A Statement From Elizabeth Thursday, August 6, 2026 Read it here
The Statement Press Meet Elizabeth Why She Ran The Ste. Genevieve Visit Where She Stands Voices From the Trail Women Helping Women Contact Elizabeth
A Statement · August 6, 2026

Elizabeth
Sparks-Holmes

We did it.

Missouri stood up to Jefferson City and defeated Amendments 4 and 5. Thank you for showing up. Our work isn't finished — it's only getting started.

Read the Full Statement Meet Elizabeth
August 4, 2026 · Statewide
Amendments 4 and 5 defeated

We did it. And our work isn't finished.

Missouri showed up. Jefferson City heard us.

A statement from Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes on the defeat of Amendments 4 and 5, on the end of her campaign, and on what she intends to do next.

In Her Own Words
August 6, 2026 · Missouri's 2nd Congressional District

Thank you to my fellow Missourians for showing up on Tuesday. We stood up to Jefferson City, and we defeated Amendments 4 and 5.

Not narrowly. Decisively. Roughly eight in ten Missourians voted no on both, in an election where turnout was high and the message was impossible to misread. That is not a close call. That is a state telling its own government exactly where the line is.

I had hoped to carry that same “we the people” spirit to Washington. That is not how Tuesday ended for my campaign, and I want to say plainly that I accept the result. But watching this state come together and make its voice heard, loud and clear, is its own kind of victory, and I am grateful I got to be part of it.

Our work is not finished. It is only getting started.

As you know, I have voted Republican my entire life. I have never once voted for a Democrat.

But I watched Republicans in Jefferson City try to silence the votes and the voices of Missouri citizens, people like you and me. Then I watched them turn around and try to punish small business owners and working families with higher taxes on labor and on health care. That was my last straw.

And when the incumbent's own household has spent a career on the inside, lobbying in Jefferson City and Washington for one of Missouri's largest corporations and holding state posts and appointments along the way, I stopped expecting anything to change on its own. We will keep getting amendments like 4 and 5. They will not relent.

They will not relent. Neither will we.

Public service is supposed to protect everyday people, not the powerful. Right now it is doing the opposite. And the clearest way to put working people and working families first in this district is to send Fred Wellman to Congress.

I am going to campaign for him. He grew up in Kirkwood, right here in this district. He gave more than twenty years to the United States Army and flew helicopters in Iraq. He remembers where he came from and who he is fighting for, and that is worth more to me right now than the letter after his name.

If you're a Republican like me

On the fence. Asking questions. Carrying some doubts. Looking for answers.

Please reach out. I mean that, and I will answer you myself. I am not going to tell you what to think, and I am not going to pretend this was an easy place for me to land. I will just tell you honestly how I got here.

Send Elizabeth a message →

The Republican Party in Missouri has grown too big, too powerful, and too far from the people it is supposed to serve. I am choosing a different path, but I am keeping the values and the principles I ran on: serving the people instead of the powerful.

Elizabeth
Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes
Missouri's 2nd Congressional District

Does Her Homework

She believes in seeing things firsthand before forming an opinion. Curiosity first, talking points never.

Shows Up

She drove to the places other candidates only talked about, and answered to people's faces instead of from behind a press release.

Comes Home

She ran on term limits for herself. Public service should be a season of giving back, not a lifelong career.

Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes
Missouri's 2nd2026 Candidate for the U.S. House
Meet Elizabeth

Not a politician. A Missouri mom who started paying closer attention.

Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes didn't set out to run for Congress. For decades she has lived right here in Missouri's 2nd District, raised a family, and built a life in this community, the same as the neighbors she set out to represent.

Her road to Missouri began in Texas. She started her college studies at Randolph-Macon in 1991 and Texas Christian University in 1992, then followed a path north that eventually brought her to Missouri, where she met her husband and built a working life alongside him in Kansas City before making the 2nd District home.

Ask her about her son's work in the arts and you'll see it immediately, the pride that every parent recognizes, the kind that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with who she is.

She ran because she's the kind of person who has to see things for herself, and because she already knew what too many families here were feeling. Costs are up, paychecks are stretched, and Washington keeps talking past the people living it. She didn't run to perform a campaign. She ran because she felt she had to step in. That instinct hasn't gone anywhere.

Elizabeth
Why She Ran

She learned what service means at home.

