Missouri Democrat running for AG stripped of committees after photo with Holocaust denier

Missouri state Rep. Sarah Unsicker, a Democrat running for state attorney general, has been stripped from her committee assignments after a series of bizarre social media posts, including a photo in which she posed with a hard-right activist accused of denying the Holocaust.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Democratic candidate for governor, announced that she was removing Unsicker from the committees late Thursday and raised the possibility House Democrats could expel the lawmaker from their caucus.

Quade, in a statement, lauded Unsicker’s work in the General Assembly but said she had used social media “to promote individuals who espouse baseless conspiracies and racist and anti-Semitic ideologies that are antithetical to the values of inclusiveness, tolerance and respect House Democrats are dedicated to upholding.”

Unsicker, first elected to the House in 2016, was the ranking minority member of the House Children and Families Committee and a member of four other committees. She has drawn praise for her advocacy for children and other vulnerable groups. But the St. Louis County lawmaker may have imploded her own political career in just a few days.

Unsicker took to social media after Quade’s announcement, saying that she was “confused by the statement that I have ‘promoted individuals’ who espouse ‘baseless conspiracy theories.’”

“I have not been offered any explanation of how my behavior was different from my typical behavior, including my refusal to respond to slanderous representations about others,” she said, also claiming that her “associates are known to be FBI informants.”

“I find it very disappointing that I will be unable to continue to serve my constituents in the way that I have been, by pressing departments to answer questions, on the record, that make them uncomfortable,” she said. “While I will continue my service in the Legislature, I hope that the ability to ask questions will also continue unabated.”

Unsicker declined further comment in a text to The Star, pointing a reporter to posts on her social media accounts.

The strange controversy appears to have started on Saturday, when Unsicker posted a series of tweets on X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming that social media criticism over legislation to make cashew chicken the official state dish was part of a “distraction campaign.”

In two separate tweet threads, Unsicker posted a photo of herself with Charles Johnson, a right wing activist whom the Anti-Defamation League condemns as a “Holocaust denier and alt-right troll” who asserted in a since-deleted 2017 Reddit post that the number of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust was false.

Unsicker faces a series of calls to resign and suspend her campaign for attorney general, including from Saint Louis University Democrats and her Democratic opponent in the race, Elad Gross, a former assistant state attorney general. Some social media users have expressed concern over her well-being and apparent shift in behavior.

“It’s unacceptable that a sitting Missouri State Representative is proud to be drinking lemonade, taking selfies, and working with a white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer who denies the Holocaust and has made a career profiting off of conspiracy theories and harassment,” Gross posted on social media this week.

Jean Evans, a former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, however, posted on social media on Thursday that Unsicker was “a good person with a good heart, not a mean bone in her body.”

“Whatever has happened over the past week or so doesn’t change that,” she said.

The move from Quade is considered serious punishment against a fellow Democratic lawmaker and candidate for statewide office ahead of the legislative session next month. Removing committee assignments strips a lawmaker from being able to weigh in on inner-workings of bills as they make their way through the legislative process.

Unsicker remained active on social media as of Friday morning and the posts still appeared on her page. In a follow up post, she said she would be posting comments on her newsletter on Substack.

“At this time, I will not be giving interviews,” the post said. “I cannot respond to legal charges that I have not seen.”