During the October 28th Senate voting session State Senator Jon Bramnick (R-21) bucked his party and voted in support of the “Freedom to Read Act” (S-2421). Amid the hullabaloo, Bramnick said, “If you want a soundbite warrior as your governor, I am not your guy.”

The 2025 GOP candidate for statewide office explained:

“Without this bill, there are no standards or guidelines for what material is made available to our students in school libraries. Right now it is the wild, wild west, and this bill will require local school boards to set developmentally appropriate standards as to what content is made available to students. Librarians will now have clear guidelines and policies to follow while protecting them from civil and criminal penalties, unless they break with the locally established regulations in bad-faith.

“Furthermore, the bill preserves a parent’s right to request the removal of material from libraries and requires the local school boards to create a procedure to process those requests. This is not the same bill that was introduced months ago. Questionable provisions were removed through the legislative process in response to concerns from conservative advocacy groups including the Family Policy Center which was opposed to the bill in its original form but ultimately changed their position to neutral.”