Lonnie McDonald sees pinball as a Republican path to Jackson County politics

Lonnie “Lon” McDonald plays Joust at Up-Down. // Photo by Kylie Volavongsa

It’s 3 p.m. on a Tuesday when the bar arcade Up-Down welcomes a Great American guest. 

Lonnie “Lon” McDonald strolls in wearing loafers, a blazer, and an American flag pin. Instead of handing the bouncer his ID, McDonald passes him a different set of documents: trading cards. They featured McDonald himself, for his world-renowned achievements in arcade gaming.

As McDonald walks up to greet me, he also gifts me a set of cards that he’d signed ahead of time. We shake hands to the racket of first-person shooters and 100 gecs. 

“So we’re here to talk politics,” McDonald says.

Yes and no; allow me to explain.

Yes: McDonald is running in the Republican primary for Jackson County Legislative District 4, an area that encompasses Grandview, Martin City, and southern portions of Kansas City and Raytown.

And no: In his candidacy announcement, McDonald takes care to highlight his trading card-worthy lore of competitive arcade  gaming. He was a world-ranked player in the top one percent of registered players in the International Flipper Pinball Association. He also holds world records for a slew of other machine games and completed a Joust-playing tour across all 50 US states. Further evidence of McDonald’s prowess is his email signature: an all-encompassing resume of over 50 accomplishments and accolades. They range from president of the Low Moisture Carpet Cleaners Association—“As seen in Martha Stewart,” reads his company’s van—to Golden Age Gamer in the International Video Game Hall of Fame (location: Ottumwa, Iowa). 

Given the everything of it all, I wanted to see if McDonald’s identities as a gamer, entrepreneur, and county politician-to-be worked with or contradicted one another—if these were the unconventional makings of someone truly up to winning Jackson County District 4. After all, this is someone who, if elected, would be responsible for the upkeep of Jackson County—things like property and sales taxes, public works budgets, law enforcement funding, and overseeing the county health department. 

Which is to say, someone who’d be one of nine county legislators whose decisions would affect the daily lives of 732,994 Jackson Countians.

As a Republican, McDonald faces steep odds. Democrats have dominated previous general elections for District 4 Legislature with voting margins of at least 95%. In 2022, they ran unopposed. Plus, the 2026 election is an important one: turnover is expected for the majority of seats. Regardless of party lines, though, McDonald says he isn’t approaching the race with a sense of competition. Rather, it’s a matter of winning over constituents through his own merit. 

While gaming might be the most publicly familiar of those merits, he’s attempting to change his narrative.

McDonald is stepping back from his many other endeavors to focus on the campaign. Lately, those have included restoring old arcade machines, running his own low-moisture carpet cleaning company, and serving as a councilman for the University of Missouri’s Jackson County extension.

From the latter two, McDonald has buried himself into the business of delegated problem solving—so much so that he’d begun speaking to members of the Jackson County Republicans, with whom he’d been involved for a while. He tells me that they suggested he run. 

The Jackson County Republicans’ office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story, but they do endorse McDonald on their website,.

“It wasn’t just that I knew I wanted to run. I felt then that, spiritually, I wanted to do this,” McDonald says of their conversations. “But I’m not trying to disrupt the government, just to fix it.”

He will run unopposed in the August Republican primary.

Lonnie McDonald on the pinball machine // Photo by Kylie Volavongsa

The rundown of McDonald’s campaign is this: fair property taxes, protection for seniors’ homes, fiscal reform and transparency, and supporting public safety. 

And there is McDonald’s narrative. The winning heart of a pinball and Joust champion, yes—loftily, ambitiously so. But even more, the powerful mind of a Republican who would profess to me his value of realism and logic—classic virtues of his political affiliation. As far as Jackson County Legislative District 4 goes, he is decidedly one of the Jackson County Republicans’ best.

But if his political goals aren’t necessarily as lofty as his heights in arcade gaming, nor as ambitious as his more radical political counterparts, then maybe digging into his broader political philosophy could parse out whether McDonald would be all of District 4’s best. If he would be up for it, that is.

“I’m sensibly conservative, we’ll put it that way,” McDonald says. “But I land somewhere more moderate.”

He cites qualms with what he’s observed as extreme behavior from both sides of the political spectrum, like rhetorical overkill from the right, or leftist threats toward ICE agents he’d heard at a neighborhood meeting.

