We proved once again the American dream is still alive.

Coming up, we pick apart election day's biggest winners and losers.

I'm thankful that I even got this close and achieve the outcome we wanted tonight.

You voted.

What did you tell us?

Why and what now?

Tonight, results show us that regardless of party, regardless of where folks live in the state of Missouri, they want something different.

Plus, the rest of the week's most impactful news stories straight ahead.

Week in review is made possible through the generous support of Dave and Jamie Cummings, Bob and Marlese Gourley.

The Courtney S Turner Charitable Trust, John H. Mize and Bank of America NA co trustees.

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And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Nick Haines.

We've been picking apart your vote this week after Tuesday's big election.

What on earth happened and what happens now?

For the answers, we turn to Kyle Palmer with the Johnson County Post tracking the news from behind the microphone.

At 95.7 FM, KCMO Pete Mundo, political analyst and former star newsman Dave Helling.

And at the helm of our metro's newest newspaper, The next page, KC Eric Wesson.

Dave Helling, complete the sentence for me.

The biggest surprise on election night was blank.

The biggest surprise to me was Jay Ashcroft finishing third in the Missouri Republican primary.

You know, Ashcroft had name recognition, lots of money.

He statewide office.

He was secretary of state, his secretary of state.

You would think that he would perform better than, say, Bill Heigl, who was basically unknown outside of Saint Louis.

So that was a surprise to me.

More broadly, I think I was also surprised by the problems that the most Trumpy candidate seemed to have at the ballot box.

It did seem like we were snapping back a little bit to a more traditional approach in the Republican.

The biggest surprise for you on election night was what, Eric?

The margin of victory for Melissa Johnson for a Jackson county prosecutor.

I thought it would have been a little bit closer, but she won.

She worked hard.

She won.

So what happened there?

Because we were told that because there were two African-American candidates, very strong candidates.

They were on the show just a couple of weeks ago that they would split the black vote, giving a clear path for John Graham to win that election.

Politically, what happened, I believe, is that people in eastern Jackson County, instead of getting a Democratic ticket, they got a Republican ticket so they could vote for Keough and that kind of changed the dynamics with it.

So a lot of those Republican voters who might have been inclined towards John Grabowski never had that chance to vote for him because they had to vote for Keough, because that was supposedly a tight race as well.

On the Kansas side, the biggest surprise for you, Kyle, not the fact that Sheriff Calvin Hayden lost his primary, but maybe the margin of victory.

I think he was soundly beaten by his former undersheriff, Doug Bedford.

And to Dave's point, I think it might have been an indication that Hayden's campaign really centered around his ongoing or now paused elections investigation did not resonate with, again, emphasize Republican primary voters, which demographically would be, you would think, the group most inclined to go with that type of argument.

So the fact that he lost by double digits to his former underling is notable.

If we go back in time, though, the last time he ran for real election, he didn't have any opponents whatsoever.

So if he had not started that election fraud investigation, would he still be the sheriff?

That's a good question.

We'll never know.

But he made that a central part of his campaign.

And I mean, even a week before the election, he was holding an event with his organization, True The Vote, one of the organizations behind the 2000 Mules documentary.

So he wasn't shying away from it.

He wasn't backing off of it, even though the investigation itself, he said, had been paused but had been anyway become a central part of his at least public persona in Johnson.

Now, it doesn't mean that Doug Bedford, his opponent, though, is the new sheriff in town, because there is going to be a general election.

I mean, there is a Democrat in that race.

The police chief in Prairie Village.

Yeah.

Byron Robertson has an interesting biography himself.

He's the first to, as far as we know, first black police chief in Johnson County history, a career in law enforcement and military.

So he is a strong candidate, Democrats believe.

But I think they may not say it out loud.

The Democrats were probably hoping to get Hayden in the general election because it's a clear foil to Roberson, Bedford and Roberson.

There's less daylight, actually between them on the issues.

Pete Mundo The biggest surprise for you on election night was what?

