Competition for Greg Razer’s seat in District 7 draws complicated perspectives from three candidates
Sen. Greg Razer leaves big shoes to fill in his District 7 seat after he was appointed to the Tax Commission by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson last April—rendering his Senate seat vacant and opening the floodgates for MO’s most diverse political population to find new representation ASAP.
During his four years as a state representative and four years as a state senator, Razer distinguished himself as a fierce advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and one of the few openly gay members of the General Assembly. He was at the forefront of the effort to pass legislation that would outlaw discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity from landlords, employers, and others. Razer was also at the helm of a multi-day filibuster against the bill that banned gender-affirming care for minors. While the bill was ultimately passed, he was able to get a sunset amendment into the bill, meaning that it will expire in four years.
Greg Razer. // Photo by Zach Bauman
Three candidates have filed for Razer’s vacated seat. Patty Lewis—who is the current Missouri State Representative of District 25—and Pat Contreras are vying for the Democratic nomination. Joey LaSalle—the lone Republican—initially filed to run against Razer in February.
The Pitch spoke with all three candidates to unearth which issues are important to them, how their past experiences qualify them for office, and what they hope to accomplish if elected.
Patty Lewis
Patty Lewis is a registered nurse—the only one in the legislature—and a former healthcare executive who won the MO District 25 State Rep. seat in 2020. She announced her candidacy for Senate in May.
“I don’t consider myself a career politician, but an advocate, and I want to fight for a better Missouri, especially around healthcare issues and marginalized communities like our LGBTQ communities,” she says. “I’m the only candidate endorsed by PROMO—the statewide LGBTQ organization—because of my advocacy and defending LGBTQ folks.”
True to her background in healthcare, Lewis has sponsored and passed several measures to increase access to healthcare during her time as state rep. Among these are a bill to increase physician residency slots and bills to remove some burdens on nurse practitioners. She was a part of passing a mental health parity law that Razer also worked on during her first year in the General Assembly.
In the most recent legislative session, Lewis sponsored a women’s healthcare bill that would have allowed women on private insurance to pick up an annual supply of birth control from pharmacies. Despite bipartisan support, the bill didn’t make it over the finish line before the end of the session. Lewis also sponsored a sales tax exemption on diapers and feminine hygiene products, another bill that has had bipartisan support and passed in the House. She hopes to pick up where she left off and get these bills passed into law, in addition to a bill protecting telehealth services that also did not pass.
Getting legislation passed as a Democrat in Missouri is often an uphill battle. Lewis refers to being in the super minority as an “everyday crisis.”
“I look at it as, sometimes in my bedside nursing days, when you have a non-compliant patient, you just have to get down to their level and meet them where they are,” she says of working with lawmakers with differing agendas. “There’s a lot of opportunity for education.”
One of Lewis’ priorities is supporting reproductive rights. Previously, she sponsored a bill that extended postpartum coverage from six months to one year, and she hopes that the amendment to enshrine the right to abortion in the Missouri Constitution passes in November. She is sponsored by Planned Parenthood Great Plains, Abortion Action Missouri, Access MO, and the Greater Kansas City Women’s Political Caucus.
“These personal, private healthcare decisions should be up to the individual and their healthcare provider, not the legislator,” Lewis says.
That same sentiment applies to the aforementioned ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
“When the ban on transgender care is set to expire, I plan on holding before in the Senate when they try to renew that expiration,” Lewis says. “Not gonna happen, not on my watch.”
Lewis has also been a defender of workers’ rights. She spoke at a rally for a Waldo Taco Bell strike in 2022 and is a proponent of raising the state minimum wage and increasing sick pay. Lewis has been endorsed by several labor unions, including Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and IAFF Local 42—which represents firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, and others.
“Hopefully, someday, we can get on offense,” she says. “But most of the time, it just seems to be defense, and protecting, ensuring that we don’t become a right-to-work state, ensuring safe workplaces.”
Lewis wants to see Kansas City as a whole become safer, and she believes that stricter gun laws will bolster that goal. She supports red flag laws, which she’s sponsored in the past, and sponsored Missouri’s iteration of “Donna’s Law.” “Donna’s Law” allows people to add their names to a list, where they wouldn’t be allowed to purchase a gun. The idea is to prevent susceptible individuals from potentially harming themselves in the future.
“I do support the Second Amendment,” Lewis says. “It’s not about taking guns away. It’s just about common sense gun laws. Here in the state of Missouri, we have the loosest gun laws and innocent people are losing their lives. I worked in the ICU at a trauma center here in Kansas City and served many victims of gun violence. We couldn’t save them all. So, gun violence prevention is an issue that’s personal and near and dear to my heart.”
She says that investing in social services will help combat crime. Those she listed included schools, afterschool programs, mental health resources, public transportation, and aid for the homeless.
“We need to give our first responders the tools they need to be successful and to help keep our community safe,” she says.
Lewis states that crime reduction would also boost the local economy, and she adds that creating more inclusive communities in Missouri would have that same effect.
“People leave, because of the extreme, and the ban—the hatred attacks on our LGBTQ community,” Lewis says.
Pat Contreras
Pat Contreras was born in Kansas City and grew up in the Westside neighborhood. He studied business as an undergrad and obtained a Master of Public Administration at Columbia University after working at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City. He was commissioned as a Foreign Service Officer and served two tours in Pakistan before returning home to Kansas City near the end of the Obama administration. Upon his return to Missouri, he ran for State Treasurer in 2016. Though he lost, he received national attention for being the first Latino to run for statewide office.
