House Minority Leader Crystal Quade was the guest speaker at the Southwest Missouri Democrats monthly meeting. KRPS’s Fred Fletcher-Fierro has more.

Representative Quade said Wednesday night that although Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers, Democrats played a pivotal role in this legislative session due to infighting between two factions of the Republican party. “There were so many times this session where the Republican leadership came to my office and said we need your help with this. Whether it was passing the prescription drug monitoring program. The infrastructure funding bill. Wayfair, the collection of online sales tax. There were a lot of these really important bills that we supported, that we were on board with that they could not get done without the 49 votes of the Democrats.”

The meeting, originally scheduled to be held at the Minnie Hackney Community Center in Joplin was shifted to a Zoom meeting due to the increasing number of Covid-19 cases in the area.