Well, three great choices.

I'm running out of options here, so I'm going to go with that amendment for just the margin of victory or lack thereof on Amendment four, which of course, was a statewide ballot issue that maintain that Kansas City, Missouri, has to fund the police department to the tune of 25%.

It was on the ballot two years ago.

It won by 25 points.

It won by less than two the other night.

So what are we to make of that?

Why do you think it was that close, Eric?

Because people didn't understand what it really was.

And why were they voting for the same thing over again?

I think that was the biggest thing.

And, you know, if you really stop and think about it, over the past couple of years, the mayor and the city council has given the police department an exceedingly extra amount of money, you know, the raises.

And so I think people thought the issue was resolved when when the city council did that May 20.

Lucas said in one tweet that he viewed it as sort of a statistical tie in his mind, and that was evidence enough for him to say, we're going to put forward a proposal to put on the ballot local control for Kansas City Police.

Is that the wrong message that came out of that election, or did they now have a shot at doing that?

They do.

He said on my show on Thursday that this is a priority for him now to get a statewide ballot initiative to get local control of the Kansas City, Missouri, police Department.

So he's using the fact that the margin was so small that Amendment four and he had no funding to speak of on the no side, that maybe there is some enthusiasm him to give Kansas City politicians the local control, the police department.

But there was no funding on the U.S. side either.

So that's that's kind of a bad analogy.

No funding on the no side, because the no side didn't try to raise any money.

I mean, the mayor taking credit for what should have been a more aggressive campaign in Missouri is really ridiculous.

And local control would be very difficult statewide, but it'll be impossible if they try to do it for free.

There was a time in Kansas City, Nick, you'll probably remember this when if you had a local issue of importance, you could pick up the phone, call the Civic Council, call Hallmark, call Sprint, you know, call all the leaders in the chamber and raise a million bucks.

Now, a million bucks isn't a lot of money in a statewide race, but it might have made a little bit of a difference.

No one makes that phone call anymore.

And until you start making those calls, raising money and take it seriously, you're never going to get local control.

There were hundreds of different races and issues on the ballot on both sides of state line.

Who was the biggest winner on election night, Kyle?

Well, you know, kind of flying under the radar.

Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe was the single biggest vote getter of any candidate in Johnson County on Tuesday night.

He's seeking his fifth term as district attorney.

He got a little mixed up in that elections investigation by Sheriff Calvin Hamm, but distanced himself enough from it that he was not penalized electorally by voters.

And so he was able to easily fend off an internal Republican Party challenge.

Now, he's going to face a formidable challenge in November.

That race in a Democrat still technically too close to call.

But both of those candidates, I think, could pose a formidable challenge to him.

And the Democrats will have been gunning for that office.

I know that.

But I mean, four years ago, he had another challenger then, which was Zac Thomas.

Then.

I was told at that time, Steve Howe is toast.

He's not going to win, and yet he wins comfortably.

Yeah.

And Zac Thomas is now was another Democratic candidate this year trailing Vanessa, really former assistant D.A.

So he'll face one of those two.

How will.

But yeah, his margin of victory, the ease with which he sailed through primary night suggest he still has a lot of support among Republicans.

And Johnson, the biggest winner on election night was what?

Biggest winner, Mike Parson.

He did well in his endorsements, even though he was on the ballot.

Mike Kehoe Exactly.

Mike Kehoe wins the vote.

Malik, As treasurer wins and Andrew Bailey, the Attorney General wins, and they won fairly comfortably.

Mikey Hill is down 30 points.

A few months ago, Andrew Bailey thought that might be close with Will Sharpe, who was always on Fox News, one of Donald Trump's attorneys.

But, you know, Andrew Bailey was picked by the governor as former general counsel to be ag, and he won by 20 plus points.

So Mike Person had a good night on endorsements, and a lot of those more traditional candidates ended up winning.

You mentioned then.

So Michael was appointed by the governor and he was endorsed by the governor, is if he does win the governor's race, is it a third term for Mike Parson or are they different?