Since then, Contreras has worked as an executive at McCownGordon Construction in Kansas City. This work has involved building schools, hospitals, community centers, and more, helping create jobs for thousands of Kansas Citians. One of these projects included a workforce training center at 29th and Troost.
“There are about 236,000 skilled trade jobs in Kansas City, and about 40% of those have to be replaced over the next five years,” Contreras says. “We need to be ready for the future and have a skilled workforce to continue to build and do the things that we need, whether it’s infrastructure, transit, heavy construction, or just the renovation of schools and buildings.”
He has also served as Commissioner of the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Board, member of the Executive Committee of the Downtown Council, board member of University Health, and as Chairman of the Kansas City, MO Committee of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.
Contreras previously touted support from U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and Mayor Quinton Lucas, among other area and state politicians, in a press release—however, their public endorsements are suddenly a point of contention. But he’s been publicly endorsed by Razer himself.
Contreras hopes to continue Razer’s legacy of fighting for LGBTQ+ rights by attempting to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, just as Razer did. He’d like to work with PROMO to keep up with and kill any anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Another major priority of Contreras is lowering the cost of living. He plans to execute this by limiting the cost of healthcare, raising the state minimum wage, expanding programs that assist families with childcare costs, and expanding housing options for KC residents. Contreras suggests a more progressive tax system that can help lower the tax burden on lower-income residents. He acknowledges that it’s a complex issue, but believes he is up to the task of enacting real change.
“I understand the fiscal impacts on the state budget as it relates to overall taxes, financial health, and on people,” he says. “And I also know that taxes are a tough issue and it requires working across party lines, and that’s what I bring as a trained U.S. diplomat and someone who is used to working across aisles to get things done.”
Gun violence is also a personal issue to Contreras, and he wants to work on legislation prohibiting minors from open-carrying in public, implementing background checks, and closing the domestic violence loophole.
“I had a friend of mine who was killed by a drive-by shooter,” he says. “I’ve had family members and others that have experienced it directly. And to me, gun violence is personal, because I’ve experienced it. I know the tragedy that leaves on, not only the victims, but the surrounding community.”
He says that another way to combat crime in Kansas City is to obtain local control over our police department. Currently, Kansas City is the only major city in the country whose police department is controlled by the state.
“Now, more than ever, with this amount of dysfunction and political bickering, and with some of the least amount of bills ever passed in the history of our legislature, we need more diplomacy to get things done,” Contreras says.
Joey LaSalle
Joey LaSalle is a part-owner of a small healthcare IT company in Kansas City. He grew up in Excelsior Springs and attended The University of Missouri—graduating magna cum laude with a degree in corporate finance and real estate. Subsequently, he spent two decades in the healthcare industry at Cerner in Healthcare and Hospital Revenue Operations Leadership and Strategy—essentially, the business side of the healthcare industry.
“I’m just an ordinary, everyday guy,” LaSalle says. “I get up, I work hard, I mow my lawn, go to the grocery—and I don’t feel like I am represented well. I want to represent us, and I feel like I can be that guy.”
Seeing the rising levels of crime in Kansas City was another aspect that prompted LaSalle to run for Senate. “I always got off the plane here in Kansas City, and it was home,” he says. “It was home sweet home. And in the last five years or so, it kind of felt like home is a little scarier.” However, he doesn’t feel that guns are the main problem contributing to crime in Kansas City.
“I think that for every bad person that has a gun, there is a good person that has a gun,” LaSalle says. “And I feel like the good people that have guns, they are educated on it, clean it, go to classes, and learn about it. I think that guns are, to be honest, a last line of defense for the individual as well. Could we look at, ‘How do we do better?’ Yes, but I think that, currently, they’re okay.”
Instead, LaSalle believes that stronger policing and penalties for crimes would discourage people from committing more crimes. He also suggests a more economic solution to the crime issue: the creation of jobs.
“I think that jobs and the lack thereof are the root cause of crime,” he says. “Whenever you have a job, it’s pride, and you’re not living off of the government. You are working every day. You get up, you put your pants on, and you go to work, and there’s pride in the work that you do.”
LaSalle says that revenue from online sports betting could be a solution to compensate for tax cuts.
“I know that we have proposed online sports gambling in the past, and that is something I would like to reinvigorate,” he says, referring to past attempts to legalize sports betting in Missouri.
When it comes to reproductive rights, LaSalle says that he personally only believes in medically necessary abortions and abortions in the case of rape and incest. But he also recognizes that clinicians know better than him.
“I am not able to have children, so for me, pro-life is kind of a thing,” he says. “But I also understand I shouldn’t be the decision-maker for everyone, and nor should the state.”
LaSalle goes on to list a couple of stipulations—one of these being that late-term abortion should only be legal in the case of medical necessity. Another is that abortions should be self-funded rather than funded by the state.
As for LGBTQ+ rights, LaSalle expresses his support for the community, though his thoughts on the ban on gender-affirming care for minors are unclear. Last month, he shared a photo of himself at the Kansas City Pride Parade on Instagram.
“I believe in fairness, equal protection under the law, no matter what,” he says. “I don’t want anybody to not live their bliss. So I want everyone to have equal rights.”
LaSalle doesn’t name any endorsements, and none are cited on his website.
“When it comes to these political action committees, I haven’t taken any endorsements from them,” he says. “It’s not because I don’t want to answer their questionnaires, but they always want you to sign up for something and support them, or support them the right way, or support them their way. It’s like putting a bumper sticker on your race car. Eventually, it starts to put them on your windshield, and you can’t see the decision that Joey LaSalle wants to make because I’ve taken an endorsement or some money from someone else.”
