July - 9- 2026
🏛️ Issue of the Week: Roll Out the Welcome Mat!
Summary
The atmosphere in Kansas City with Fan Fest and the World Cup keeps catching me off guard. Not the goals, the crowds or even the matches- it’s everything happening around them. I am a believer in community building, and the World Cup truly does bring the world together into a community.
We should all take pride in how we responded to the challenge of hosting the world. Kansas City accomplished this through good planning, strong leadership, dedicated volunteers, first responders, local businesses, and thousands of residents working together. Politics has a way of putting people into categories. Those labels become so familiar that we think we know people before we've ever met them. The World Cup quietly challenged that thinking. Strangers became guests and conversations reminded us that our differences don't have to keep us apart.
The financial impact will eventually fade, but the lesson shouldn't. Strong communities don't happen by accident. They are built by people willing to invest in one another and by governments that create the conditions for communities to succeed.
Welcoming Others Makes Our Community Stronger:
I don’t imagine that a soccer tournament changes anyone’s politics overnight, but I do wonder if walking down Main Street dressed in orange and talking with other groups of people from different places in the world changes their perspectives. I believe the more welcoming we are the stronger our communities and economies grow.
Kansas City has set the tone. This has been good government partnering with agencies and businesses for all our benefit. Our local community has the same opportunity to do the same thing in the next few years as we face unprecedented changes in our society.
Government policies that support growth for public schools, energy development, and housing will welcome new residents and businesses that make living in our district a wonderful and rich experience for all of us- not just a very few.
The challenge is that our current Missouri State Government is not creating policies that welcome others but instead push people away. Amendment 5, for example, will create chaos for the state budget, gutting services including public education. At the same time, it will increase taxes for most of us, including seniors. The inevitable increased sales taxes will not just force many Missourians to purchase goods and services across the state line but also deter tourists from our cities or even Branson as the costs of local vacations rise dramatically.
As budgets are gutted, services are cut, and local tourism becomes unaffordable, small business will not be supported and go under. But large companies will also not want to stay or settle in Missouri.
Key District 33 Details
How should we be making policy in the state house and local governments? These are the questions I would ask myself as I decide what to support and what to oppose:
• How would this policy keep our community and state stable and growing without taking unnecessary risks?
• How would this policy welcome and support new people and business to Missouri and the 33rd District?
• How would this policy solve more problems than it creates?
• How will the results of this policy be measured?
• How could this policy be altered or reversed if it wasn’t working?
Missouri used to be a practical, welcoming place. Missourians want that again. We need a government that serves all of us, not just a few large donors and special interests.
A Better Path Forward & Conclusion
Our government needs to work to welcome us all and bring us all together. It sounds simple, but it’s hard to do when politicians lock down too tightly with their party and special interests and don’t participate with everyone in the community. You have my promise that I will listen. I will observe. I will see the big picture and know the individual stories. Because that’s what Representatives should do.
I wonder how many opinions are quietly shifting as we welcome all of these visitors from around the world. We are seeing how much we all have in common - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been all over the World Cup. It’s the story I’ll remember long after I forget which teams won which games.