No, they're different.

They're different.

What would be the biggest difference, do you think, leadership, the ability to actually bring people together?

Mike Person I would have him on a lot and he would say, well, you know, I just I just take things from the legislature and I'll review it and sign what I want to.

But you really need someone who's going to corral the traditional wing of the Republican Party in Jeff City with the Freedom Caucus members and Mike Parson never really wanted to get in that fight.

Somebody has to be, for lack of a better phrase, the adult in the room who gets these people together and say, hey, we should stop fighting each other and do things for the people of Missouri.

And my hope is that the leadership of Mike Hell from his business days will do that.

Mike He'll also a little bit more flexible on the abortion issue than the other candidates in that race, wanting to have exemptions, for instance, for race and for for rape and incest on abortion.

But also there would seem to be a breathing a sigh of relief among civic circles in Kansas City that he was the victor in that race because he was the only one who seemed interested in giving any money to the sports stadium.

Right.

Although the ability of any governor unilaterally to rescue the teams is very questionable, you'll need legislative support of some sort.

And don't forget, let's not forget that Krystal Quade is on the Democratic side, the nominee.

And she is a very, very high quality candidate in a year in which, by the way, the Democratic nominee for president will be a woman.

And that may have some impact on turnout.

So Mike Keough was not a shoo in to be the next governor of the state of Missouri.

Missouri has elected Democrats as governor before complete this sentence.

Kyle, the biggest loser on Election Day was who or what?

Well, we've already talked about Sheriff Calvin Hagan, but I think, you know, behind that, there is the leadership in the Johns County Republican Party, the statewide Republican Party, which has gone more towards the party's Trumpian instincts over the last couple of years, relatively new leadership at both the state and county level.

Hayden was one of their ideological allies.

This is two elections in a row.

And Johnson kind of going back to the local elections in 2023, where some of their most favored candidates didn't win.

And so I think there has to be some real thought.

I mean, I would imagine it has to be some real soul searching about the direction of that party.

But in terms of the loser, if you want to term it that way, on the night of election, on the night of August 6th, the backers of Calvin Haden and his ideological allies, I think, certainly are licking their wounds right now.

The Biggest loser on election night, Pete, Jay Ashcroft.

I mean, he had a double digit, very comfortable lead with that name I.D.

that Dave referenced earlier.

Someone told me that his name I.D.

was worth 6 to $7 million in advertising statewide, and he came in a very distant third at 37.

I'll hit 30.

ASHCROFT Back at 23.

It wasn't even close.

And, you know, that's a huge letdown.

It's not the end of his political career, I think.

So I asked him once, I said, you know, what happens if this doesn't work out?

He said, I'm going to be upset about not being in politics anymore.

So he's lost races before.

I lost, what, a state Senate race early in his career.

He then became secretary of state and now he's lost this.

I mean, and it wasn't even close.

He can go back to engineering.

He can make it all right.

Yes.

No, that's the biggest lose it, By the way, Jay Ashcroft was his own worst enemy, don't you think, Pete?

I mean, he was just such a jerk on radio and other places, public appearances.

He was not a smooth politician.

I will say.

He just he didn't connect with people like his father.

Well, I will say this, though.

We did a whole event with him earlier in the year on Cancel culture.

He was a delight on camera.

He was funny.

I couldn't believe how human and pleasant he was behind the scenes.

He got a little nastier, closer to the election.

And I'm wondering that, though, where you have to differentiate yourself in a very crowded environment where everybody's overly concentrated on the presidential race, then we've got the Olympics.

How do you differentiate yourself doing that?

He was in this impossible I mean, his name ID was the best thing he had going for him.

I was running to his right.

Kehoe was the traditional guy, and he was kind of running as this in-between candidate between the further right and the centrist candidate.

And he never found anything to latch on to.

Did you find out that his message was the same?

Immigration China?

They had flame throwers and assault weapons.

And I'm like, what does that have to do with governing for the big of the nation?

