Missouri could learn from Minnesota

History was made on November 7, 2012. I stood in a ballroom in downtown St. Paul and watched the elections results come in. We were voting for a president, but also on a ballot measure that would have amended our state constitution that would have permanently enshrined discrimination in it. I stood glued to the large screens completely surrounded by hundreds of avid supporters. We spent so much time, so much money, so much effort. We made millions of phone calls. We knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors. I personally drove 1,600 miles from my home in California simply to help out with boots on the ground in the final days of the campaign.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen. I worked alongside amazing people, young and old. They were relentless. I can’t tell you how many times I had someone tell me I was going to hell. Doors slammed in our face. It stopped absolutely no one. Because we had so much love, so much support. For every one negative, we had many people cheering us on, telling us how much they were supporting us. So many young people were spurred to action. So many people got off their butts to actually do something about it.

And we made history. We were the first state to hold back an attempt to amend a state constitution to permanently ban same sex marriage.

It was the proudest thing I’d ever done in my life. And I twice rode a bicycle 545 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

And it was probably the dumbest thing the Minnesota Republican Party had ever done in theirs.

A year and a half earlier, Minnesota was facing a similar situation to Missouri. Republicans controlled both houses of the state legislature. A Democratic governor was refusing to rubber stamp their agenda. To bypass the governor, Republicans proposed to constitutional amendments. The process, like Missouri’s, was simple: It required a mere majority of voters in each house. If passed, it would go to the voters and a mere majority would enshrine the bill into the constitution.

Not only did both proposed amendments failed at ballot box, as those voters were deciding on the amendments, the voters were deciding the fate of their representatives as well. Colleges across the state mobilized the youth vote. People knocked across doors in every suburb. Offices in opposition to the amendment popped up in the most unlikeliest of places. My mother’s small home town home to a very aged population had “No” placards across many yards along Main Street.

And I’ll let you in on not so much of a secret: The people mobilized to oppose the amendment weren’t going to vote for Republicans either.

Republicans lost their majority in both houses. It was an absolute routing. Republicans had a 37-30 lead in the senate, and only half the seats were up for grabs. And they still lost their majority. In total, 25 Republicans lost their reelection bids. Not a single Democrat lost their seat. A mere two years into their majority status and it was gone, cast away by an insistence to put discrimination before the voters. 

The sweep was so stark, a few months later, just two years after Republicans had planned on permanent and constitutionally ban it, the Democratic majority was able to legislatively legalize gay marriage. It was precisely the opposite of what they intended to happen.

So, it’s 2016. And Missouri is also considering enshrining discrimination in their constitution. And sure, like those Republicans in Minnesota who are pressured by religious conservatives to support discrimination in the constitution, they may face pressure to support it.

But that wrath will have absolutely no fury like they will at the polls if they place such discrimination before the voters.

Missouri Republicans have a choice: They can learn from the past. Or they can be doomed to repeat it.