Top Missouri Democrat Crystal Quade launches campaign to become first female governor

Missouri House Minority Leader Crystal Quade launched a campaign for governor on Sunday, saying “Missouri’s never seen a governor like me before.”

The 37-year-old Springfield Democrat would be the state’s first female governor in history if elected in 2024. Quade is the first Democrat to enter a race that features two of the state’s top Republicans in Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

First elected to the Missouri House in 2016, Quade has served as one of the most prominent Democrats in the General Assembly. During her time in office, she has been a strong advocate for abortion rights, gun reform and child care aid. She has also been an outspoken critic of what she describes as an increasingly extreme and divisive Missouri Republican Party.

A video announcing her campaign features Quade skating in a roller derby match. It also depicts her tough upbringing where her family struggled financially and relied on food stamps.

“People say politics can be tough,” she says in the video. “I tell them, I can handle it.”

This year, Quade frequently railed against the state’s near-total ban on abortion as well as GOP-backed initiatives to make it harder to amend the constitution, a corporate tax cut and plans to remove diversity initiatives from the state budget.

A victory by Democrats in 2024 would make a major win for abortion rights supporters in Missouri. Quade, in her announcement video, said she’s “leading the fight to restore our abortion rights.”

Last year, she filed a bill that would have repealed the state’s near-total ban on abortion, which was triggered after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to the procedure.

But the Springfield Democrat faces an uphill battle to take the governor’s office. Republicans hold every statewide office and a supermajority in both chambers of the General Assembly. Then-Auditor Nicole Galloway was the last Democrat to win a statewide office back in 2018.

Galloway, viewed at the time a serious contender to take the office, lost the 2020 race for governor to incumbent Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, by more than 16 percentage points. Parson terms out of office in 2025.

Quade’s Springfield roots may prove to be helpful in her campaign as she will have to make inroads throughout rural Missouri, an area that has grown increasingly conservative.

In her announcement video, Quade took a direct shot at Ashcroft but made no mention of Kehoe or state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican who is also considering a run for governor.

“I’m not worried about bullies like Jay Ashcroft,” she says. “Ashcroft uses fear to score cheap political points and divide us.”

Quade has previously sparred with Ashcroft, painting the Republican as extreme and railing against a rule the Republican filed that threatens public libraries’ state funding over providing minors with books deemed pornographic or obscene.

In the video, Quade said she was the first member of her family to graduate high school. She later graduated from Missouri State University with a degree in social work.