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10.31.2023 -   Kansas City

Johnson County conservatives hoping voters will enlist in the culture war – by supporting this slate of local candidates in the Nov. 7 election

By Michael Ryan

When there’s a culture war raging in nearly every community, there are no longer any sleepy, irrelevant elections you can sit out. There never really were.

November 7 is a case in point – a local election that doesn’t attract the media frenzy of a national election, but which will set the tone for how your community is governed for some time to come.

Indeed, your local school boards, city councils, mayors and even community college trustees are making decisions on controversial matters of race and gender, sexual indoctrination in schools and public libraries, and curricula – not to mention rendering verdicts on the time-honored, life-changing choices regarding taxes, development, infrastructure and more.

It’s local units of government where officials can make the most impact on your life – and you the greatest effect on who they are and how they do their jobs.

Thus, armed with hours of online, in-person and interviewing research on candidates for local offices in their hometown, the group Northeast Johnson County Conservatives has endorsed a comprehensive slate of conservative candidates (below) whom it hopes voters will support at the polls to uphold traditional American values right here.

In 2018, then-congressman and now Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote out what he called the “7 Core Principles of Conservatism. He reiterated them upon taking the Speaker’s gavel, suggesting they are, instead, central American beliefs that, his original document says, “made our nation the freest, strongest, and most prosperous in human history.”

They are:

  • Individual Freedom
  • Limited Government
  • The Rule of Law
  • Peace through Strength
  • Fiscal Responsibility
  • Free Markets
  • Human Dignity

Such principles, while abundantly represented in the Constitution, “are being torn apart,” says NEJCC advisory committee member Steve Snitz.

“We’re being bombarded by people’s feelings and whatnot, and facts don’t matter anymore, the law doesn’t matter anymore. And if we don’t get some people in what I call the ‘power elected positions’ so that we can turn this ship in a different direction, we’re just not going to be the country that all of us who love it know that it is.”

The only way it remains that country is if people who understand what makes it great get out and vote, Snitz warns.

“We need people to be determined to vote. As much as you hear about voter fraud and all that, the cure for almost everything is to get out there and vote. Don’t let anybody dissuade you from thinking that your vote isn’t worth anything. It is worth everything.”

Many of the races are, ostensibly nonpartisan – meaning candidates may not make clear their party affiliations or affinities.

That’s a canard these days, Snitz says. While a local officeholder may be nonpartisan, “they don’t behave that way. And frankly my opinion is, people are able to use [nonpartisan races] as weapons to deny or hide their true positions in order to get elected. And that’s just wrong. If I was asked if that should be changed, I’d say, in all races the candidates should have to declare their party affiliation or declare themselves as an independent if that’s what they want to do.”

The major problem facing conservative activists and voters is that local media, so closely mirroring and mimicking their national cousins, are almost universally left-leaning. So groups such as NEJCC must rely largely on email chains and word of mouth to advance their agendas and agencies.

“We don’t have a media presence,” Snitz tells The Heartlander. “And so, when the [local media] put their things out, we’re trying to compete with that at a grassroots level. And it’s a media presence like yourself and the Free State News and so on that we are trying to grow into a source, so that when people have questions or feel lost [they can] contact these media sources. … and get the word out. That’s the only way it can work.”

NEJCC’s slate of endorsements, and other grassroots efforts, can help moderate and conservative voters decide on whom to vote for in local elections for which there just isn’t a lot of information.

“It’s terrible for people to be out there and wanting to vote and not really knowing whom to vote for in their own area. I mean, that’s just sad,” Snitz says.

Snitz reminds voters that it’s perfectly legal – and in such a varied local election, perhaps wise – to take a list of their preferred candidates with them into the voting booth, rather than try to commit them all to memory.

The candidates endorsed by Northeast Johnson County Conservatives are:

Countywide elections

Johnson County Community College board of trustees – all JoCo voters can vote for all three.

Water One – all JoCo voters can vote for all four.

School board elections

Blue Valley school board — all BV voters can vote for all four.

De Soto school board

Gardner Edgerton school board

Olathe school board

Shawnee Mission School Board

Spring Hill school board

City elections – city council and mayor

De Soto

All voters can vote for ALL these candidates.

Edgerton

All voters can vote for both.

Fairway

Gardner

All voters can vote for both.

Lake Quivira

Leawood

Lenexa

Merriam

Mission Hills

All voters can vote for both.

Olathe mayor

Olathe city council

Overland Park

Prairie Village

These common-sense candidates oppose rezoning and runaway spending:

Roeland Park City Council

Ward 1

Shawnee mayor

Shawnee City Council

Spring Hill City Council

All voters can vote for all four.

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About The Author

Michael Ryan is Executive Editor of The Heartlander. A Kansas City native, he's been an award-winning reporter, editor and opinion writer at newspapers in Kansas, Missouri, Georgia and Texas.
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