Public service runs deep in Elizabeth's family, though the service that shaped her most never made the history books. She found it at her own kitchen table. Her father, Hal S. Sparks III, gave twenty-five years to the Tarrant Regional Water District, much of it as vice president of its board, caring for something an entire community quietly depends on. In 2016 the district dedicated the Hal S. Sparks III Park Center at Eagle Mountain Lake in his honor, though the lesson Elizabeth took from him was never about the plaque. Her mother, Carmyn, spent those same years volunteering in hospice, sitting with people through their most fragile moments, and is an author and speaker in her own right, who wrote Transformed by Tragedy: A Rose of Redemption and built a ministry around helping others find hope. Watching them, Elizabeth came to see that service has little to do with an office or a title. It has everything to do with showing up for people, listening, and doing the slow work that actually helps a family or a town move forward.

Show UpBe present for people, in person, where they are.
ListenHear what people are carrying before you speak.
ServeDo the steady work that moves families forward.

Those lessons shaped what she notices now. So much of the hardship around us is carried quietly. Families are stretched thin, and more and more of us feel isolated, closer to a screen than to the people next door. We have traded real neighbors for virtual ones, and too many people are left feeling alone in struggles they never say out loud.

A strong country is built on strong communities, places where people know their neighbors and no one has to face their hardest days alone.

Elizabeth believes our well-being, not just our paychecks, is worth fighting for, and that rebuilding real human connection is some of the most important work we can do for one another. That is why she ran: to put those values back into a politics that has too often forgotten them. It is also why she is not walking away now.

How She Leads

She'd rather see it for herself.

When immigration became one of the loudest fights in the country, Elizabeth didn't form her opinion from cable news or a press release. She drove to the ICE site in Ste. Genevieve to see how it actually works on the ground, because she wanted to speak from what she had seen, not from what she had been told.

That one trip says a lot about how she approaches everything. She does the homework, she listens before she talks, and she knows the families of this district are stretched thin, because they're her neighbors.

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She sees it for herselfThe drive to Ste. Genevieve wasn't a photo op. Firsthand over secondhand is simply how she does everything.
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She knows what families are facingGroceries, gas, and rent that keep climbing. She isn't reading it off a poll, she's hearing it from neighbors.
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She said what she found, not what was convenientShe reported back honestly from Ste. Genevieve even when her account cut against her own side's talking points.
Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes
Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes meeting with Sheriff Gary Stolzer and Major Jason Schott during her oversight visit to the Ste. Genevieve County Jail Firsthand · June 10
Oversight, Not Talking Points

She went to Ste. Genevieve and saw it for herself.

While Washington politicians toured the facility and ran to the cameras, Elizabeth made an unannounced visit and earned access to 100% of it. Every holding cell, every nursing station, the kitchens, the attorney rooms, all of it. This is what opening the door looks like. Not a press conference, but a willingness to go see the truth for herself and report it back honestly.

"There was nothing 'deplorable' or 'disgusting' about the way any detainee was being treated, and any characterization of such treatment is patently false and untrue."
Read Elizabeth's full account →
In the Media

She sat down with the other side. On the record.

Joan VonDras, host Luis Antonio Perez, and Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes at the St. Louis Public Radio studios after taping an episode of Meet Me
Joan VonDras, host Luis Antonio Perez, and Elizabeth after the taping.
Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes, Joan VonDras and the Meet Me production team around the microphones in the St. Louis Public Radio studio
Around the table at St. Louis Public Radio before the mics went hot.
St. Louis Public Radio “Meet Me” with Luis Antonio Perez Taped August 2026

Elizabeth joined Joan VonDras on Meet Me, St. Louis Public Radio’s project about connecting across the divides that shape this region. VonDras ran in the Democratic primary in the same district Elizabeth ran in on the Republican side, and narrowly lost it to Fred Wellman on August 4.

Host Luis Antonio Perez put the two of them at the same table: two women who spent months campaigning for the same seat from opposite ends of the ballot, talking about what actually separates them, what does not, and whether people on different sides can still build something worth having. It is the conversation Elizabeth has been asking her own party to have all year.

“We had a great conversation. He brought out the best in both Joan and me.”— Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes

Visit the show → The episode hasn’t aired yet. It will be linked here the moment it does.
Voices From the Trail

We need more women like Alisa and Rebecca.

Elizabeth was raised by strong, resilient women whose courage shaped her from a young age. Meeting kindred spirits on the campaign trail has only deepened her resolve to lift up their voices and fight for the causes near and dear to all our hearts.

Alisa Tang
Writer · "Alisa's Daily Dose"

Alisa Tang

Alisa spent years as an assignment editor on The Washington Post's local desk and now writes "Alisa's Daily Dose" for readers across the D.C. area. Visiting family near St. Louis, she and Elizabeth sat down to talk about community, connection, and the personal challenges that sudden hardship can bring. Alisa helped Elizabeth make sense of what she had witnessed at the Ste. Genevieve detention center, and encouraged her to seek out asylum seekers and hear their stories firsthand.

