The Republican Party has two wings. Both right wings. But one of the right wings supports Gay rights. The other wing is like a field full of rattlesnakes, pitiless, like Senator MARCO ANTONIO RUBIO and these rebarbative Republicans in Missouri, who ran off a conservative Gay legislator. Freaks. From NPR:
A gay Missouri Republican defied his party on only one issue — but it cost him his House seat
Rep. Chris Sander of Lone Jack, Missouri, was one of the only openly gay Republicans in the Missouri legislature. In the statehouse he often felt ostracized from the Republican Party, especially when he voted against high-profile anti-trans bills.
For the first time in four years, Missouri Rep. Chris Sander won’t see his name on the ballot this Election Day.
The Republican from Lone Jack — one of the only openly gay Republicans in the state legislature — lost his reelection bid in the August primary.
“They, basically, in the legislature, want everybody gay or LGBT to get out of Missouri, leave here and don't ever come back,” Sander said. “If they could pass every law that they wrote and sponsored and referred and had hearings on, then it would be a horrible place to be.”
Sander lost his primary to Carolyn Caton, the former secretary of the Jackson County Republican Party. Without a Democratic opponent, Caton will win the seat to represent Missouri’s 33rd House District, which includes eastern Lee’s Summit, Blue Springs and Lone Jack.
“The constituents of District 33 wanted a change,” Caton said. “They wanted a conservative change.”
But Sander isn’t a moderate Republican — he’s a staunch supporter of Donald Trump who only strayed from the party on transgender rights.
“Chris Sander is a Conservative America First Republican who believes in low taxes and protecting our Constitutional Rights,” his website reads. “Chris will prioritize keeping government small while supporting small businesses and our children.”
His site also touts a 100% rating from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022 (it dropped to 87% in 2023 because of his votes against anti-trans bills). It says Sander is “proudly pro-life, pro 2nd Amendment and pro small business.” It says he “stands against boys in girls sports and transgender therapy for minors.”
But Sander voted against those issues in the legislature, at a time when Missouri proposed the second-largest number of anti-trans bills in the country. He said the only reasons he voted no were because they were bad bills that needed amendments and because House leadership did not let him voice his opinion.
“They let everyone else speak and then they didn’t let me speak,” Sander said. “So I voted no on everything that I was not allowed to speak on.”
Sander said he also supports banning surgery procedures for transgender minors. But he also said he did not want to be on record supporting actions that take away the freedoms of parents, families and doctors.
“I think that the best place for conversations about somebody's mental health or physical health or medical discussions, are between parents and doctors and individuals — not on the floor or the halls of the capital in Jeff City or DC,” he said. “I think those are very personal decisions. I don't think government should be in the middle of healthcare decisions.”
As Missouri’s GOP-dominated legislature coalesces around anti-trans bills, Republicans like Sander who break from the party risk their political careers.
Sander’s political background
Sander is a sixth generation Missourian who grew up in Hazelwood, Missouri, in St. Louis County.
His foray into politics began when he started attending the University of Missouri in Columbia in 2003. Sander got involved in student government, specifically the Student Fee Review Committee, which makes recommendations on changes to the activity and facility fees collected on behalf of students.
The role gave Sander the opportunity to respond to the needs of constituents — in this case, students.
“We did not represent our party, because there was no party,” Sander said. “Everything I did in student government had to do with me checking with my constituents. That's all I did. I worked for them, and I did nothing else. I checked with nobody else. There were no lobbyists and all that.”
Sander also advocated for the university to ban discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation.
In 2004, when Sander was a junior, 71% of Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, making Missouri the first state in the country to do so. (A Missouri judge overturned that ban in 2014.)
A decade passed after Sander graduated from the University of Missouri in 2005 until he became involved in politics again. In 2017, Sander traveled to Washington, D.C., to witness the inauguration of former President Trump.
While at the inauguration, Sander met Republicans from St. Charles County near St. Louis. They encouraged him to join the St. Charles County Republican Central Committee, one of several organizations throughout Missouri that promotes Republican policies.
Sander was elected to the committee, and began helping campaign for Republicans running for state and federal office. In 2019, Sander moved to Lone Jack. The next year, he filed to run for the vacant District 33 seat.
He ran on a platform of keeping businesses open during the pandemic, and beat his opponent by more than 2,000 votes out of 4,741 total votes cast. He did not face a general election opponent.
'They noticed something was different'
Before becoming a state legislator, Sander was a loyal supporter of Missouri Republicans and the national GOP. He frequently volunteered for Republican campaigns like those of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and Gov. Mike Parson.
Sander also supported Trump in 2016, 2020 and in this year’s election.
But as soon as he joined the legislature in January 2021, Sander ran into trouble.
