I want to thank you for being here today.

I'm Charles Schollenberger, from Prairie Village, and I would like to be your next U.S. Senator.

As a twenty-year resident of Kansas, I have come to love this state and its people. As a newspaper reporter, I've been privileged to travel all over the state and meet its people.

Kansas is a special place, immortalized - whether we like it or not - in the movie, "The Wizard of Oz." What other state has such memorable characters associated with it, so that people ask you about Dorothy or Toto in airports when traveling all around the world?

While most Kansans agree that the movie is an old-fashioned conception of Kansas, since many years have passed since its making, do they realize that we haven't had a Democratic U.S. Senator in this state since that movie came out in 1939?

It's unfortunately a national record. A lot of things have changed around the country in the 70 years since 1939. However, not enough things have changed here in Kansas.

Here in Kansas we still have two conservative Republican U.S. Senators opposing national health insurance when the rest of the country and Kansans are crying out for it.

Here in Kansas we still have two conservative Republican U.S. Senators who have acted indifferently after the stock market crashed last year due to Republican deregulation of the financial industry, causing Americans to suffer a $5 trillion loss in household wealth.

Our two U.S. Senators aren't attuned to times, aren't attuned to the needs of working Kansans. Nor are the two Republican congressmen who want to be elected to a Senate office next year.

We're going to change that next year.

We're going to send a U.S. Senator to Washington who is going to represent the true interests of the people of Kansas, the working men and women of Kansas, their children and grandchildren, and our senior citizens.

We're going to elect a U.S. Senator who is a not a career politician, one who is both visible and who is accessible to the people, unlike the ones we have now.

Kansans are going to say, "70 Years Is Enough, Vote for Change in the U.S. Senate!"

I didn't make my decision to seek this office lightly. I have spent the past six months touring Kansas and speaking to Democrats in Emporia; Girard; Hutchinson; Kansas City, Kansas; Lenexa; Olathe; Ottawa; Overland Park; Topeka; and Wichita, visiting many of these places multiple times. This past weekend my campaign team brought our message to the fall meeting of the Kansas Democratic Party in Wichita. It was well received.

Everywhere we went people have been friendly and supportive and have welcomed our efforts. I believe that Kansas Democrats are looking for leadership from a candidate who is not afraid to get out among the people and wage a grass roots campaign.

So today, at the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic site, which honors Kansans' commitment to equal rights, I humbly declare my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.

One of America's greatest virtues is its capacity for change. Here in Topeka, people took a stand against segregated schools and it changed the nation. Those brave Kansans, like their forebears who fought slavery before the Civil War, took a situation of shame and turned it into a symbol of hope.

So let us again take back our heritage as a Free State and work to promote change. Change for better schools, change for universal health coverage, change that creates good jobs and promotes clean industry and clean energy, change that will bring our "Wizard of Oz" characterization up to date.