Well, one other loser, quickly, from this election cycle, I was surprised at the margin of loss for Amendment one, which was the childcare tax credit.

And you would think that tax cuts and childcare would be popular items for the state to address.

In Missouri, particularly in rural areas where childcare may be more difficult to find, even though it's difficult everywhere.

And yet it wasn't close in that race.

I thought that was interesting.

Now every election cycle sees new twists and turns.

What was the best or worst campaign strategy we saw during the 2024 election?

I'm going to start on this one myself.

What was it, the demise of the debate?

Mike Keough just won the Republican nomination for governor without ever debating.

He declined every single invitation.

But even when there were debates, there were some strange moments.

Here's the debate in the Kansas Second Congressional District, where one candidate decides to use his moment in the prime time spotlight to propose to his girlfriend.

So you go poorly.

You're out there.

Will you marry me?

That's a first.

And then there was the candidate who decided to give up his allotted time to pray.

But now you know me.

And you know what?

I stand for.

So I'm going to give the next 30 seconds to my God, and I'm going to bow my head to him.

The clock would keep ticking and ticking.

The moderators put in an awkward spot, of course, not wanting to be accused of being anti-God, but these were campaign decisions.

What was the best or worst campaign strategy we saw during the 2024 election?

The one I think it was.

I go with the Hispanic guy behind him translating what he was saying in the commercial.

I thought that was extreme poor taste.

And I had talked to several people in the Hispanic community about it and they didn't like it at all either.

Tape a couple of things.

First, the war strategy was by far by Valentino Gomez, which we can she was never going to win anyway, but she cut YouTube ads and Twitter ads that were just the most grotesque, profane, obscene, ridiculous commercials that you can possibly imagine.

And of course, she got crushed in the general election.

You are picking up on a trend here that we did see all across actually Missouri in many of these races.

And that was the immigration issue.

If you watch those lines, you'd think the biggest problem facing Missouri was illegal immigrants.

On day one, I'll issue an executive order to arrest and deport every illegal immigrant in Missouri.

I'm conservative, Holly Rader.

When illegals try to hurt our families, I'll do whatever it takes.

I'm always packing.

And when I take aim, I don't miss conserve.

Holly Rader for lieutenant governor tell you.

Now, surprisingly, the issue even spilled over into local races.

On the Kansas side, some candidates telling the Johnson County pollster the biggest concern they were hearing from some residents was alarmed that migrants would be housed in Johnson County's new year round homeless shelter being planned at this former LA Quinta Motel in Lenexa.

Our residents are really concerned the county will be housing migrants there.

They're concerned about it.

I think it did come up tangentially in the primary elections.

I think it will be a big issue because there's three commission seats up in November.

There's still, of course, the sheriff and district attorney's race.

So this issue could touch upon those races as well.

This would be Johnson County's first year round, non congregate homeless shelter, non congregant, meaning people who stay there would have their own room, They wouldn't have to stay in a communal space.

But in terms of migrants, it is possible that a noncitizen would be able to stay there because getting federal money to do this project, they can't inquire about a person citizenship or residency.

But whether that would happen, of course, the county says this is meant for Johnson County and metro area residents, primarily.

Many of the candidates, though, that we just saw in those clips and others who really leaned in very heavily on that issue, lost out on Election Day in Missouri.

Pete, does that take away the residents of that issue for the upcoming November?

Will there be a dialing back of that of immigration as a result of that?

I don't think so, because you've had an administration that has allowed 10 million illegal immigrants into the country.

It's become a big issue across the political aisle.

So it makes sense for Republicans trying to appeal to a base to use it.

But there's only so much locally and federal or locally and statewide that can really be done based on the federal nature of the issue very quickly.

The irony, of course, is that illegal immigration, to the extent it is a real policy problem, is a much bigger issue in Kansas than it is in Missouri because of the influx of immigrant populations, primarily in western Kansas, to work in the meatpacking plants and some of the other businesses out there in Missouri, the amount of actual illegal immigration is relatively low, and yet it was elevated in some ways to the most important issue in this campaign.

