Johnson County elections are nonpartisan. Yeah, right. Polarization has gotten local | Opinion
Editor’s note: Our next local elections are a week from today, Tuesday, Nov. 7, and average voter turnout across the Kansas City area has been low. This week in Opinion, we’ll have editorials and columns on several elections across the metro. We can’t cover each one, but we’ll highlight a few that are hotly contested.
Today, we explore local Johnson County races.
The Kansas City Star has published a Voter Guide for several areas in our metro to help voters keep informed. Before you cast your vote, use the guide at kansascity.com/election to research what’s on the ballot. Stay tuned this week for more on the elections on these Opinion pages.
Your Johnson County voter guide for city council & mayor candidates
Who’s running for school boards in Wyandotte County?
Who’s running for school boards in Johnson County?
Officially, elections for local offices in Kansas are nonpartisan. (The same is true for most local races in Missouri.) That means political parties aren’t supposed to matter when voters go to the polls next week to choose mayors, city councils and school boards. There will be no R or D next to candidate names — Kansans instead will be asked to choose the best person for each job regardless of political affiliation.
Reality, though, is something different.
That is especially apparent in Johnson County, where the local Republican and Democratic party organizations have both posted voter guides to give a partisan imprimatur to favored candidates in this year’s supposedly nonpartisan elections. Whatever the official ballots say, many Johnson Countians will make their voting decisions based on which party they trust more.
There is a temptation to lament this state of affairs in an age of rising political polarization. After all, as Wichita State University’s Chase Billingham told the Kansas Leadership Center in 2021, the tradition of nonpartisan local offices in the early 20th century arose from a desire by progressive-minded leaders to make community elections “about local community and cooperation and getting things accomplished at the local level, where national level political splits were less relevant.”
That sounds nice. In reality, many of us struggle to keep up with the day-to-day movements in local politics. That is particularly true in suburb-packed Johnson County, where a resident might live in one community, work in another and meet friends for dinner in yet a third location.
In those cases, a candidate’s political party — if they have one — can be a useful bit of information that helps voters decide how best to cast a vote that aligns with their values.
Thankfully, that’s not the only information out there. The Star has produced its own voter guide for Johnson County’s city council and mayoral races. And the local chambers of commerce have joined forces to produce VoteJoCo.com, which features surveys and videos from candidate forums. Both are useful resources.
We will be keeping our eyes on three races, in particular:
Residents of Prairie Village have spent all of 2023 engaged in a brawl over zoning — a split between those who embrace the exclusivity of being one of Zillow’s hottest housing markets in the United States, and those who want to change requirements a bit to allow for more affordable housing. The fight has prompted some residents to mount an effort to remake the structure of local government entirely. None of their measures will be on the ballot this time around, but it’s a key issue in the myriad city council races. Republicans are endorsing Terry O’Toole, Ed Boersma, Lori Sharp, Tyler Agneil, Nick Reddell, Kelly Wyer in those races. Democrats, meanwhile, are backing Inga Selder, Bonnie Limbird, Piper Reimer, Ciara Chaney and Ian Graves. Selders, Limberd and Reimer are the incumbents.
In Shawnee, Mayor Michelle Distler is stepping aside after battles with a conservative City Council and an exodus of high-level staff from City Hall in recent years. Can anybody restore stability to the Shawnee city government? Voters will choose either GOP-endorsed Mike Kemmling or Michael “Mickey” Sandifer, who has no party endorsement, to replace Distler.
And in Leawood, Mayor Peggy Dunn is leaving office after a quarter-century at the helm of her fast-growing community. Voters will choose between Marc Elkins, who has Republican support, and Steve Hentzen, who is backed by Democrats.
The days of officially nonpartisan local elections, both in Johnson County and across Kansas, may come to an end in the near future. Mike Brown, a former JoCo commissioner who lost his 2020 reelection bid and now serves as chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, has advocated for a measure that would give local candidates the option of having a party label next to their name on the ballot.
The tradeoff? Local politics could become as ugly and divisive as national races are now.
But it seems that ship has sailed. Both parties have waded fully into Johnson County politics. It’s now up to voters to decide what to do with that information.