"There's so much misunderstanding right now around immigration. Listening to women like Alisa gives me clarity and compassion for everyone involved."— Elizabeth

Rebecca Now
Founder · Voices of American HERstory

Rebecca Now

Elizabeth met Rebecca after speaking at a Crestwood City Council meeting. Rebecca is the founder and director of Voices of American HERstory, a nonprofit that advances gender equality by spotlighting the overlooked contributions of women pioneers through live historical reenactment. A lifelong history buff, Elizabeth was drawn at once to Rebecca's passion. Her story moved Elizabeth most of all: as a single mother working to support her children, Rebecca discovered the life of suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and found her calling.

"It's women like Alisa and Rebecca who give me the strength to keep fighting for the rights of all Americans, today and in the future."— Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes

Women Helping Women

Missouri needs a change. She is knocking on doors for it.

On Women’s Equality Day, Elizabeth joined Voices of American HERstory at the Grant’s View branch of the St. Louis County Library and met four women running for the Missouri House. She left as a volunteer for all four.

Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes with the Missouri House candidates and a suffragist reenactor in period dress at the Voices of American HERstory event on August 26, 2026
The candidates, Elizabeth, and history in period dress after the program.
A suffragist reenactor in black lace and a period gown, flanked by a woman in a Votes for Women sash, at the Voices of American HERstory event
Voices of American HERstory brings the suffragists into the room in costume, sashes and all.
Speakers standing at the front of a St. Louis County Library meeting room, applauded by a seated audience, at the Voices of American HERstory event
The program at the Grant’s View branch of the St. Louis County Library, August 26.
Four Missouri House candidates she is canvassing for this fall
District 88

Jennifer Trickey

Fenton, Eureka and southwest St. Louis County

Campaign site →
District 95

Meredith Sumenek

South County below I‑270, Mehlville to Oakville

Campaign site →

“Meeting women from all walks of life who share the same passion for equality and justice as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony did 150 years ago was truly an honor. They spoke to our hearts, and they touched something deep within all of us: Missouri needs a change, and we need it now.”— Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes

Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes outdoors in Missouri's 2nd Congressional District
Beyond the Campaign

The person behind the yard signs

Before the policy and the politics, Elizabeth is someone who feels most at home in the middle of everyday life in Missouri, not in a conference room in Washington.

Ask her what she is proudest of and she will not start with politics. She will start with her family.

Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes with her son, who is pursuing a career in the arts
Cheering on her son as he builds a career in the arts.
Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes with her family
Family first. The reason any of this matters.
Elizabeth Sparks-Holmes in Missouri's 2nd Congressional District
At home in Missouri's 2nd District.
Where She Stands

Common-sense priorities, drawn from real conversations

These came straight from families, workers, and small businesses across the 2nd District. They are the priorities she campaigned on, and they are the ones she is still measuring this district's representation against.

Lower Healthcare & Living Costs

Care you can actually afford, and relief from the prices squeezing every household. Bringing down the cost of healthcare, groceries, and energy for Missouri families was the first thing she heard at nearly every door.

Seniors & Veterans

The people who built this country and served it deserve better than broken promises. Protect Social Security and Medicare, cut the red tape for veterans, and support the families who care for them.

Safer Communities

Every family deserves to feel safe at home and in their neighborhood. Back our law enforcement, invest in public safety, and put the security of our communities first.

An Economy for Working Families

An economy that rewards work, not Washington insiders. Support good-paying jobs, lower costs, and the small businesses that keep the 2nd District running.

Responsive, Accessible Representation

Your representative should answer the phone and open the door. Elizabeth ran on town halls in every county and on staying reachable, and it is still the standard she holds this seat to.

Accountability & Term Limits

Congress should serve people, not careers. Elizabeth supports term limits, real transparency, and a representative who never forgets who she works for.

Reach Out

If you have questions, ask me.

Elizabeth meant what she wrote. If you are a Republican who is on the fence, or you simply want to understand how a lifelong conservative got here, send her a note. She reads them, and she answers them herself.

You can also email her directly at lizholmes84259@gmail.com.

What Comes Next

Our work is not finished.

Tuesday proved what Missourians can do when they show up together. That did not end on election day. Keep paying attention, keep asking questions, and keep showing up — at the ballot box, at your city council, and for your neighbors.

Read the Full Statement Contact Elizabeth
Paid for by Sparks-Holmes for Congress.