A battle with cancer, a battle for home and work balance, a battle to pay the bills as a single mother. Millcreek teacher, Kristy Gnibus has fought all of these battles in her life, but she now prepares to fight her next one on the national stage. 

Gnibus, a culinary arts and sports nutrition teacher at McDowell Intermediate High School, announced in October that she is running for a seat in the U.S. House Representatives in 2020. She will be running against Mike Kelly, the Rebulican incumbent for the 16th district in Pennsylvania. 

Gnibus, a single mother of two daughters and a cancer survivor, gets her motivation to run from these many experiences in life, such as, “having cancer when I was 20, taking care of my family, figuring out how to still go to school, deal with debt and healthcare,” Gnibus said.  

She isn’t just sharing these experiences with voters for people to know about her, but rather for people to be able to relate to her.

“I feel like I’ve gone through a lot of obstacles that everyone else has in this district,” she said.

In the last decade Gnibus has gotten very involved with learning about politics and preparing for this race. She said that she has known that she wanted to run for the position one day and now the chance opened itself up for her. 

She feels confident in her campaign and running for the spot due to her team and the support from people in the district. When it comes to her plans and campaign, Gnibus has strong ideas on what she is advocating for while running for Congress. She said she wants to fight for “accessible and affordable healthcare, lowering costs of prescriptions, world class education and strengthening our economy.”

However, outside of all the campaign and congress talk, Gnibus is still a teacher to many students at McDowell, and believes things will stay the same when it comes to her reputation. The culinary arts teacher feels as though there won’t be too many changes to her daily routine at McDowell. At most she thinks there will be some students who ask about the campaign or maybe point out seeing her on T.V. 

Gnibus will be campaigning against Daniel Smith, Jr. from Butler County for the democratic nomination, which will be decided in the primary election on April 28, 2020. If she wins the primary, she will be running against Republican incumbent Mike Kelly for the seat on Nov. 3, 2020.