remember my father and mother telling me all about them, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller, and George Romney. I am certain my mother was a Republican and my father being a union man was a Democrat although that was the first and only time I remember my parents talking politics.  I have never voted for a Republican in a Presidential race and was not old enough to vote for Jimmy Carter the first time, so my first Presidential vote was for him the second time in 1980 when Reagan won.

My Teens – When the pain began

My father, my hero, lost his job in the summer of 1973, but not until after he took mom and me on a trip across country to California and on the way stopping in Texas to visit my brother who was in the Air Force Basic training. I was my dad’s co-pilot for every road trip my mother did not drive. The night before we were to leave my dad called me to the kitchen table with the Atlas in hand and said “Andrea, you know Victor Steel Company is on strike and if we go on vacation tomorrow I may not have a job when we get back, so what do you think should we still go?” To which I replied “If not now, when Daddy.” We went and my father did lose his job, management closed its doors on the union workers and shut down permanently that year. My father had no regrets, he loved to drive, travel the country and educate me about how other people lived and I loved it.  He always said Andrea you have to see America first before you travel anywhere else in the world. The loss of his job took its toll on the family even though my mother was still working and my father took a job driving a Taxi. My father suffered a mild heart attack 10 months later, my parents separated and sold our home, my mother moved to Manhattan and I stayed with my grandmother and father while I finished school.  My grandmother suffered a massive stroke a few days before my 17th birthday and my father suffered a massive heart attack 10 months later two months before my 18th birthday.  My brother got an early honorable discharge from the service when my father died in 1976. He went to live with my mother the end of September and I was on my own even before I turned 18.

Early Adulthood through my 50s - How I was earning a seat at the table

In 1977 with Roe v. Wade only being in effect for 4 years I was alone and pregnant but I had a choice. If you look at my banner on my Home page, you will see I have always been “a critical thinker, a problem solver and a truth teller”. Here is the truth I was all alone, in fact homeless for six months from October 1976 to April 1977, until I finally got some small inheritance money and got an apartment in Brooklyn. It was there in the summer of 1977 I got pregnant with my daughter. I wanted to keep and raise my daughter but my mother was still alive and working and could not help me. There was little to no assistance for single mothers back then but I kept holding out hope that somehow I could raise her on my own. She was just a tiny problem growing in my womb I was determined to solve. Since I was living on my own, I did not tell the biological father, nor my mother and grandmother until it was too late for an abortion.  Not that abortion was ever something I considered even though it was legal. It was a very personal and difficult decision not motivated by my religion Roman Catholic or anyone else, or my struggles. I wanted to keep her it is that simple but having no resources I placed her for adoption at birth. We both searched for one another as soon as she become an adult and in July of 2002, we were reunited.  We are close, she and her husband have blessed me with four grandchildren, and they all call me “Grandma Andrea”.  I believe anyone with a uterus that needs to make that so personal, private, and difficult medical decision whether or not to continue a pregnancy or terminate up until viability is hers or  his (yes transgender men have a uterus) and theirs alone to make without government interference. Life begins at first breath. Every person’s experience with pregnancy is unique to them. Medical decisions are between a Physician and the patient there is no room for politicians in the exam room.  I stand by Roe v. Wade that was the law of the land for almost 50 years and will do everything in my power as a U.S. Representative to restore that right so my granddaughters and step granddaughters can have the same freedom of bodily autonomy that I had my entire reproductive life. 

About a year after my daughter was born in 1979 I began working as a Researcher and IT Director at a large not-for-profit National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. (NDRI) primarily funded by the National Institutes of Health. We studied the effects of Substance and Alcohol Abuse on all populations and its effects on health, mental and physical, related infectious diseases such as AIDS and Hepatitis both domestically and internationally. I organized a union in my work place in 1987 and served as the local President for 10 years of Division 500 and as an Executive Board member of the parent union Public Employees Federation until 1998 when I was promoted to management. I was the lead negotiator of three contracts for the Professional and Technical Clerical Unit that voted to bargain collectively in 1987 when the National Labor Relations Board certified us. I was able to achieve better wages, flexible work hours, shift and over-time pay as well as a seniority system and severance pay for layoffs, which was especially important because our organization’s primary funding was grants, typically lasting 3- 5 years. During my spare time, I volunteered for many political campaigns, mostly Presidential including Bill Clinton and Barak Obama. When Hillary Clinton began her campaign for President in April of 2015, I was one of the first to sign up to volunteer at her campaign Headquarters in Brooklyn N.Y.  For the next year after my day was finished at NDRI I drove to Brooklyn from Manhattan at least three nights a week to do whatever it took to help elect the first woman President of the United States.

Losing my job in my late 50s - the pain of Ageism

After 37 years at NDRI in May of 2016, I suffered a “forced retirement”.  I was laid off from lack of grant funding just six months after I bought my “retirement” home in Florida.  My job prospects were dismal as a woman in her 50s earning more than 100k a year when I lost my job.  After many interviews in my field of work in N.Y. and several months gone by, unemployment running out soon, and my savings almost drained, I applied for work for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign in Florida as the state IT Director and Deputy Operations Director in Tampa Headquarters. I got the job 7 days a week 10 hours a day  traveling to and from Tampa and my North Port home 160 miles a day during the summer of 2016. NDRI, Inc. closed its doors in 2019 during the Trump administration after being one of the longest and largest not-for-profits of its kind since 1967. From 2017 through 2019, I struggled financially having lost my job at age 57 like many workers in their 50 do today (ageism) and not finding work to sustain myself after Trump won the election.  I began to suffer from depression; I drained much of the liquid portion of my 403b Retirement account to pay my two mortgages, health insurance and just survive from one day to the next.  In January of 2020 just before the pandemic hit in March with only 50k left in the liquid portion of my 403b, I decided to take a lifetime annuity from the portion of my 403b that was not liquid roughly half of the original total yielding me enough to survive each month. I received my Social Security in March of 2020 when the pandemic began retroactive to when I applied in 2018 for disability. I started volunteering for the 2020 Biden campaign in Florida when I finally had enough to do a little better than just survive at the age of 61. I thought of my father often during my rough two years. He lost his long time union good paying middle class job at the age of 47, which was typical in the 1970s for a man. He suffered a mild heart attack that year, struggling to keep the family together, having to sell our home and work as a New York City Taxi driver, separating from my mother, losing his mother, the pressure he felt, anxiety and depression, he died from a massive heart attack three years later at the age of 50. My Dad was my hero; he was a fighter, a WWII Veteran at age 17.  My Dad knew I was a fighter too, so I fought through that period in my late 50s and early 60s making the tough decisions and doing the next right thing for me and my loved ones. I did not want to die young; I had a purpose to fulfill, a duty, to serve the people in public office someday.

I was so close to the pain that so many Americans feel in their everyday lives so many times, I felt I earned my seat at the table, so I took a leap of faith and ran in 2022. When I lost in 2022 it was mostly due to circumstances beyond my control, a category 5 hurricane, a short campaign only 5 months when the only other Democratic candidate dropped out, but I stepped up anyway and I have no regrets.  Let’s do it together this time, help me finally get my seat at the table in 2024. I deserve a real seat not a folding chair! I promise this will be the fight of my life, fighting for all Americans, our democracy, most of all fighting for you the people of the 18th Congressional District, Florida’s Heartland.

“Our diversity is our strength, our unity is our power!” ~ Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi