Missouri Democrats ponder options after Senate breaks down over abortion, paid sick leave
State Sen. Tracy McCreery, a Democrat from Olivette, prepares for Senate Republicans to force a vote on a constitutional amendment to ban abortion on May 14 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
On the evening of May 14, when the House side of the Missouri legislature was almost a ghost town, state Rep. Mark Sharp's phone started buzzing with messages telling him that 'things are getting ready to blow up in the Senate.'
Sharp, a Kansas City Democrat, started making his way to the Senate when he heard chanting. Protesters were in the Senate expressing their opposition to HJR 73, which would put an abortion ban on the 2026 ballot.
After visitors were cleared out to stop the protest, security began to let people back in, and Sharp and dozens of other representatives crammed into the spaces along the edge of the Senate floor to watch what would happen next.
'You had about 50 reps on the Senate floor … maybe 20 Democrats and another 30 Republicans all mixed together. All kinds of camera crews. I've never seen the Senate that packed before,' Sharp said.
'Then, they moved for the previous question, and then did it again on Prop A,' he added. 'Then they adjourned. I was literally stunned.'
After a session considered uncharacteristically productive and bipartisan by recent standards, the Missouri Senate, on the second-to-last day of the 2025 session, broke with its own longstanding tradition and overrode a filibuster.
To do it, Senate Republicans pulled out a rarely used procedural tool called a 'previous question,' or PQ, to close debate and force votes on the abortion bill and a bill to repeal paid sick leave protections.
Senate Republicans' use of the PQ shocked the Missouri legislature for a number of reasons, one being that the tool is very rarely used, because it's seen as antithetical to the chamber's tradition of unlimited debate.
The other is that the move came after a session in which Republicans and Democrats, despite their disagreements, were able to find some common ground and collaborate on legislation.
Republicans have held a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers of the Missouri legislature since 2012. This year, Democrats held 10 of 34 Senate seats and 52 of 161 House seats.
Even so, this session was marked by considerable bipartisan cooperation — a stark contrast from previous years, when Republican infighting dominated the Senate and made it difficult to get much of anything to the governor's desk.
While extreme political polarization nationally might make bipartisan cooperation seem impossible, it's a requirement in the Missouri legislature if Democrats want to get anything done, said state Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat.
'I would not be successful as a legislator if I worked in a silo or if I worked on purely hyperpartisan issues. That's not going to get me anywhere as a Democrat in the superminority of Missouri,' she said. 'It all comes down to me finding common ground with others.'
Sharp said: 'As a member of the superminority, we have to constantly, constantly be talking to these folks in the majority party daily. They're the ones controlling everything.'
Republican House leadership — including House Speaker Jon Patterson of Lee's Summit, Majority Floor Leader Alex Riley of Springfield and committee chairs — have control over every step in the legislative process, including whether a bill is introduced and referred to a committee.
Because of that, 'at every corner, we should be working across the aisle to make sure that these bipartisan pieces of legislation are given a chance … because we know the partisan ones won't,' Sharp said.
He said 'it can be frustrating' to be a Democrat working in the Republican supermajority-controlled Missouri legislature, but 'you've got to have a short memory.'
Despite being in the supermajority, many Republicans were 'absolutely' interested in working with Democrats, Nurrenbern said.
One of those Republicans was Sen. Kurtis Gregory from Marshall. He and Nurrenbern together represent Clay County in the Senate, and 'as soon as we were both elected, we sat down and talked about what we could do together to move Clay County forward,' she said.
When Nurrenbern decided to file a bill to create a Clay County Sports Authority, she reached out to him and said, 'I would like you to champion this with me.'
'He was an absolutely great supporter every step of the way to get that done,' she said. 'He was … excited to carry that legislation with me.'
But the collaboration wasn't just one-way, Nurrenbern said. Sen. Mike Henderson, a Desloge Republican, also asked for her input on a massive education bill he was working on.
'He came to me right away and said: 'Maggie, I'd really like your input on this. You're a former educator. I respect your opinion on these provisions, and I want to work with you on this,'' Nurrenbern said.
State Sen. Tracy McCreery, an Olivette Democrat, cosponsored several bipartisan bills this session and said it was 'refreshing' to work across the aisle.
'I'm in a district that's 50/50, and I feel like my constituents want me to work together with people of all political stripes and all backgrounds to find common-sense solutions,' McCreery said. 'They appreciate that politicians aren't fighting all the time and calling each other names.'
While some issues consistently divide Republicans and Democrats in the Missouri legislature, others offer more opportunities for bipartisan cooperation, such as economic development and health care.
'All of the things I worked on successfully with colleagues from the other side of the aisle are just issues that are going to help make people's lives a little bit better,' McCreery said.
For Democrats in both chambers of the Missouri legislature, getting a policy over the finish line often means amending another bill to include their language. It's especially critical in the House, Sharp said.
'Freshman Democrats feel like their specific House bills should be moving. That's now how it works. … Republicans aren't going to pass a bill in your name,' Sharp said.
McCreery said it's 'pretty common' for Senate Democrats, when they're unable to block the passage of a bill, to try getting some of their own bills added as amendments to soften the impact.
'Once the supermajority decides that a bill is going to move and make it out of the chamber, you, as a senator, have to decide. Do I want to try to stop it, or do I want to try to make a bad bill a little less bad by putting some good things on it?' McCreery said.
McCreery said one example was a 'terrible' omnibus utility law that passed early in the session, which she said will increase Missourians' utility rates.
