My name is Morgan Harper, and I’m a Democrat running for the open U.S. Senate seat to guarantee an opportunity for every Ohioan.
I was born in Columbus to a teenager and spent the first few months of my life in a foster home before being adopted and raised by a public-school teacher. My mother poured everything into my education. That’s what put me in a position to earn scholarships to attend Princeton University and Stanford Law School, and eventually work in Washington, D.C. at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration.
At the CFPB, we went after the large financial institutions that caused the financial and foreclosure crisis that wiped away a lot of the wealth our community had accrued via homeownership. It is part of the reason that the racial wealth gap has only widened with the median white family having $189,000 in wealth compared to just $24,000 for Black families. We will not be able to close this gap by just working hard at our jobs. This gap is even starker for Black women given we are typically paid a fraction of our peers.
We need pathways to start and grow businesses to accelerate wealth building and leadership in Washington to get it done. Entrepreneurship shouldn’t only be for the ultra-wealthy. We have to directly invest in small businesses and entrepreneurs who need resources, especially people of color and in rural areas. If we want to see Black-owned enterprises thrive, we have to take real action to make it happen.
We must pass Medicare for All to bolster federal support for small business owners and expand health coverage for every American, regardless of socio-economic background. If we have a universal healthcare system, small business owners will not have to provide healthcare benefits and can instead focus on investing in their businesses and expanding employment. Also, more of us, especially aspiring Black and Black women entrepreneurs, will be freer to take the important leap of starting a business without fear of losing healthcare coverage, including for our children, tied to our employment.
There is tremendous economic opportunity in Medicare for All, and a lot more Ohioans are in favor of this policy than you’d think. Just a month ago, Cleveland Heights City Council introduced local legislation calling for universal healthcare in America with a resolution in support of the Medicare For All Act of 2021, proposed nearly a year ago in Congress. For a large majority of Ohioans, and especially business owners, this would be a game-changer.
Another federal program that saw great success for some was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provided loans to help businesses stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. We need to replicate the good aspects of this program and make sure these forgivable loans are equitably distributed. Reveal News did an analysis of 5 million PPP loans and found widespread racial disparities in how those loans were distributed. Given our communities typically have less access to generational wealth that can be used as seed money to start a business, these types of no-interest loan opportunities are essential to growing small businesses and closing the racial wealth gap. We need to enforce antitrust laws at the federal level to ensure our small businesses are able to compete in a truly free market.
And finally, we need accountability when big economic development deals like Intel come to Central Ohio to ensure Black-owned contractors participate and capture part of these huge opportunities for our state.
As your U.S. Senator, I will be committed to advancing this agenda so we can pursue our American dreams and make Ohio a state of the future. Some structural issues stand in the way of more Black entrepreneurs and women entrepreneurs being able to compete, and we need federal leadership to address these issues directly.
It’s time for a new path forward. I would very much appreciate your support in the upcoming Democratic primary election on May 3rd.
