ST. LOUIS — Missouri Independent Senate candidate Jared Young launched a new campaign to highlight the frustrations voters have with the two-party system.
The campaign, called "Two Few" will show how having only two choices impacts day-to-day lives.
"The Two Few campaign is one of those creative efforts we've been working on," Young said in an interview with The St. Louis Record. "It's really an effort to just make sure people realize and point out to people the ridiculousness and the silliness of the fact that we as Americans demand a multitude of options in every area of our lives, whether it's the cereal aisle or in our streaming or in our clothing —everywhere we demand lots and lots of options, except in one of the most important places in our lives. And that is in our democracy. We just settle for just two options."
Young said the first concept that launched last week was "TwoFlix" which showed a streaming service with only two movie options.
"It's a streaming service with just two options and it's really showing just how silly that is, Young said. "And then there are additional ones each week."
This week's release was "2ber," which would be a ride-sharing company with only two drivers.
"There is a 'third car' option — Jared Young, the Independent for U.S. Senate in Missouri," the website states.
Young said each week they will continue to highlight this issue during the campaign.
"We'll continue to release similar concepts that drive this point home in the coming weeks and months to just keep hammering that look, two options are pretty silly and the two options are not serving us well," Young said. "So we really need to start thinking about options outside of those two options."
Young said so far, the campaign has really been resonating with people even though it's still early.
"It's still pretty early to have a really good idea, but the anecdotal feedback we've gotten so far is that people love it and they love the creativity," Young said. "They completely agree with the premise that it is silly that we have two options here, but many, many options everywhere else in our life."
Young said the biggest challenge with being an independent candidate without name recognition to start out with is just increasing is name recognition throughout the state.
"We're making good progress on that," Young said. "I'm really focusing on just increasing that and we are just want to make sure that when the election season really kicks into high gear after the primaries that we're in a good spot and that people know who I am and, and what I'm up to."
Young said that's his big focus right now.
Young said he's been spending a lot of time going across the state and meeting people and getting his name out there.
"We've also been increasing our amount on paid advertising to make sure people know what I'm up to," Young said. "The challenge of an independent candidate is that it's just getting attention. We have fewer resources than the party candidates. We don't have the party machine to help us get our name out there. And so we either have to spend a lot of money to get attention or we have to be creative, so we are trying to get creative."
Young holds a law degree from Harvard University and completed his undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University. He has six children under the age of 12. He was an intramural volleyball champion in undergraduate school and an intramural basketball champion in his law school.
Young currently serves as the chief acquisitions officer at G&A Partners.