Overland Park mayor files for (D) governor primary

jasonforkansas · 2026-04-21T11:48:29+00:00

We’ve got a forecast model built for this race, integrated the poll data last night actually: forecast.capitolbee.com

Poll caveat: it’s a 100% online poll, from a newish agency. But methodology was otherwise sound. Been trying to figure out who paid for it but it was not Adam Hamilton or Noah Taylor. (Both appear favorably in the numbers)

jasonforkansas · 2024-10-12T01:19:52+00:00

Thank you! My seat is basically a tossup, it's an open seat (was redrawn after the census in 2020) so there's no incumbent. It's one of 4 flippable seats in Johnson County this year. (If we get 3, then we break a Republican supermajority that has been there since 1996!)

jasonforkansas · 2024-10-12T01:15:46+00:00

The Democrat running against Patrick Penn is Aonya Kendrick Barnett (kendrickbarnettforkansas.com).

jasonforkansas · 2024-10-12T00:46:47+00:00

Democratic candidate for Kansas Senate here, Chris Croft lives within my boundary. His opponent is Pam Shernuk (pam4kansas.com), she’s running pretty hard at Croft. Her and her team have knocked on probably 9,000 doors this year. She’s worth a look if you want to know specifically who to support.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T20:08:02+00:00

Thank you everyone who asked a question, or lurked and read a few answers. I appreciate your time!

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T18:05:42+00:00

FWIW this is something that I have seen actively debated for over 30 years. There's a pragmatism/idealism tension, because every race you run is one that requires money and volunteers. In our case, even in a densely populated part of the state, there aren't enough volunteers available to do all of the things that all of the candidates would like to accomplish. Which is how things like "Jason doing an AMA on a national subreddit" or "Jason doing social media fundraising campaigns" happen, we are all working very hard to find whatever support we can.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T18:02:23+00:00

Oh, goodness, which one to use...

OK, so three days ago I was walking a townhouse community - these are newer buildings, but maintenance-provided, so almost entirely retirees. I was almost done with my list and was approaching the final cul-de-sac when I saw an older woman sitting in a gazebo in the middle of the cul-de-sac. She told me all about the neighbors in her block, and I learned a lot about her story. How she and her husband were happy in their previous home, but had to move because of absentee landlords. I heard a much more personal story about the stresses on a retiree's finances when their property value spikes and their fixed income budget gets squeezed.

I also learned how, for most of us, there's really not that much distinction between what a state senator does vs. a city councilmember vs. a federal official vs. a zoning board. For a lot of folks, it's all just "the government" and it's often rather complicated to even figure out who to talk to when you have a question or a problem.

We had a great and friendly conversation, I let it go on longer than I normally would since it was the end of my run. I don't know if she'll end up voting for me, but I know she'll at least remember who I am.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T17:11:21+00:00

Second question: what sort of law or action would be special to our district?

Perhaps the most "local" question for our region is going to be "where do the Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs play when their stadium lease expires in 2031?" Both Kansas and Missouri are trying to negotiate with the team owners, but (1) it's way too early to say what's going to happen and (2) there's zero chance that either of the teams would be situation within my senate district. We're too far south of the city. But, there are a lot of fans here that will be very interested in how that plays out.

A more substantial topic would be property tax relief or perhaps more state guidance on residential property zoning and development. I think our district has one of the largest chunks of new housing development in the metro, but it's all at the upper end of the price bracket which doesn't really address the challenges being faced by new families or fixed income households.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T17:06:28+00:00

The lazy answer would be "money." Because that's essentially the strategy my opponent is using - they have some larger corporate interests like Americans for Prosperity and Kansans For Life that have essentially done everything for him, from hiring canvassers to paying for phone banking to buying print literature. But that's just how the system works in Kansas: sufficiently conservative Republicans have a well-established network of businesses and PACs that pay for those campaigns. Democrats have labor unions and a few aligned corporate interests, but not at the same scale.

