Joining us now on the record is
House Minority Leader Crystal Quaid.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much.
As you travel the state a little bit,
people might look at that and think
she's got her eye on a bigger prize.
Do you hope to run for governor?
You know, we're definitely looking
at it now that sessions over.
We're taking it seriously.
And I'm hopeful to be able to let
folks know soon what my plans are.
Can a Democrat win a statewide
race in Missouri? Absolutely.
A Democrat can, yes.
You know, it wasn't that long ago that we
were holding almost every statewide office.
And how we win it is by both
turning out in the cities.
By activating rural voters and getting,
you know several 100,000 folks
in rural Missouri as well.
It has to be a both and and of
course registering new voters.
We have a lot of folks about the
state who could be voting who
aren't if only it were that easy.
If only.
What message draws those people out to vote?
I think for me the most important
message that that I have gotten
feedback from is local messages to
what matters to folks in the area.
You know, in Jefferson City,
we like the folks like to hyper
analyze everything and really
make things really global.
We talk about culture war issues that
sometimes have no impact on Missouri.
What I think voters really want is
for somebody to knock on their door
and talk to them about what matters.
They're locally.
Is their school funded?
You know,
what is it?
What kind of controls does the
local community and their local
elected leaders have over what
happens to them in their homes?
And so for me,
it's really about localizing it.
A lot of the rhetoric coming out of Jefferson
City from Jefferson City, about St.
Louis during this last session was
a lot about crime and violence.
Can Democrats speak to that in a way
that wins voters hearts and minds?
I think so. You know,
one thing that I will say that's been
extremely surprising to me as somebody
from Springfield the past seven
years I've been in the legislature,
is how much Jefferson City targets St.
Louis. As one of the largest, you know,
economic drivers of our state,
the attacks after attacks to St.
Louis has been really fascinating to me.
But to answer your question, yes, absolutely.
It doesn't matter if you're
a Republican or Democrat.
You want to feel safe in your home.
You want your community to be
a place that your kids can ride
their bikes down the street and
and feel comfortable doing so.
And so again,
I think the conversation really needs to
be about what is happening on the ground.
It's really easy for folks in
Jefferson City to say what the city
of Saint Louis should be doing,
but I want to hear from the folks
who live directly here about
what fixes they they see.
That would be helpful.
You might have seen some of the video
recently of people open carrying large
rifles down the streets of Saint Louis,
sort of a chaotic scene in
the streets of Saint Louis.
That's totally legal, totally legal.
I understand that Democrats,
yourself among them,
want to change that.
Are there some avenues that you can
explore to actually get that done?
Yeah. And that specific conversation was
really frustrating this year because there
was a bipartisan group of lawmakers,
both Democrats and Republicans,
who spent a ton of time during the interim
during the offseason working on trying
to find a crime package that made sense.
Representative Donna Behringer here from
Saint Louis actually was one of the ones
who was leading the charge on trying to
change the law so that children can't
walk down a street open carrying with,
you know, just without any repercussions.
And that was overwhelmingly supported
by Republicans in that committee,
in the working group,
through the entire process.
Until we got it up to the House floor
is when we then started to hear
pushback from folks making this,
saying that Democrats don't care
about the Second Amendment,
that we want to take everyone's
guns away on the House floor.
Now in private conversations with
the Republican electeds, they say,
of course a child should not be
walking down the street unaccompanied,
you know, with a gun.
So to answer your question,
is there room for this?
Absolutely. There's room for this.
Because they.
Off the mic we'll have these
conversations with us,
but more importantly,
voters are telling us that they want
to see some serious change and the
more pressure that is that voters are
putting on to the elected lawmakers.
I do believe it's going to to get better.
I
wonder what the disconnect is between their
private feelings and their public comments.
When you look at just recently a Fox
News poll that came out a range of gun
proposals from background checks to
red flag laws to a number of different
things like banning assault weapons.
Even the support ranges from 6070
upwards to 80% for some of these
proposals in a Fox News poll.
So what's the disconnect?
If that's where public support lies,
how come it doesn't reach the legislature?
I believe that this conversation falls
in line with all the other culture
war conversations where privately
Republican lawmakers will say, yes,
I agree with you that this is too extreme,
but when it comes to actually voting,
they vote the extreme way.
And where I believe the disconnect
falls is with the era of term limits.
We see Republican lawmakers running
against each other in primary elections
for whatever the next seat is.
And so they're constantly trying
to out extreme each other.
And unfortunately,
this conversation around gun
safety falls right into that
and lives are on the line.
A lot of House and Senate leadership,
Republicans in the House and Senate
really wanted to raise the bar,
make it harder to change the constitution.
In Missouri, they couldn't
get that done this session.
Is there still time for them to
do that before November 2024?
No. Should they? So that's.
If they were to do it next session,
it would go on the ballot in 2024,
so it would be on the ballot
the same time as the election.
So we expect to see a question on
the ballot for voters in November
2024 about this question of abortion.
If the signatures are collected
and everything goes correct, yes,
what should that question read?
What should the question be for voters?
You know, right now actually believe,
I believe today there was a court case and
I haven't heard the ruling on that yet.