I ask what kind of threats.

“Just… incredibly violent,” McDonald says.

He asks what I want to play first. 

I choose pinball—specifically, the machine featuring Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. With each of my questions, McDonald would the ball on the flippers to answer, then flick it back into action with finesse. The soccer great, Ronaldinho, comes to mind, especially as McDonald instructs me in his technique.

“I see this as a game of angles,” he explains, then shakes the entire machine to manipulate the ball.

When I bring up the detailed CV that is McDonald’s email signature, he laughs. Though he says he has the tendency to compartmentalize his various areas of mastery, he wants to be best known for his intellect. 

In particular, he considers himself a skeptic: “I need to see things from the source to believe them, not just to read or hear them secondhand.” 

“It’s been said that I’m the most intelligent person in the room,” McDonald adds, “or the most well-read.” 

On March 8, McDonald’s Facebook campaign profile shared his discernment with such reading. 

Original poster Janet Elaine Parks begins with the following: “Apparently, telling the truth is now considered ‘hate’ if the truth makes the left uncomfortable. I posted earlier about the pattern a lot of conservatives experience: That before we even speak… we’re already labeled… ‘racist,’ ‘bigot,’ dangerous,’ ‘extreme,’ ‘uneducated,’ ‘cult member,’ ‘pedo protector.’”

“Well stated Purposeful misinformation has one desired outcome – confusing the facts,” McDonald wrote.

We move on to a game of Joust. I spend maybe too much time transfixed by his dexterity on the joystick, but he assures me the motions have grown so familiar that my questions won’t break his focus. 

I ask if there was a time he’d ever really changed his mind.

“No, not really,” McDonald says, then pauses for a moment. “But I will say I’ve gotten more moderate since I’ve gotten older. I come from a really small town, so that’s influenced my views.”

McDonald asks about my politics next. He suggests that maybe we aren’t so different. 

I’m reluctant to give away too much, but I mention New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani since he fixed a particular Brooklyn pothole particularly quickly. While McDonald points out Mamdani’s socialistic tendencies—“someone who takes something from someone and gives it to everyone”—he puts his hands up, as if to point at himself too: “A guy who takes a problem and deals with it!” 

What, then, might be the more visible problems that Jackson County would like to deal with?

One topping headlines at the time was the legal feasibility of a proposed mask ban for ICE officers and, of course, the related tensions between federal officers and Jackson County locals. When I ask McDonald for his thoughts, he gives me a definition of the US Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. It was 1:1 with a somewhat dense Facebook explanation he’d posted previously—by which he meant that the legislature wouldn’t be able to do much.

Next, I ask about the news surrounding SB-244’s trans bathroom restrictions in Kansas, which according to The Beacon, faced considerable opposing testimony despite its successful push from Kansas Republicans. Not to mention, the possible implications for Missourians on the other side of state lines. At the time, he tells me he hadn’t read it in depth, yet since it was a Kansas issue.

“Everyone has rights,” he ultimately tells me, “but I think we should stick with what we’re born with. I wouldn’t be comfortable if my wife had to be in that situation, for example. You’re asking more about congressional issues, though. My work as district legislature would be different.”

Our conversation is meandering; I sense we’re getting out of his depth, so I reel things back in. That would be to Joust, where I know he’s safe.

McDonald likes to play defensively, waiting for enemies to come to him. After killing them the first time, he waits for them to upgrade themselves to farm points more quickly. He tells me can’t stand being bad at anything, even if it only means additional practice for the things that don’t come naturally to him.

Perhaps McDonald just knows to pick what works for him and sticks to it.

All things considered—the world of Gen X Facebook, video games, low-moisture carpet cleaning, and what have you—lives are on the line in November’s general election. And, for better or worse, in whatever state the World Cup will have left them. McDonald’s next steps will have weight, as will his Democratic counterparts.

But with McDonald having only built a Facebook following of 182 since February (compared to Democratic candidate John T. Maloney’s 800-plus), I’d be curious to see if McDonald can actually hold that weight in an arena that isn’t the local arcade.

Once McDonald breaks a million points, he throws his character into lava so I could have my own turn. After a few quick failures, our two hours together comes to an end. I head for the door as McDonald approaches the bar for a Sprite—to fuel more gaming, of course.

Behind me, I hear a stranger greet him. 

“You’re the Joust guy!”