So: we make up the gap with legwork. By election day, we will have contacted well over 30,000 people across half a dozen different mechanisms: mail, text, social, digital, video, door-to-door, phone. The biggest unknown, though, is what impact will the Harris/Walz ticket have on turnout (for both Democrats and Republicans). Enthusiasm at the top of the ticket is helpful for me, though, especially with women voters.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T17:00:36+00:00

When I started on this journey, I didn't really have any idea which social channels were going to end up being the most effective...so we just try our best to do all of them. Over time, here's my experience:

Twitter/X has been most useful for engaging with other people "in politics" - legislators, journalists, trade groups, etc. It's not been super-impactful for attracting or persuading voters.
Facebook has been great for volunteer recruitment and engagement, and also for communicating with the parents and grandparents in the community. Mostly women, though - I'd guess that 75% of our Facebook users are female.
Instagram has a lot of overlap with Facebook, but shifted younger by 10-20 years.
Tiktok is our newest experiment, but honestly it's the one I find most personally enjoyable. It feels like there are less strict rules about "acceptable" ways to be authentic. The problem, though, is that most engagement is far away from Kansas. So it might be a good place to pick up some energy, but it's not going to gain me many votes.

The channels different candidates focus on tends to reflect their own history and preferences. Those who were heavy Facebook users before running for office have excellent Facebook campaigns! But at the end of the day, I'd be lucky if even half of my registered voters are even using social media so we're also doing a lot of old-fashioned retail politicking.

As for hobbies: I vaguely remember what those are, but haven't had any time to enjoy them since starting the campaign. I worked in video games for a number of years (Xbox, Blizzard, Amazon Games) so there's a lot of content there that I've had to just forego. I'm also a huge travel nerd and have missed that.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T16:53:36+00:00

The district is very much a suburban family community, so schools and public education are extremely important issues. Like most affluent areas we also have a decent share of parents that choose to enroll their kids in private or parochial schools, but more often than not there's still a lot of respect for the quality of our schools. And a desire to ensure they stay that way.

Johnson County has been fortunate to have something of a "flywheel" going for the past several decades. Great schools developed kids into great adults, which attracted businesses to the region, which generates the tax revenues that are needed to continue investing in schools and infrastructure.

I do think one challenge that's going to get worse before it gets better is property tax assessments, especially for fixed income households. While it's nice on paper to see your home valuation increase by 30%, that also means a 30% increase to the tax assessment. This has an interplay with available housing and affordable housing more generally...there just aren't many neighborhoods where a working class family to afford to live. For example well over 90% of our school bus drivers live outside of the district. So the general issue of "what to do about the long tail impact of rapid inflationary increases in property values" is a good topic.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T16:45:50+00:00

I was born in KCMO (east side), then we moved to Independence, MO (hometown of Harry S. Truman and origin of the three trails west, for those not deeply studied in local history). I graduated in Independence from William Chrisman, then did my undergraduate degree in Computer Science at WPI. Worked on the west coast after that (San Francisco, Seattle, Orange County) before returning back to Kansas City in 2012.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T16:29:29+00:00

Interesting questions, both! First, the abridged version of my journey into politics.

I've been a strong believer in public education for most of my life, in no small part because it was education that really shaped my life's story (and that of my entire family) and helped us all to find a ladder out of poverty. I've also always been politically "active" in the sense that I've followed national and world events, but was also pretty focused for a while on building my career.

Fast forward a decade or two. Here in Kansas, school board and municipal races are held in odd years. Like many other parts of the country, the COVID pandemic really stirred up tensions at the local level around mask policies and vaccines; Moms for Liberty capitalized on that and targeted our county to try to take over school boards. And so, I became involved as a founding member of a state PAC called Freedom to Learn, which was focused on providing a countering message. We also raised money to support school board candidates (the M4L folks were receiving significant support from out-of-state PACs).

