House Minority Leader Crystal Quade announces gubernatorial bid 

Courtesy Quade Campaign

Crystal Quade was the first in her family to graduate high school. Now, she’s running to become Missouri’s first female governor.

The Missouri House Minority Leader opened the door on her 2024 gubernatorial campaign July 9 with an announcement video featuring Quade herself trucking through bodies in a roller derby bout.

“When you come from nothing, you fight the odds your whole life,” Quade says in the spot, presenting a typical day growing up with a single mother who works multiple shifts.

Having served as a representative of District 132 in the Missouri House since 2016, Quade, 37, has been present for the rise of a GOP supermajority that commands all walks of the state legislature. Not one Democrat currently occupies an office on the executive branch.

“After seven years of watching the divisiveness grow, the extremes just taking over, I just got to a point this year where I was like, ‘we have to fight back.’ We have to try to bring some common sense back to Missouri,” Quade says in an interview with The Pitch on the eve of the announcement.

The Greene County Democrat is the first of her party to make a run at becoming the state’s 58th governor. Her chief rival at this stage looks to be Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft—though Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe will also run in the GOP primary and Rep. Bill Eigel (Weldon) is still expected to throw his hat in that race soon.

“It’s important that in the 2024 cycle, we have a female gubernatorial candidate who is willing to talk about this issue and the seriousness of what we’re seeing in our state, over the past several years—and quite frankly, even before Dobbs,” Quade says of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and reset abortion laws nationwide. 

Courtesy Quade Campaign

“We’re actually seeing women turned away from doctors’ offices. I do think it’s extremely important for this next election cycle that we are talking about it and we’re bringing honesty to the conversation because it’s not a partisan issue,” Quade says.

Quade cites her time spent going door-to-door in Springfield—“not the most liberal city,” she notes, aware of the redundancy—and talking to a number of voters who felt the Republican party had alienated them.

“People are frustrated by this overreach and attack on our freedoms. I know here in my community we have a lot of what folks who would like to call themselves Republican voters that now don’t feel like the Republican party represents them anymore. They will say that it’s just gone too far, that the Republicans are too extreme and they have no business in our doctor’s offices,” Quade says.

She acknowledges that the issue won’t be single-handedly stifled from the top, however. There is more at play in the effort to restore reproductive freedom for Missourians.

“We are still very hopeful that we will have a ballot initiative in the 2024 election cycle to bring right back to Missouri so that is currently held up in the courts thanks to our Secretary of State, Jay Ashcroft, and the attorney general who are trying to delay that. I’m still very hopeful that we can get that done,” Quade says.

Earlier this month, Governor Mike Parson issued 201 vetoes and cut $555.3 million from the legislator-proposed $51.8 billion state budget for 2024—even though Missouri is sitting on an $8 billion surplus. 

“I am still very excited about some of the investments that are remaining. They were some cuts that I thought were didn’t really make much sense, you know, we’re [expanding] I-70, but there was a piece of I-44 [near Springfield] that was cut,” Quade says. “I’m definitely not saying that we needed to spend every penny—but there is money that we have to send back, and there are places that we really need to be investing in, like our infrastructure across the entirety of the state.”

Still, after seven years in Jefferson City, Quade adds that the 2024 budget is the one she’s been most satisfied with.

Her campaign site lists “standing up to the biggest corporate special interests, and stopping China and Russia from buying up our farmland and squeezing Missouri farmers out,” as some other priorities for her potential administration to tackle.

Courtesy Quade Campaign

On these matters, again, she sees a divide between voters and their representation.

“What is disappointing for me is even our Republican elected officials who call themselves moderates are still voting for the extreme—and so ‘moderate’ is kind of a misnomer now,” Quade says. “You’re not seeing these Republican elected stand up and go against the establishment leaders telling them what to do.”

In her gubernatorial bid, Quade will look to stand on the shoulders of those who came before her, including 2020 Democratic nominee Nicole Galloway (who lost with 40.7% to Parson’s 57.1%), and former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, for whom she was once a legislative aide. 

“The great honor of being the floor leader for so long has put me in relationships with a lot of our folks. You know, I’ve discussed [running] with (2016 nominee) Jason Kander, Galloway, and all of the folks who’ve been doing this for a hot minute,” Quade says with a gentle laugh at her word choice.

“I’ve definitely sat down and spent some time with them to hear about not only their personal experiences for them and their family, but also what lessons they learned what they would have done differently,” she says.

A Missouri State University alumnus with a B.A. in social work, Quade is the former director of chapter services at Care to Learn, a nonprofit that addresses childhood poverty needs. She is actively involved in other organizations like Community Blood Center of the Ozarks, Organizing for America, and as a U.S. Senate constituent services representative.