JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Depending on the outcome of two elections in November, the Missouri General Assembly could witness its first ever brother-sister pair of representatives.
Rep. Nathan Beard, R-Sedalia, came into the House after his unopposed election in 2014, replacing termed Rep. Stan Cox, and last week, his sister, Ashley Beard-Fosnow filed to represent part of Cass County.
The dual filing shows that Beard and Beard-Fosnow are keeping it in the family. Their father, Richard Beard, also served as a state representative in the early 1980s and even ran for attorney general in 1984 as a Democrat.
“There’s an emphasis in our family on public service, civic responsibility,” Beard-Fosnow said. “My earliest memories are tagging along with my mom to go to League of Women Voters meetings or PTA, and I think that really influenced my adult perspective.”
“I don’t remember many family conversations around the dinner table where we’re hashing out political issues…” Beard added. However, he agreed with his sister by noting there was “always a sense of civic responsibility to do what we can to help the community and get outside just the family.”
We filed together for seats in the House. We’ll make history as the 1st brother/sister State Rep duo to serve #moleg pic.twitter.com/q9h2vuZI7A
— Ashley for State Rep (@Beardfosnow) February 25, 2016
Beard-Fosnow filed to run against Rep. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, one of the general Assembly’s most conservative and controversial voices. She would also be the only woman with school-age children in the General Assembly if she won, and remarked that there was a reason a brother-sister duo in one legislative body was such an intriguing story.
“It’s so rare because so few women in our history have served in the state house,” Beard-Fosnow said. “We’re looking at 25 percent of the House is represented by women, even though women make up 51 percent of the state. As I talk to people who have never been in the political process previously, it’s been exciting that women are more interested in my race than maybe they have been in the past, and especially moms.”
She also could appeal to more conservative Democrats with her middle-of-the-road stances on certain social issues and she even openly advocates for the protection of Second Amendment rights on her campaign website.
But to her, and she’s hoping to voters in Cass County, those issues come second.
“If you look at Democrats in more rural parts of the state…that is what they believe, those are the values they hold to, and those are the people I represent,” Beard-Fosnow said. “I feel like the issues that impact people in their daily life are more of the transportation, education, economic issues. Party officials feel like there has not been anyone advocating for our community at the statewide level.”
Beard-Fosnow has also stressed party unity, advocating for the Democrats to open their doors to more conservative ideas to get things done within the state.
“I come across individuals who are more progressive than I who vocalize different positions,” she said. “But I think if we’re ever going to see progress, we all have to come together and work on the things we need to agree on.”
So perhaps the most interesting dynamic between the two is that should they get elected, they would be on separate sides of the aisle. Beard reasoned that it might be because their father was a conservative Democrat.
“Ashley took that Democrat part, and I took the conservative part,” he said. Beard-Fosnow laughed, but added that the political differences between she and he brother were not overly pronounced.
“Moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans tend to have more in common than they do differences,” she said. “I think there a lot of basic values we would agree on, and then there are some things we might disagree on.”
However, their obviously close relationship has taken some time to develop, according to Beard, once those political differences did become more apparent.
“Several years back, there was a time or two where Ashley and I got into conversations that became a little contentious, and I decided at that point I was probably going to try to avoid that with her for a while,” Beard said. “We didn’t really talk much about politics. I found it more beneficial to make sure our family relationship was solid.
“But then as I ran and got elected for the first time, and Ashley revealed that she had plans in the works to get elected at some point, our relationship kind of changed. We started talking about issues in a way that was more just sharing our positions, but not trying to convince or turn the other one from theirs.”
That stronger relationship is not quite enough to get Beard to cross party lines and endorse his sister, but he also said he would withhold his endorsement, even though he counts Brattin as a friend of his.
He may change his mind; Beard-Fosnow said she would love to debate him on the floor of the House.