'I voted no on it, but I was able to get some consumer protections in there for low-income people,' she added. 'It was a tough decision, but I didn't have the ability to stop the bill, so then I had to make a decision to try to put some things in there that can make it a little less harmful to people.'
Nurrenbern said she tries to remember 'that we, as Senate Democrats, are just 10 of 34 senators' and that 'while we should have a mark on the legislation that is passed, it is going to be not as large a mark as the Republican supermajority.'
'I don't think a single piece of legislation got across the finish line without Democratic input,' she added. 'But we also recognize that we're not going to be overdemanding or overbearing in our asks. The asks that we put forward are reasonable, I think, and are really in the spirit of serving Missouri well.'
Sharp said that unlike in previous years, House leadership — and especially Patterson, who just completed his first session as speaker — was more open to keeping an open dialogue with Democrats.
'I will give House Speaker Patterson this: he did a very good job of working with Democrats, (and) particularly African-American Democrats in Kansas City,' Sharp said. 'He made time for us regularly in Jefferson City and in Kansas City.'
That shift meant that 'a few more opportunities were thrown to members of my caucus,' Sharp said, with Patterson and various Republican committee chairs being more willing to help some of Democrats' bills move through the legislative process.
Those opportunities meant that Democrats, including freshmen, were able to add their bills' language as amendments to Republican legislation, including bills banning hair discrimination in schools, extending a tax credit for donations to diaper banks and eliminating sales taxes on diapers and feminine hygiene products.
But other House bills with bipartisan support were casualties of the Senate's breakdown. That included Sharp's bill requiring some people with DUIs to install ignition interlocks in their car, which he said was on the Senate agenda but was effectively 'killed' when the PQ was used.
With the use of the PQs, 'all of that bipartisan cooperation and collaboration was pretty much thrown out the window,' according to McCreery.
At the time, Republicans and Democrats had been negotiating to find a compromise on Republicans' bill to repeal Proposition A's paid sick leave protections, passed by voters last fall.
'We were working right up to when we were given word that negotiations were finished,' McCreery said. 'I went into that Wednesday still feeling hopeful that we would figure something out.'
According to the Missouri Independent, Democrats told Republican leadership they would stop filibustering the two bills if language were changed to remove references to gender-affirming care for minors — which is already illegal in Missouri — from the abortion bill and to allow for minimum wage to rise with inflation.
McCreery — who was leading the filibuster when the PQs were used — said 'the PQ may have been used against me, but it's bigger than me.'
'Shutting down the debate was done against the will of the people. And that's what makes this more harmful and harder to look the other way on, because the PQ was used on me, but shutting down debate was used against 1.5, 1.6 million Missourians that voted for Prop A or voted for Amendment 3,' she said.
That move 'eroded my trust and confidence to negotiate in good faith with Republican senators,' Nurrenbern said.
While Democrats said negotiators were on track to find a solution, Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance, said on the day of the PQ that 'goalposts were being moved' in those negotiations, which ultimately 'hit a logjam.'
Gov. Mike Kehoe was working behind the scenes in the lead-up to the PQ to try to prevent it and improve the chances of the Missouri legislature passing his proposed stadium funding plan, according to the Missouri Independent.
In the lead-up to the PQ, Nurrenbern and other Democrats said that while they enjoyed the bipartisan cooperation, 'That is not going to be the case next session.'
'It marked a change in how we are going to operate as senators,' Nurrenbern said. 'There are a lot of motions that happen throughout the legislative day in the Missouri Senate, and we are going to use every opportunity to make our point that it's paramount to negotiate in good faith.'
McCreery said she didn't want to speculate about how Democrats might proceed, but did say that 'it's going to be much harder to get things done, even things that are perceived as nonpartisan or noncontroversial. There was a lot of harm done not just to this session, but future sessions as well.'
'I'm certainly disappointed with how session ended this year, and I have a long memory,' she added. 'I don't anticipate that I'll go into special session this summer or regular session next January with all of this disrespect just put behind me.'
Gov. Mike Kehoe recently announced that he will call lawmakers back to Jefferson City for a special session sometime this summer to vote on a bill to provide state funding for a new Royals stadium and a renovated Chiefs stadium.
Nurrenbern said she doesn't know 'what the call is for special session yet, but I would certainly expect to see some of that spill over.'
McCreery said Democrats 'have not had any discussions' about the special session.
'I will say, as someone who is a proud resident of the St. Louis region, to see all of the destruction that happened on Friday night with the tornado, it's going to be really hard to think about giving $900 million or more to a wealthy team owner when we've got so much destruction in the St. Louis region that is going to have to be dealt with,' she said.
Sharp — who has been a vocal advocate for finding a way to keep the Royals and Chiefs in Missouri — said an even bigger barrier to getting the stadium bill passed will be senators' lingering resentment over the House failing to pass a massive construction bill.
However, he said he's optimistic that House leadership will put it up for a vote during the special session to clear the way for the Senate to pass the stadium bill.
At a press conference after the end of session, Kehoe told reporters he understands lawmakers' concerns about the construction bill.
'I've heard and listened to quite a few senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle on that very same issue, and I understand what their concerns are,' Kehoe said. 'I think it's fair to say everything is on the table of what that special session might look like.'
As Democrats prepare for the sessions to come, Nurrenbern said she hopes to see bipartisanship in the Missouri legislature again.
'Everybody comes from a different walk of life, from a different area of the state, and we work best — and the institution works best — when we come together for the common good,' she said. 'I hope we get back there sooner than later.'
This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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