There is no conservative revolt in Kansas City
Taking KC Back, a fiercely pro-police group, failed for the second time to force a recall election on Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and at large city council people minus Teresa Loar. The group needed 13,700 but came up at least 2,000 short and probably more if the signatures had been reviewed.
The expanded effort built on the first failure to recall 4th District councilperson Eric Bunch, who is arguably the most vulnerable to a recall petition given the meager threshold of 2,673 for petition signatures. I like Bunch but he was an easy target. A bike riding, hippie council person that you only needed ~3,000 signatures. Come on! Should’ve been a layup despite the left leaning politics of his district.
Both attempts tied the Mayor’s and eight south of the Missouri River council people’s move to reallocate around $40 million of the police budget to a new fund where there would be more council control over how it was spent.
Petitioners decried the move as “defunding the police” even though it was still allocated to the police department. This in-year budget move was later ruled not legal by a Jackson County judge.
These two failed recall petitions built on an earlier somewhat connected failure to recall Mayor Quinton Lucas over vague frustrations, Facebook-like rants, and lightly veiled racism about masks and COVID-19 restrictions.
The two movements and their subsequent 3 recall attempts follow two conservative themes lodged firmly into nearly all local politics across the country.
Those two themes: anti-public health measures and unquestionably pro-police.
The outcomes of these debates have been localized and Kansas City is no different.
The conservative media has attempted to make these movements ubiquitous throughout the country and imply that there is a conservative revolt occurring.
The failure of the 3 recall efforts to gather at most 13,700 signatures and at least 2,673 in a city of 500,000 plus people demonstrates no such “conservative revolt” exists in Kansas City and that most people are relatively unbothered by both potential police budget changes and commonsense public health measures.
Gathering signatures is hard.
But if there was this widespread conservative anger within Kansas City’s 316 square miles then you’d think they could get 14,000 people to sign up.
I mean non-Kansas City resident and abrasive “transit” advocate, Clay Chastain, has been able to do it in the past.
It is surprising, though, considering the organizing prowess that conservative movements have and continue to possess in exerting an outsized influence on local, state, and federal politics.
I don’t know the details of the group and its supporters’ strategy. There seemed to be a lot of hours and effort put into knocking on doors as well as reports of them sitting on the side of highway waiting for people to come to them.
Perhaps, they were expecting to ride the wave of support and national dollars like other recall efforts have enjoyed but it never materialized?
All that aside, one thing is clear: there is not this vaunted conservative revolt occurring in Kansas City, Missouri.
The fights with the Board of Police Commissioners about the police budget as well as the past COVID-19 health measures have not resulted in a meaningful challenge to our current leaders.
One can infer from this that most Kansas Citians are okay with what is happening.
The other more potentially important conclusion involved people with commonsense have to contend with is that most people just don’t care.
The petitioners have become somewhat of a punchline among locals but even in their failures the group can become more organized, well-funded, and ultimately more successful.
In a world of local politics where small numbers of people can sway opinions and policies, commonsense Kansas Citians need to be vigilant that groups like Taking Back KC don’t affect policy.
As one councilperson told me, they often try to listen to “the people not there.”
We won’t always be so lucky.
The conservative “revolt” is loud, abrasive, and can be successful in the future but right now it’s just not happening in Kansas City.
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