Ohio's Issue 1 Should Be a Lesson for Missouri Republicans, Crystal Quade Says

The Senate minority leader also sees GOP infighting as a serious obstacle to progress

Aug 14, 2023 at 6:00 am

Monica Obradovic

Representative Crystal Quade speaks at a rally for transgender rights on March 29, 2023.

Missourians have a powerful tool in their arsenal — they can change the state constitution by a 50 percent vote of the people through initiative petitions. Pro-choice advocates hope to leverage this in 2024 and enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. In response, the Republican majority in the statehouse proposed raising the threshold needed for initiative petitions to pass — an express attempt to kill any initiative petition on abortion.

But Democrats see hopeful news from Ohio. Last week, voters there soundly rejected Republican-backed Issue 1, which had been designed with similar intent. We caught up with Missouri House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, who is also running for governor, to discuss what Ohio’s vote could indicate for Missouri.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What can Missouri glean from Ohio’s rejection of Issue 1?

I think Ohio will show my Republican colleagues that their plan to stifle voices in Missouri is not going to work. They’re trying to do almost the exact same thing here and have been for quite some time. I think Ohio is a good representation that it won’t work.

We’ve seen Republicans try this in other states too. North Dakota, Arkansas and Florida have passed or attempted to pass something similar. Why do you think the initiative petition process is such a focus all of a sudden?

I think it is similar to the strategy that we’ve seen them do with multiple issues across the country. It’s almost like there’s a playbook; the same bills are handed over, and a lot of times my colleagues don’t even know what are in the bills they’re filing. There’s a really good strategy they’ve done across the country in terms of strategy and working cohesively. And I think this falls into that bucket.

But for Missouri, specifically, we’ve seen initiative petitions be utilized time after time for progressive concepts and overwhelmingly continue to win. With abortion, the speaker of the House said at the end of the year that because Senate Republicans did not get this done, it’s going to be their fault when abortion is accessible in our state again.

Do you think Missouri Republicans will be successful this upcoming session in getting something before voters on initiative petitions?

I don’t believe so. This past legislative session, we saw so much infighting from the Republicans. They kept going back and forth on the threshold they wanted. They just kept fighting with each other. Next legislative session is going to be during an election year where many of those same people are now running against each other for various primaries. So no, I don’t think it will get done.

And if Senator Caleb Rowden is not making it a priority, then that makes it even harder for them to get something done. [In an interview with the Post-Dispatch last week, Rowden, the Senate’s president pro tem, said he doubted Missouri could raise the constitutional amendment threshold.]

What about your next race? Do you think Missouri is ready for a Democratic governor?

Absolutely. I am a Democrat from southwest Missouri. We are continuing to flip seats and make movement in places like southwest Missouri, where more and more folks are voting Democrat.

It’s not just about our public policy stances. I believe that Missourians everywhere are frustrated with politics in our state right now. We have Republican lawmakers trying to out-extreme each other to win these primaries.

But folks are often frustrated with how little is getting done. This legislative session had the least amount of bills passed in my entire life, besides the year of COVID. We are not moving forward; in fact, we’re going backwards in so many places. I think that will bode well not just for my race, but for Democrats all over the state.