The Pitch’s June 20, 2023 Election recap and results

The biggest takeaway from this massive election cycle, in which the city council saw a great many shakeups, has to be the number of newcomers who will join Mayor Quinton Lucas in his second term of leading Kansas City. In total, seven new faces will assume seats on the city council, with five out of six incumbents having successfully defended their seats for another four-year term. 

This was the first election in which the KC Tenants Power made endorsements and organized en masse. Four of the group’s six endorsees (Melissa Robinson, Eric Bunch, Andrea Bough, and KC Tenants leader Johnathan Duncan) won their respective races, while Jenay Manley lost by just 1,304 votes, and incumbent Brandon Ellington was ousted by a near 60-40 split.

Voters across Jackson, Platte, and Clay counties averaged 12.55% voter turnout, with 42,689 voters hitting the polls out of 340,100 total registered voters.

Kansas City Mayor

The 55th Mayor of Kansas City, Quinton Lucas (80.63%), earned 33,266 votes to win his second term for mayor over perennial contender Clay Chastain’s 19.37% (7,993). 

Having succeeded Sly James in 2019, Lucas, 38, oversaw the city’s pandemic efforts while also assuming his seat just prior to the Chiefs dynasty’s launch into the stratosphere. That’s pretty hard to beat, all things considered. 

1st District At-Large 

Incumbent Kevin O’Neill (71.7%, 29,106) defended his seat for a second term following a fairly inspired effort from conservative, pro-police candidate Ronda Smith (28.3%, 11,477). 

1st District 

Nathan Willett (63%), a former KCPS math teacher, beat his opponent Chris Gahagan (37%), by way of 4,100 votes to Gahagan’s 2,376 when combining both Platte and Clay County results. 

2nd District

Wes Rogers, a lawyer who had served as a Democrat in the Missouri House of Representatives from 2019-2023, ran unopposed.

2nd District At-Large 

There aren’t many out there who would have called the 2nd District At-Large race to come down to just 1,304 votes, but it happened. Lindsay French (51.61%, 20,937) managed to eke out a victory over KC Tenants leader Jenay Manley (48.39%, 19,633). 

French gained a massive net positive from the two northern counties of Platte and Clay, besting her opponent with 8,321 across those two counties to Manley’s 4,930. 

The closeness of this race, paired with the vast support French had from the city establishment, served in the mind of many KC Tenants supporters and other progressive groups as a moral victory. 

3rd District At-Large

Melissa Patterson Hazley (60.53%, 24,105 votes) went somewhat ballistic in forcing out the incumbent, Brandon R. Ellington (39.47%, 15,716). 

Interestingly enough, as the April 4 primary had only included these two candidates, the numbers are fairly similar across both ballots, with Patterson Hazley winning with 62.69% of the vote to Ellington’s 37.31%.  

3rd District

The incumbent Melissa Robinson (84.44%, 3,912) walloped challenger and local poet Sheri “Purpose” Hall (15.56%, 721) in the biggest blowout across all races. 

Robinson is the president of the Black Health Care Coalition, formerly led the Kansas City Public Schools board as its president, and former director of crisis intervention with the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime. Both are very active in community groups, as noted in The Pitch’s election preview from last week.

4th District At-Large

Lawyer and seven-year Jackson County special victims unit prosecutor Crispin Rea’s turnout of 56.79% (22,686 votes) caused LGBTQIA+ activist Justin M. Short’s (43.21%, 17,261) campaign to fall just short of its goals in a race where the combined age of the candidates totaled just 71 years of age. 

Rea, who succeeds Kathryn Shields for the seat, finished first in the April 4 primary at 36.16%, with Short’s 21.46% besting three others in the field.

4th District

Incumbent Eric Bunch (67%, 4,252) handily defeated his more conservative-leaning opponent Henry C. Rizzo (32.92%, 2,087), across a Midtown-centric district that saw a ridiculous number of mailers being sent out by both campaigns. 

5th District

Ryana Parks-Shaw, the incumbent, ran unopposed.

At-Large 5th District

Hailing from a family that is a regional political mainstay, Darrell Curls (56%, 22,643) pulled ahead of BikeWalkKC Director Michael Kelley (44%, 17,808) to become yet another new member of the council. 

Curls had successfully molded his campaign to pick up a number of more moderate and conservative-leaning groups in defeating Kelley, who stressed a campaign that leaned left with an emphasis on such issues as housing, climate change, and public health. 

At-Large 6th District

Incumbent Andrea Bough (71.71%, 28,737) bested former public school educator Jill Sasse (28.29%, 11,336) in a near repeat of a three-way primary race. Bough is a Brookside resident and attorney who graduated from UMKC. 

6th District

Iraq veteran and VFW Operations Director Johnathan Duncan pulled off perhaps the most shocking upset of the day as his campaign tallied 56.50% (6,884 votes) against longtime Jackson County Legislator and businessman Dan T. Tarwater III (43.5%, 5,299). 

Duncan says that the 6th District “is the most progressive in Kansas City” and had run against Tarwater in part by calling him out on his stances taken while serving as a legislator—specifically citing the latter’s apparent opposition to a women’s right to choose.