SM East parent Sarah Preu stood under the warm lights of Overland Park’s Strang Hall, gazing at 30 new faces. Some were young democratic socialists, others were parents and longtime residents of Kansas’s 3rd Congressional District — the seat she’s now running for in Congress.
“I’m so happy to see your faces,” Preu said. “It feels like hope.”
For the past decade, the idea of running for office had been “boiling” in Preu’s mind. But she was raising two kids, starting businesses and running a nonprofit.
Then Preu’s kids grew up, and she attended several political events with Democrats in Johnson County. She noticed that few strategies targeted young voters.
“I didn’t hear a strategy about young people voting,” Preu said. “I may be 48 years old, but I think I know how to get these kids out to vote, and I know why they aren’t interested in voting.”
Preu talks to her college-age son and her 17-year-old daughter. She knows what the social media algorithm is showing them.
So, around four weeks ago, Preu officially decided to run. She told herself: Let’s go. Let’s figure out what it takes.
Her husband Jason built a campaign website, and Preu set dates for her first community event at Strang Hall on Feb. 22. Preu began volunteering at a “No Kings” protest and campaigning door-to-door and online.
Preu isn’t running as a typical politician but as a member of the working class. And although she recognizes the social and economic diversity of her district, she wants to highlight the unity of values and hopes of her coalition.
“What I'm trying to get done is to see each other as people of good conscience who disagree about the framework [for how the government should work],” Preu said. “But we don't disagree that we want the best for each other. For our children.”
Since Preu started campaigning — all to prepare for the Aug. 4 primary election and Nov. 3 general election — her son and SM East 2024 alum Roman has seen how his mom's passion has energized her.
“I see her getting ready for political events, and she just seems very activated,” Roman said. “It's like an engine revving.”
A central catalyst of Preu's campaign is the influence of her late mother, who was a social worker in schools serving students predominantly below the poverty line. Preu’s nonprofit, Nana's Christmas Tree, honors her mother's vision by helping cover expenses for lower-income families.
“Those poverty-stricken schools always had a family or two or three or four at Christmas time that broke my mom's heart because they were in an unusual situation,” Preu said. “These weren’t necessarily the families that were always in trouble. My mom's focus was really more on the working poor — the people who had two or three jobs.”
In its first year, Nana’s Christmas Tree helped 10 families, including a woman whose husband died at 42, leaving her to raise their 13-year-old daughter alone. Since then, the nonprofit has helped families cover car repairs, medical bills and expenses for small business owners. Those same working families — doing everything right but one crisis away from falling behind — are who Preu wants to fight for in Congress.
Through her work as a technologist, nonprofit director and small business owner selling soaps and perfumes, Preu has learned accounting, how to run a board and how to work with new people under strict deadlines — all skills Preu believes render her specially qualified for office.
“I learned delivery, and that’s something I'm excited to bring to Congress,” Preu said. “There's a lot of ‘when we get to it, we’ll get to it’ in Congress. Pushing delivery would be a huge differentiator because that's part of technology. You’re expected to deliver what you said you were going to deliver. And if you don't, there are real consequences.”
As a congresswoman, Preu aims to reduce corporate interests, overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, abolish ICE and rebuild the middle class from the bottom up.
At community events, Preu speaks with people who feel their voices have been marginalized in the Democratic Party.
“We get labeled progressive, but I don't feel that these are inherently divisive issues,” Preu said. “I think the [issues] are manufactured. The rage and division are manufactured.”
She wants the focus to be on policy and not on uncompromising partisan politics.
“I'm excited to see, even if she doesn't win, if her actually running with this platform can force change in some of our other elected officials,” Roman said.
Preu’s daughter and Bishop Miege High School senior Bebe turns 18 today. Her first time voting will be for her mom.
Bebe sees her mom as someone who can hold a conversation with anyone, regardless of their political beliefs. But what’s special about Preu, according to Bebe, is her empathy, shining through in her work at her nonprofit or in the events she holds for kids in foster care at local churches.
“It's so special that I'll get to cross off her name on that ballot,” Bebe said. “[My mom] isn’t motivated by anyone telling her to run. She honestly started with zero support, and she's already starting to build that. It’s her individual yearning to do something about what's going on.”
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