With strong union backing Crystal Quade formally files to run for governor

Jefferson City – Missouri House Minority Leader Crystal Quade formally filed to run for governor Feb. 27, as candidate filing opened. Quade would be the first woman to hold the office in Missouri’s history.

“It’s past time to put an end to the good old boy’s club that has allowed insiders and the well-connected to continually fail to address the problems average Missourians face every day,” Quade said in an announcement. “I’m running for governor because I know what working Missourians are dealing with, how families are struggling, and that their state is failing them. I’m running for families like the one I had growing up in Webster County and the families across Missouri that face similar struggles. I’m running because Missourians’ rights have been trampled on and it’s time for somebody to put their foot down and say, ‘Enough is enough.’

“I don’t have a famous last name or a wealthy family with political connections, I’m the daughter of a waitress and a factory worker, the first in my family to graduate from high school. I know what hard work looks like, and how our state can help families beat the odds and achieve great things,” she stressed.

CLEAR FRONTRUNNER
Quade enters the candidate filing period as the clear frontrunner in the Democratic Primary. Polling suggests she is neck and neck with, or ahead of, the three leading Republican candidates.

Her campaign has been endorsed by numerous advocacy and Labor organizations including the Missouri AFL-CIO, CWA District 6, SEIU State Council and Healthcare, Missouri IBEW State Conference, the Greater Kansas City, Sedalia, and St. Louis Building & Construction Trades Councils, UFCW Local 655, UNITE HERE Local 74 Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 178, the Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska Conference of Teamsters, AccessMO, Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, the Missouri Women’s Leadership Coalition, the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Missouri Women’s Political Caucus, the Kansas City Women’s Political Caucus, the Missouri Chapter of the Sierra Club.