Anne McGregor was the first person in the race for the at-large council seat for the 4th District of Kansas City, and she ought to be the first person out. If she truly cares about Kansas City and its residents, she holds the power to give us a chance at solid and effective representation in that seat rather than unwavering support for the economically powerful. She can do that by resigning and encouraging people to support Jim Glover.
Right now, there are 4 people in the race. Two of them seek to represent privilege, and two of them (Glover and McGregor) seek to stand up for Kansas Citians who don’t own hotels or country club memberships. One of the candidates of privilege WILL be one of the two winners of the primary on 2/22, and, if McGregor does not resign and unify behind Glover, we may well get stuck with only the two candidates of privilege in the general election.
John Crawford is far and away the leading candidate in terms of effective campaigning, staggering bankbook and support of every rip-off artist eying the Kansas City budget like a personal piggy bank. The development departments of every major law firm have hosted events for their rapacious clients to meet him. Herb Kohn is on board. Tim Kristl is on board. It’s a rogue’s gallery of the wrong people flexing their economic muscle through a likable but wholly-owned candidate. John Crawford will absolutely get through the primary with a strong plurality of the electorate.
Annie Presley is a Republican who brings big money to the race and a Rolodex that includes the country club set of KC. She’s linked to the Blunt family, and she blogs for The Independent, “Kansas City’s Journal of Society”. She does not seek to represent us – she’s there to represent the hyper-privileged segment of KC WASP society that resents the influence of Catholics and Jews on societal institutions. Money and well-connected friends, though, mean that she could be the second person to make it through the primary, delivering the 4th District At-Large Seat to one of two candidates of privilege.
So, either McGregor or Glover needs to beat Annie Presley and mount a serious challenge to Crawford in the general. If both remain in the race, they may well split the core of voters that don’t live on tax-incentives or trust funds. We have one (kind of slim) chance at getting a representative of the people in that seat, and Jim Glover stands the best chance of being that candidate. Ann McGregor should resign from the race and throw her support behind Jim Glover in a last-ditch effort to save the seat for the people.
McGregor has been in the race since before Beth Gottstein announced she wouldn’t run, and she has failed to harness any popular support. She has demonstrated an inability to sway voters at least twice in the path. Her work for Obama delivered such underwhelming Missouri support that we bucked the democratic trend in 2008, and her noisy and expensive ($30,000 +!) effort to unseat Funkhouser was a colossal failure, after she repeatedly and stridently assured us that it would be successful.
Glover, on the other hand, has won City Council races in the past, and his fresh entrance into the field has given a jolt of hope to those that want to see that seat remain responsive to the people instead of the insiders. He has name recognition that Anne McGruff-McGiver-McWho can only dream about. What he lacks, though, is excitement, and McGregor could generate a bit of that by publicly embracing his campaign and standing up for the people of Kansas City.
The time to make this move is now. The primary election will be held in less than 2 weeks. Will Anne McGregor join up with Jim Glover and help Kansas City, or will she ride her dwindling campaign into the ditch it is headed for, and help Annie Presley?