Rachel Townsend Brown challenges Jim Kanatzar in as-yet-imaginary election

Two years ago, Lee’s Summit city prosecutor Rachel Townsend Brown was a candidate in the race to become Jackson County Prosecutor. She lost to Jim Kanatzar in the Democratic primary. Now, she’s attempting to unseat him by filing her candidacy in an election that isn’t scheduled for two more years, because she claims Jackson County’s election cycle is all wrong.

Her attorney, Danny Miller of Columbia, Missouri, explains, “Basically, the idea is that the county charter, passed in 1970, provided that in any conflict, the county is subservient to state law.” In 1982, Miller says, a statute passed by the state legislature changed the two-year terms for county prosecutors to four-year terms, “and those elections are to be held at the same time as the general election, starting in 1982 and every four years thereafter.”

Following that logic means that 2010 is an election year, Miller says.