Sander remembers receiving a package in the mail from a former state legislator. Inside was a book called “Changed,” touting the successes of conversion therapy — a debunked practice that seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation.
Sander still has the book, and even thought about framing it in his office. He listed the book and the cost of the postage as an in-kind contribution.
“It kind of separated me from everybody else in the legislature, because they noticed something was different,” Sander said. “But I considered that whole event, scenario, conversations, the book, all that is like bullying.”
Sander rankled other state Republicans during his unsuccessful attempts to change the language of the Missouri Constitution to recognize that marriage is between “two individuals” — as with same-sex marriage — instead of “between a man and a woman,” its current language. (The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodgeslegalized same-sex marriage nationally, superseding Missouri’s ban).
Sander first introduced the bill in 2022. He reintroduced it again for the 2023 legislative session, after President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which codifies same-sex and interracial marriage.
In response, the Jackson County Republican Party considered a resolution to censure Sander as a punishment, though it ultimately failed.
“I think it's government bullying people,” Sander said of Republican lawmakers supporting laws that would harm gay couples and transgender people.
“In all the four years there, I feel more welcome and I feel more accepted by colleagues who are Democrats,” Sander said. “I've been given handwritten notes by Democrats who say, ‘We see what you're doing, we see who you are. We appreciate how you represent a group that is not represented in the party.’”
Still, Sanders’ constituents in Lone Jack seemed satisfied enough with his representation that he drew no opponent when he ran for reelection in 2022.
A Republican challenger
Caton volunteered for the Republican Party before serving as secretary of the Jackson County Republican Party from 2022 to this August. During this time she met Sander, who was her representative.
She found him ineffective in Jefferson City.
“I just just thought the representation for District 33 could be better — a bigger, louder, stronger voice,” she said. “He started voting not with the conservative values of District 33. So that just confirmed that I made the right decision to run.”
Caton knew it would be difficult to oust an incumbent.
She seized on Sander’s votes against bills to prohibit gender-affirming care for minors and ban transgender student athletes from playing on the team that matches their gender identity. She made sure every voter she spoke to in the heavily Republican district knew about his record.
“We kept copies of the bills with us at all times,” Caton said. “So if there was a question about that, then we could show them, and they could see for themselves.”
That stuck with voters.
Out of 3,918 votes cast, Sander lost to Caton by 458.
'I’m not the first gay rep'
Sander pointed out that Missouri’s Republican leaders want a unified front on core issues like restricting transgender rights. He said the party does not tolerate disagreement. He’s a prime example of that.
Another openly gay Missouri Republican, Rep. Phil Christofanelli, also lost his primary for a state senate seat in August. But that was a more crowded primary, with four Republicans vying for an open seat. Christofanelli garnered attention last year for his vocal opposition to a bill that would prohibit teachings about gender identity and sexual orientation in schools.
“Missouri is a place where Jeff City gets together and they want to decide what freedoms and liberties people outside of Jeff City can have,” Sander said. “Where it's just not practical to pass laws that would outlaw drag shows or pride parades or marriage for two individuals who want to be married.”
As political parties become more entrenched in their beliefs, there’s less room for debate or nuance. On the other side of the aisle, the Democratic Party has become less tolerant of anti-abortion candidates.
“You have a lot of issues at the national level that may or may not have to do with what's happening at the local level, that may not have to do with issues in Missouri, that all of a sudden these towns and local Republicans think that they have to focus on,” said Scott Warren, a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at John Hopkins University who studies election trust and democracy.
“There's certain issues that essentially become orthodoxy for the party faithful,” Warren said.
And, Warren said, primaries tend to attract candidates who are more partisan and extreme in pushing party orthodoxy.
The process can make some Republican candidates afraid to be honest and stray from the party line because it’ll make them vulnerable to attacks. One solution, Warren said, is to have more courageous candidates who are willing to go against the orthodoxy of their parties. But that’s easier said than done.
“I think sometimes these people are in a delicate situation where what goes on in their minds is, ‘Well, I need to stay in power, because if I don't stay in power, someone worse will succeed me,’” Warren said.
In spite of his experiences in Jefferson City, Sander isn’t going to switch to the Democrats any time soon. He said he doesn’t represent the agenda of political parties but of voters themselves. Even those who don’t find a home in either major party.
“I'm not the first gay rep, I'm not the only gay rep,” he said. “And it's not the last time I'll be elected.”
1 comment:
Some of these people come from radical religious institutions, similar to what you'd find in the Middle East, and want to legislate based on some utopian ideal, ancient guidelines, or belief that's not backed by proof or evidence to begin with, and of course the lack of logic and reason manifests itself in their stance on a variety of issues. The principal of separation of church and state they justify non observance by pointing out progress as a zero sum game in which they losing. I say that even one of these people in government is too many and separation of church and state isn't happening if even one of them is in office.
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