Regarding the the language of the
actual ballot language and the
fiscal note accompanying that,
there's been a few hiccups along
the way that I I believe the groups
who are organizing around were
fully anticipating this happening.
The the debate around what the language
actually is and we know that Secretary
of State Jay Ashcroft wants to the.
The language that I saw that was
drafted was essentially lying to
voters and we know that the attorney
general or excuse me, the the.
The state auditor,
Scott Fitzpatrick,
actually put out a statement that
he wasn't going to lie to voters
about the cost of this.
And if folks want to dig into that,
there's a whole lot of story around that.
But I say all that in that we still
don't know what the language is going
to be when it is on the ballot in 2024,
but hopefully we'll find out soon.
So there's some back and forth over the
fine print or the political infighting
over what to actually put on the ballot,
but what should it say?
What should the moral question or the
political question be that you put two
voters on this issue of abortion? Yeah,
you know, I'm not going to say exactly
what the language should be because
I am not an attorney drafting it.
But here's what I can tell you that that
voters and and folks who have contacted
my office are the most frustrated
about is the complete government.
Overreach that we are seeing in our
healthcare systems and the the trans
conversation falls right into that.
We are seeing a government that is
continuously going into spaces that
are are should not be reserved for
governments to have access into and
that is the doctor's office and so I'm
hopeful that the language will will
find will be able to support the the.
Ability for an individual to go in and
seek the health care access that they
need and government will stay out of it.
Let me reframe the question.
Sometimes candidates running for Congress
will say we want to put Roe in federal law.
But even Roe versus Wade, that decision,
the Supreme Court justices recognize
that the state can have an interest.
In regulating or restricting some
abortions in that third trimester,
is that a reasonable standard? I
think that it is for some discussions, right?
Every state is a little bit different.
And so when you're looking at
what the Supreme Court has said,
pushing it back to the states,
voters have different opinions on
what that threshold should be.
I have my own opinions that it would.
You know, I think that no, you're fine.
You know, I personally believe that again,
government should stay out of decisions
that doctors and their patients are making.
I I do think that there is a room
for conversation around viability,
but not everybody agrees with me on that,
right. And and there are folks in my
district down in Springfield who feel
more extreme one way or the other.
Some folks don't want to have
the conversation at all,
which is why I think.
The fact that government is getting in the
way of this is the problem in the 1st place.
I see. Is there an opportunity for
the was there any chance for the
legislature to take action on this
issue on its own or was the plan always
just to put this to voters in 2024.
Oh, we there absolutely
is was a there's a way.
You know I filed bills of course lots of
Democrats filed bills to try to undo.
What was passed in 2019?
They were bills filed to even make
it more accessible than that,
because Missouri's laws have
always been very restrictive.
But the reality is,
with the Republican supermajority
in Jefferson City,
there's just no pathway for
something like that to pass.
We see that through the initiative
petition all the time where the
voters have told the legislature
we want Medicaid expansion,
we want a higher minimum wage,
we want no on right to work laws and
the legislature wasn't listening.
So folks utilize the utilize
the initiative petition process.
And so we're not surprised that is here.
On
Tuesday, this week, Lieutenant
Governor Mike Kehoe threw his head
into the ring to run for Governor of
Missouri in the Republican primary.
What kind of a governor would he make?
You know, I think that Lieutenant
Governor Kehoe is somebody that
a lot of folks get along with.
Well, he is considered kind
of a moderate, but there.
But what I would say back to that
is the reality is right now in
Republican politics in Missouri,
again with a primary that we're
going to see between the Secretary of
State and Lieutenant Governor Kehoe.
They're going to out extreme each other.
And there is, you know when you look
at the voting records of individuals,
again, what they might say to you
versus what they actually vote
are two very different things.
And I think that Mike Kia will
fall in line with all the extremes
happening in Jefferson City.
You might have just answered my
next question, but what kind of a
governor would Jay Ashcroft make?
I would say the exact same, right.
He's Jay Ashcroft has very publicly
expressed his frustrations with some
of the moderate decisions that have
happened this year in Jefferson City.
We got some some actually
good pieces of legislation.
Through that I would love to talk
about as well and he's expressed
some frustrations around that and
most recently on a radio station
even went after the right for
gay folks to be married and very
publicly has opposed that And so
he is a very extreme and we I.
Expect if he was governor that
he would rule the same way.
All right. If people were
interested in watching should a
campaign announcement unfold soon,
what should they circle on their calendar?
I I don't want to put out a
timeline right now. Like I said,
we just wrapped up session on Friday,
so we just finished.
And so we're really digging in
now to look at the landscape,
look at what's going on across the state.
Because for me,
when I'm making a decision like this,
it's not a just about the governor's race.
We've got the US Senate race.
We have several State House and state
Senate races that are extremely important,
a lot of them that we can.
Flip red to blue,
where we can make serious inroads
in the the supermajority that
the Republicans have right now.
And so I believe that we as a party
and folks who are looking at running,
need to really look at this holistically
and see what's best for our state.
All right, A long way to go.
Should you jump in, We'd love to
have you back to learn about what
kind of a Democrat you are and where
you might fit in a primary field.
Thanks for joining us. Thank you.