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Trump to tout St. Charles as national example of economic growth

President Donald Trump during a campaign stop in St. Louis in March 2016.
File photo, Bill Greenblatt | UPI
President Donald Trump during a campaign stop in St. Louis in March 2016.

As President Donald Trump makes a pitch Wednesday for afederal tax overhaul,he plans to cast the city of St. Charles as an example of the “Main Street economy’’ he wants to help flourish across the country.

That’s the word from senior White House officials, who briefed regional reporters ahead of time on Trump’s key topics during an address Wednesdayafternoon at the St. Charles Convention Center.

Trump also is expected to highlight several St. Charles businesses, including Cassandra Erin Studio,which issituated along the community’s historic riverfront. The studio designs and creates custom jewelry sold on-site and atroughly30 high-end stores across the country.

Republican Presidential candidate Dontald Trump points to protesters that he tells to "get out," during his speech at the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis on March 11, 2016.
Credit File photo, Bill Greenblatt | UPI
President Donald Trump during a campaign stop in St. Louis in March 2016.

Owner Cassandra Portier is thrilled by the presidential attention.

“Anytime the president of the United States is going to give you a shout-out, we’re in,” she said Tuesday.

Portier and her mother, Teri Sallee, are slated tobeamong the 1,000 people who have been invited to hear the president’s remarks.

The audience is expected to include Missouri Treasurer Eric Schmitt, St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann and many of the state’s seven GOP members of Congress. The latter may include Sen. Roy Blunt, although the White House expects the senator may have to skip the trip if the U.S. Senate takes up its version of the tax overhaul.

None of Missouri’s Democratic members of Congress were invited, the White House officials said. That includes U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, who the officials said Trump is expected to mention in his speech.

The president is to be accompanied by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon.

St. Charles County is more prosperous, and less diverse, than many of its counterparts in the state and nationally. St. Charles County long has been the fastest-growing county in Missouri. It also is solidly Republican, and delivered Missouri’s second-largest bloc of GOP votes in the November 2016 election – which Trump won handily.

The county has been becoming more racially diverse, as it possesses the fastest-growing population of Latinos in Missouri.

Follow Jo on Twitter:@jmannies

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.