And I do think and maybe this is an overarching lesson there, the voters are pretty smart about this stuff.

I mean, we you know, I think we work so hard to sort of understand what the message is from candidates, but the voters get it.

And I think they voted, of course.

But it was interesting, though, we did see Krystal Quade, who is now the Democratic nominee for governor, also leaning on that issue, saying the border was an issue and that I gave money to Mike Parson, the governor, to send the state highway patrol troopers and the National Guard to the border.

So it has obviously had an effect.

And Democrats also feel they somehow have to lean into the issue, too.

Well, she had tremendous name recognition and she was running against a guy that owns some Wendy's restaurants and his message wasn't really resonating that well.

And they only happened to be two exactly these in parallel restaurants from Boston to Chicago, not a big company.

But I think that Dave is right.

Voters.

Okay, now we have some other issues besides immigration to deal with.

We've got crime, we've got taxes, we've got our highways.

Let's talk about some of these other things we can fix.

Already, with the presidential election consuming 99.9% of the public's attention and the Olympics gobbling up the rest of our waking time, how many people actually went to the polls this week?

Was it higher or lower or about the same as had the presidential year?

Kyle Well, compared to the last two even year primaries, the turnout in Johnson County was down significantly two years ago.

Two years ago, of course, you had the value than both of them, which drove record turnout over 50% turnout, which is unheard of for a primary two years before that in the presidential election, the primary, I think it was about 35%.

So still very high this time around is about 21%.

After Tuesday night, that will tick up slightly as they count provisional and mail in ballots.

So still, it was a much quieter election.

And I will say in Johnson County, outside of the sheriff in the race, there wasn't a lot going on.

So it was a pretty quiet ballot.

It was also slow on the Kansas City, Missouri side.

But is there it does not provide any lessons for us for November or they are completely different things.

Turnout will be high.

We're saving our energy here.

You know, just a personal anecdote, quickly.

I'm an unaffiliated voter in Johnson County.

There was literally nothing on the ballot for me.

Nothing.

There was no reason for me to even go to the polls because all of the elections were based on partizanship Republicans and Democrats.

I think that's more common than people know.

The unaffiliated registrations in Johnson County are up significantly, and that may be one reason why.

But also there were very few competitive primaries for Democrats.

So they had a reason to go to the polls.

In terms of can we just mention very quickly Marvin Robinson's loss in the House District 35 in Kansas.

That's an important race to keep an eye on.

Wanda Page was the victor.

It shows that Democrats who try to cross the aisle may suffer in primaries as well as Republicans who cross the other way.

And David Haley won his Senate seat over in Kansas, too.

It was kind of goes against a young guy, a young guy who ran against him.

So he was kind of conservative.

Now, Kansas City Mayor Quinta, Lucas wasn't on the ballot this week, but he seemed to be spending an awful lot of time campaigning.

He was in New Hampshire this past weekend making speeches and meeting with groups on behalf of the Kamala Harris campaign.

Just before that, he was in Georgia, in Michigan, trying to rally young voters to support Harris.

His vigorous travel schedule has not gone unnoticed on social media.

We don't pay you for that.

Get back to Casey and do your job, writes Amy on Twitter.

Another says, How much of my taxes is paying for these trips?

Who does pay for these trips?

The campaigns do they do party?

Yeah.

Or the party?

Can he do both jobs?

I mean, he likes to say I can basically, you know, walk and chew gum at the same time, Pete.

I mean, but is this hurting him politically that he is spending so much time out of state now campaigning for a Democratic candidate for president and not on the job when we had three homicides in 12 hours and we still haven't fixed the stadium issue, it's not hurting him politically because he's a lame duck.

So it doesn't matter.

I mean, I think he realizes for his political future there is no path really anywhere.

Missouri, you can talk about Cleaver's seat, but he's not going anywhere anytime soon.

