Pattie Mansur leans on her educational background as District 25 race heats up

Photo Courtesy of Pattie Mansur’s Instagram

The Missouri House of Representatives District 25 stretches along the Missouri-Kansas state border from the south end of the Country Club Plaza to Interstate 435. Since 2021, the state representative office of District 25 has been held by registered nurse and Democrat Patty Lewis. Lewis is currently running for state Senate in District 7, leaving her seat vacant.

Another Democratic candidate with a background in healthcare has stepped up to the plate to run for the District 25 office, who says she’s worked with Lewis on numerous healthcare initiatives. That candidate is Pattie Mansur. 

Mansur has worked as a policy director for REACH Healthcare Foundation—a nonprofit health organization that seeks to make healthcare more accessible in the Kansas City metro. She only recently stepped down from this position to run for state rep., but she says her experience will be valuable to her in her new endeavor.

“That work gave me enormous insights into health policy in both Missouri and Kansas,” Mansur says. “I spent quite a bit of time in Topeka and some time in Jefferson City, meeting with legislators and talking with them about health policies that our foundation believed would have tremendous benefit for working Missourians and their children.”

Mansur has lived in Brookside for over 30 years. She became interested in policy and advocacy while parenting three children who attended Kansas City Public Schools.

“I could see how our teachers were struggling and how the school district wasn’t getting enough resources to meet basic educational needs in that urban school district, and I wanted to really fight for something better for those schools,” she says. “Instead of walking away from our city’s public schools, which a lot of people do, I wanted to stay and fight for it to get better, and that ultimately led me to decide to run for the school board.”

She went on to serve on the Kansas City School Board from 2014 to 2021, two of those years serving as board president. During this time, the Kansas City School Board went through several challenges, including the battle to regain state accreditation for KCPS, the COVID pandemic, and a situation in 2016 where KCPS employees were found to be falsely inflating student attendance records. (It should be noted there isn’t evidence that Mansur was aware that this was occurring). 

“My time on the school board helped me understand how important it is to stay connected with the community to share information, to listen and take input, and then try to work really hard with a whole variety of civic leaders, business leaders, education groups, and state officials in order to come to sound solutions,” Mansur says.

She hopes to be an advocate for public education by increasing funding for public schools, part of which would go toward increasing teachers’ salaries. In the same vein, she’d like to increase access to affordable childcare and early childhood education.

“When I was door knocking, and even on the primary election day, when I was standing at the polls, young adults would tell me that their overriding concern and fear is about finding child care, keeping it, and affording it,” she says.

She says that the lack of educational opportunities, such as children’s camps and internship opportunities for young adults, is a contributing factor toward crime, along with a shortage of jobs. Mansur believes that increasing funding for education and internships through a partnership between local government, state government, and the businesses and employment sector will present more opportunities, which in turn she hopes will help people to feel fulfilled in their lives and be less inclined to commit crimes. She also says that some inadequately maintained and uninvested neighborhoods create a sense of despair among the residents and make someone more likely to want to commit a crime.

“There are beautiful places to live, and there are beautiful, well-tended boulevards, and the parks are clean and inviting, and we’ve got to make up for that in the parts of the city that that have been ignored,” she says.

Mansur supports certain gun control measures, such as waiting periods for applications to have access to a gun and red flag laws. She says that people should have the right to be in public spaces without fear that they may be shot—Something that should be a universal opinion, but Missouri Republicans’ actions following the Chiefs parade shooting provide evidence to the contrary.

“While we can protect Second Amendment rights, we can do that also with having other measures in place that used to be in place in Missouri—background checks and other measures that would create some boundaries and safety around gun access,” she says. “There’s been a shooting at a school in Georgia. I have a daughter who’s an elementary school teacher. She doesn’t want to be armed in a classroom, and she also wants to feel safe in the classroom.”

Mansur explains that her time as a health policy director contributed to her strong pro-choice beliefs and support for Amendment 3—the amendment that would enshrine the right to abortion in the Missouri Constitution and protect access to IVF and birth control.

“I believe strongly that women should have the right to make their reproductive health decisions with their medical provider, without fear of reprisal, without fear that their doctor will be prosecuted, without fear of getting in some kind of trouble,” Mansur says.

Another healthcare issue that is important to the Democrat is the expansion of Medicaid and SNAP benefits. A large number of Missouri residents have been denied these benefits when they are, in fact, eligible—that is, if they are even able to get through to the call center in the first place. Mansur desires to ensure that everyone who is eligible for benefits is able to receive them. 

Despite the tumultuous political climate and the uphill battle that Democratic politicians face in Missouri currently, Mansur says she looks forward to taking on the duty of District 25 state rep.

“I’m excited and sort of humbled to have the opportunity to take on this role,” she says. “It isn’t an easy role, and I have a lot of respect for people who go in elected office and try to work for change through state government. You have to figure out how to form alliances and how to negotiate with people and partner with people. It’s hard work, and it takes you away from your home and your community. So I feel really grateful that I’m in a place in my career and life, that I have the willingness to go do that, and that I have a family that is willing to support me in that endeavor.”