As the battle for Congress intensifies, the path to maintaining President Trump’s legislative majority runs directly through Missouri. Following a contentious redistricting battle, the new 5th Congressional District is now a critical battleground. This redrawn seat represents a golden opportunity that Republicans are banking on—or a catastrophic vulnerability. If the GOP hopes to protect its national agenda, it must avoid the ultimate self-inflicted wound: nominating State Senator Rick Brattin.
Brattin’s legislative record gives a dark sense of political déjà vu. For Missouri Republicans, the name Todd Akin still evokes the painful memory of a winnable U.S. Senate race thrown away in 2012 due to toxic, fringe rhetoric regarding sexual assault. Yet more than a decade later, Brattin looks like the second coming of Todd Akin, bringing echoes of electoral poison in the general election ticket against Democratic U.S. Representative Emanuel Cleaver.
Brattin’s history of alienating voters from the Pro-Life cause is not a matter of a few poorly chosen words; it is his political identity. In 2014, while serving in the Missouri House, Brattin introduced House Bill 131, an aggressive piece of legislation that would have required women seeking an abortion to obtain written consent from the father of the baby. In defending the bill, Brattin explicitly included an exception for cases of—in his own words—”legitimate rape.”
The phrasing was an unmistakable, unforced repeat of Akin’s career-ending debacle just two years prior. Any hope that time or political maturity might have tempered Brattin’s extremism was shattered during a 2024 Missouri Senate debate. When discussing whether to allow exceptions for rape and incest, Brattin doubled down, advocating that victims of sexual assault be forced to carry those pregnancies to term. He suggested that the resulting child, “by God’s grace, may even be the greatest healing agent you need in which to recover from such an atrocity.” While Brattin simultaneously advocated for the death penalty for rapists, his willingness to treat the trauma of rape survivors as tools for spiritual healing revealed a profound, disqualifying lack of empathy.
In a standard political cycle, such fringe views would be a massive liability. But in the current political landscape, they are an absolute death sentence for a general election campaign. This year, Missouri voters are confronting Amendment 3 on the ballot, a high-stakes initiative that would fix our state’s extreme liberal abortion laws. With new victories possible for the Pro-Life movement center stage, abortion is not an abstract debate; it is a highly motivating, turnout-driving reality for Missouri Republicans.
Running a candidate like Brattin—who has explicitly codified the phrase “legitimate rape” and believes a sexual assault victim’s pregnancy is a “healing agent”—will supercharge Democratic mobilization and alienate the mainstream voters necessary to win the 5th District.
We know firsthand the fight we have on our hands against Emanuel Cleaver, as we come from the bluest areas of our state and are eager for a chance to remove a radical leftist voice from Congress. Cleaver is a formidable, deeply entrenched incumbent who knows how to hold his ground. Defeating him requires a disciplined, mainstream conservative candidate who can capitalize on the favorable dynamics of the new district boundaries and win extra voters in a tough environment. Brattin is the exact opposite. He provides the opposition with a ready-made blueprint for devastating attack ads that will shift the focus away from the economy, immigration, and fiscal responsibility, and train it squarely on his radical positions.
The stakes could not be higher. The newly drawn 5th District could very well be the tipping point that determines whether President Trump retains or loses the majority in Congress. Republicans cannot afford to repeat the catastrophic mistakes of 2012. If primary voters choose to send Rick Brattin into the general election, they aren’t just nominating a candidate; they are reviving a political ghost that is all but assured to hand the seat to Emanuel Cleaver and imperil the Republican House majority.
Sincerely,
Carolyn Woodward Lisa Gore Mark Anthony Jones
Carolyn Woodward Republican activist Republican activist
Columbia, MO Western Missouri Western Missouri
Carolyn Woodward, Lisa Gore, and Mark Anthony Jones are Republican activists from central and western Missouri who have been involved in grassroots conservative organizing and advocacy across the state.
Discover more from The Missouri Times
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