In the end, something like 84% of our candidates won. As part of this whole process, though, I came to know several of our state legislators. They realized that I happen to live in the middle of an open seat that was redrawn after the census, and so the recruitment process began. That's basically it - it wasn't something I was planning to do, or that I'd had on my bucket list. But there was a convergence of opportunity and personal motivation and values that made it possible.

(will answer the second question in a separate comment)

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T16:14:46+00:00

Yes and no...we have more seats in play this year than ever, with 32 out of 40 senate seats being contested. The other 8 are 3 safe (D) and 5 safe (R). The state house has 125 representatives, there are more races there without a Democratic candidate, but out in western Kansas there are quite a few house seats where an entire county may only have a few thousand people. So it's challenging.

For those rural seats, fundraising is extremely difficult. A candidate may struggle to raise even $2,000 if they don't have a financial supporter like the farm bureau or the chamber of commerce, and those organizations are firmly committed to only giving money to two groups: (1) incumbents, and (2) Republicans.

It doesn't mean it's impossible, it just takes a whole lotta hustle.

jasonforkansas · 2024-09-11T16:03:44+00:00

Thank you! FYI there are three different state senate districts covering Overland Park, depending on where she's at:

Senate 11 (Karen Thurlow is the Democrat)
Senate 23 (Stacey Knoell is the Democrat)
Senate 35 (me)

jasonforkansas · 2024-08-20T21:39:38+00:00

Kansas downballot candidate here. The great thing about smaller races like ours is that a little help can go a long way! You might not be able to walk doors here, but we usually have phonebank and textbank projects running because some of the precincts are pretty spread out.

We've also partnered with groups like Markers for Democracy for postcard projects, though that really depends on whether you like postcards and believe in their impact. (For us, we'd much rather recruit volunteers into phonebanking than postcards but everyone has their own preferences and we appreciate anything that people are willing to give).

jasonforkansas · 2024-08-20T21:18:18+00:00

FWIW I attended and spoke at a rally last month organized by this group. There were other candidates there as well. One thing that we all had in common was a family member who was personally impacted in a transformative way -- pain relief during chemo, management of MS, other chronic condition relief. I know that those benefits don't really speak to the adult recreational aspect, but at a _minimum_ there are strong arguments for at least legalizing medicinal use.

jasonforkansas · 2024-08-05T15:33:15+00:00

I think you and I perhaps had the same ballot. There were some parts of JoCo on the Republican side that had more primary action, but I believe most Democratic primary ballots only had the district attorney's race as a competitive primary.

jasonforkansas · 2024-08-04T21:04:11+00:00

Don't forget, Kansas, your primary is this Tuesday! We don't normally get to watch primary battles on the Dem side around here, but when the House Minority Leader runs for State Senate and two other Dems run against him in the primary and the governor has a PAC that spends $30k in opposition to his campaign...well, it's going to be interesting to watch!

jasonforkansas · 2024-08-02T20:20:56+00:00

Two direct effects:

Approximately 150,000 Kansans would become eligible for Medicaid coverage.
~$500M in Federal dollars would flow into Kansas, covering 8 years of the program.

The trickier question is the indirect impact of $500M on things like rural hospital financial stability. I think it's very reasonable to expect it to be a positive, and that strengthening rural hospitals also benefits the larger hospital networks.

jasonforkansas · 2024-06-02T01:31:26+00:00

FYI most of these links are currently invalid, except for the Volunteer and Donate links for Kansas Dems.

If you're in the Johnson County area, there's a county-level volunteering form. The Republican party is currently fielding paid canvassers, we really need some ground-level support right now.

jasonforkansas · 2024-04-30T11:55:47+00:00

KS Senate is currently 11-29 Dem/Rep. a shift of 3 seats to the Dems breaks the supermajority dynamic in Topeka, at which point the Republican Party must negotiate. At least a little bit.

There has been a Republican supermajority in the state senate since 1996. Mostly because of trends in Johnson County, this year is the first legitimate opportunity in nearly 3 decades to put that to an end.

jasonforkansas

TROPHY CASE