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Pund enters 25th district race

Bob Pund is focused on health care and education.

By Michael Sewall
March 18, 2008

Health care advocate Bob Pund talks with friend Jay Lundquist and personal care attendant John Fry Monday morning in Memorial Union. Pund announced his candidacy as a Democrat for the 25th District seat in the Missouri House and is the third Democrat to enter the race.

Photo/Michael Sewall

Health care advocate Bob Pund talks with friend Jay Lundquist and personal care attendant John Fry Monday morning in Memorial Union. Pund announced his candidacy as a Democrat for the 25th District seat in the Missouri House and is the third Democrat to enter the race.

After Bob Pund was in a car accident during his summer vacation in 1989, he said his life was “totally different from that moment on.”

The accident left Pund paralyzed from the shoulders down, but it hasn’t stopped him from continuing a life that has since been shaped around community service and patient advocacy.

Pund, who graduated from MU with a degree in political science in 1994, declared his candidacy as a Democrat for the 25th district House seat on Monday morning in Memorial Union. He joins a three-person Democratic primary race to replace Rep. Judy Baker, D-Columbia. State Auditor spokesman Sean Spence and former MU spokeswoman Mary Still are Pund’s Democratic rivals, while Navy Reserve intelligence officer Ryan Asbridge is the lone Republican to enter the race thus far.

Pund said what sets him apart from the others vying for the seat is the experience he went through as a paraplegic and health care advocate.

“I have a very unique experience of overcoming adversity,” he said. “I think I can apply those lessons at the state level.”

Since his graduation at MU, Pund worked as peer counselor at Services for Independent Living and in recent years as a legislative advocate in Jefferson City.

Pund’s personal care attendant, John Fry, said he drives Pund to the state capital sometimes three times a week, where Pund is trying to reverse the cuts to health care made in 2005.

“He will try to restore as much as there could be and try to fight against the re-branding and harmful intent to Medicare by calling it something else,” Fry said.

Fry said certain health care plans, due to previous cuts, do not always cover certain items that could be dependant on one another. For instance, Fry said, the chair Pund sits in was paid for, but the batteries necessary to run it are not covered.

“There’s just so many things that need to be rethought,” Fry said.

Working as a peer counselor, Pund interacted with newly injured spinal chord patients.

“He helped them address problems they might be having,” said Joanne Willett, the MU Department of Health Psychology administrator, who worked with Pund at the Missouri Model Spinal Cord Injury System. “Since he’s been there it was just a way for them to know there is life after spinal cord injury.”

Aside from restoring the 2005 health care cuts, Pund said one of his main areas of interest is education. He said with continuing rises in costs for tuition and student loans, it has been hard to bring in health care professionals and do what is best for students.

“We need to make education and investment and not the first place to cut,” Pund said.

With growing controversy between universities in the state and legislature over the types of research that can be conducted at a campus, Pund said he would work to ensure academic freedom.

“If we actually put money into research, we can solve disease,” he said. “If we deny research, we deny cures that could ultimately help everyone.”

Willett said Pund’s experience with health care and patient advocacy make him a strong candidate.

“I found him inspiring,” she said. “He’s a very intelligent person and I think he would do a good job.”