He can't win a statewide race in Missouri.

So for his own political future, this makes sense.

Is it the best thing for Kansas City?

You saw the tweets and the post on X and I think a lot of people are feeling that way.

Well, with the election gobbling up again, much of the attention this week, I think our biggest story missed segment could take up to an hour, 49 minutes of that.

Just to talk about Quincy hold a Raytown South graduate claiming Olympic gold this week in Paris in the 400 meters.

But I'm going to concentrate instead on just two intriguing stories briefly, one in Kansas, one in Missouri.

Did you see that the Hurford house in Leigh would close this weekend?

Four months after a restaurant worker admitted to contaminating food with his bodily fluids.

Kyle, you and people quoted in your newspaper saying they were heartbroken.

Clearly not enough people heartbroken, though, to keep the doors open.

That's what it seems.

And, you know, we should say the restaurants, other locations around the Kansas City metro, including one in Shawnee, will remain open.

So it seems germane to this location, really suffering the fallout from this incident, which restaurant officials and even local, municipal and business officials in Leigh would always try to chalk up to just one, you know, depraved individual making a series of bad choices.

And how much can you hold the restaurant accountable for that?

But I think from the start, after that news came to light, you could see they were in trouble.

There had been at least ten lawsuits filed in the wake of that.

People saying they got sick in the time that this man was active in the kitchen.

So, yeah, I think for people in that community, it is a loss.

It is a central pillar of the kind of civic life down there.

You have graduation ceremonies and graduation parties and receptions there all the time.

And Rotary Club and even the local GOP meet has met there.

So it is a a big institution.

But as one city council member said, it's such a prominent space, a big space, something's likely to move in.

Pretty soon after I met several people who told me they were trying to help the restaurant with rebranding.

But you couldn't rebrand your way out of that.

No, that was that was too much destined to a failure once it became public.

And on the Missouri side, that was a stunning development actually, this week on that whole property tax mix in Jackson County.

Remember all those protesters now the Missouri State Tax Commission ordering the county to roll back the property values on a whopping 75% of all homes.

And if I take my shoes and socks off to count, that's more than 225,000 properties.

This is a disaster for Jackson County government of we just started another long round of court battles and appeals that's say disaster for Frank White.

Now, he says he's going to fight this thing, but this is the latest example of Frank White clearly coming off wildly incompetent and out of touch on this issue, saying he's going to fight it after the Missouri Tax Commission says roll these things back from 2023 to the 15% top threshold.

I don't know what there is to fight.

I mean, he's got to, I imagine, listen, but he's been fighting this thing all along and constituents at some point will hopefully make him pay the price.

They're hitting the panic button over at the Jackson County courthouse.

And not only that, but other taxing jurisdictions.

What does this do to the mill levy in the school district, for example, or other other people who depend to other organizations that depend on the property tax?

That's why I think it will end up in court for some time.

So immediate relief to homeowners may not be possible.

Pete is right on this, though, for Frank White's supervision, if you will, of the courthouse continues to be a major issue of concern and needs to be paid attention to.

His response.

As always, oh, this is political.

They're coming after me because I'm a Democrat.

And these Republicans, that story is kind of getting old.

Everybody can be wrong about this and everybody can't target him because he's a Democrat.

And all that we will see all week has been revealed courtesy of Kyle Palmer from the Johnson County Post and former star newsman Dave Helling.

You can hear him 6 to 10 weekdays on 95.7 FM, KCMO, Pete Mundo.

And every week a next page, KC Eric Wesson Now, before we leave you, did you know today marks the 10th anniversary of the police shooting death of Michael Brown and the start of weeks of protest in Ferguson, Missouri.

We are going to have this week on the next week's program, Chief Stacy Graves, Jackson County Sheriff Darrel Forte, outgoing prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and Urban League CEO Gwen Cramped looking at the state of policing.

We will see you then in this spot.

I'm Nick Haynes.

From all of us here at Kansas City, PBS.

Be well, keep calm and carry on.