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For the last couple of years, an outright civil war has been raging here in Jackson County, Missouri, where I live.
The fight, similar to many playing out across the country right now, is about whether or not to give billions of dollars in handouts to the billionaire owners of the Royals and Chiefs, who are threatening to leave town with their teams if they don’t get it.
I want to talk about today because the story provides a perfect example of why politicians rarely stand up to special interests and the price they pay when they do.
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The first battle in this stadium war took place in 2024, with the teams and their allies fighting to get an initial $2 billion from Jackson County taxpayers [ [link removed] ] (with more needed in the future) to start building a new stadium for the Kansas City Royals and renovate Arrowhead for the Super Bowl Champion Chiefs.
For many in the community– trade unions, politicians, businessmen– there was never really a choice but to support the project. They had to support it, despite the fact that these stadium projects always have a terrible return on investment, because these are big projects and big projects are hard to come by. Plain and simple, our country has no investment or large capital vision that doesn’t include paying a tax to billionaires, so people just accept it as a cost of doing business in order to get what they can for their members and their communities. Which I get. We need structural change, and right now most folks need to advocate for their people within the structure they have, because there are mouths to feed.
Yet, in this particular fight, an unlikely political figure decided to stand, nearly alone, in opposition to the scheme: embattled Jackson County Executive Frank White. I say embattled because Frank and the county legislature are almost always at odds, many in the county blame him for soaring property tax assessments, he almost lost his primary re-election campaign in 2022, and there were even scattered ineffective efforts to try to recall him.
Frank, a hometown baseball hero and former Royals second baseman who had occasionally feuded with his former team post-retirement [ [link removed] ] and may be predisposed to skepticism of the Royals, was in a unique position to push back. And boy did he.
At first, the Royals claimed they needed a new stadium because their iconic Kauffman Stadium, which fans love, supposedly had “concrete cancer.” [ [link removed] ] But when Frank White and some others asked for the evidence, the Royals refused to provide it and outside experts opined that the stadium would be fine for decades. So the Royals said that that reason didn’t actually matter, they didn’t really need or care about reasons, and they were going to move the team if they didn’t get a new stadium and the billions of taxpayer dollars they wanted to pay for it with, so we’d better just pony up.
The Chiefs then jumped in and both teams started making menacing statements indicating they would leave town if they didn’t get the money, while at the same time refusing to make various documents public about the funding and how the money would be used. The typical shady stadium funding stuff.
In response, the Jackson County legislature voted to put a vote to the people on a 40 year 3/8 cent sales tax equal to $2 billion— or four times the county’s entire annual budget. Frank vetoed the measure, repeating that we didn’t know enough to put the vote to the people and that it was a bad deal.
The legislature over-rode his veto, and the vote went to the people anyway. Frank, undeterred, campaigned against the measure as a bad deal for taxpayers [ [link removed] ], calling out the flaws, and continuing to ask questions. Aside from the KC Tenants organization and Frank, there was no real organized effort or expenditure against the vote.
The teams, on the other hand, invested millions of dollars in glitzy ads featuring their stars telling everyone how important it was to give their owners billions of dollars.
Then, in a massive surprise, the tax was overwhelmingly defeated by voters [ [link removed] ] who, apparently, agreed with Frank that throwing money at billionaires shouldn’t be the solution anymore.
Since then, the teams have pitted the states of Kansas and Missouri against one another in a race to the bottom [ [link removed] ] to see who will give them the most money with the fewest strings attached. Yet, to this day, a year and a half later, the owners haven’t gotten their handout from Jackson County, in large part due to the unlikely stand of its executive, Frank White.
But a war is more than one battle.
I mentioned that, prior to the stadium vote, there had been scattered efforts to recall Frank for the myriad things people were mad at him about, but that they hadn’t gone anywhere.
That all changed after Frank had the gall to question the stadium deal.
Suddenly, and ironically, after he had supported an overwhelmingly popular and winning position with voters, the effort to recall Frank became real.
You see, the folks who wield real power in our country needed to make an example of Frank and punish him so that nothing like this ever happens to them again.
And punish him they have: the recall vote for Frank White is now on the ballot for next Tuesday, September 30th. An expensive random unplanned Tuesday election that’s going to cost county taxpayers $2 million [ [link removed] ] to administer for just one question: “Shall Frank White, Jr. be recalled from the office of County Executive in Jackson County?”
Poetically, the billionaire class is spending two million taxpayer dollars to punish a politician who refused to hand them two billion taxpayer dollars without asking questions.
The ballot might as well be changed to read: “Should anyone ever stand up to the ruling class again?”
Even if you think that Frank is a terrible County Executive and should have been recalled long ago, this recall should be a stark reminder of who has power in this country. It isn’t you. Or me. Or Frank. Or the vast majority of people in this country. We know that because Frank wasn’t recalled when you wanted him recalled, or for any of the things you or his normal opponents or voters wanted him recalled for.
No, the option to recall him only became a real option when he pissed off the ruling class. And that should worry not just Frank or his supporters, but his opponents and anyone else who isn’t a part of that class.
I’ll be watching next Tuesday’s election closely because, if they do succeed in running Frank White out of office, whether your support him or hate him, it will be just another sad confirmation of who has power in this country and the cost of standing up to it.
My biggest fear is that this example will succeed and, going forward, our local elected officials will be even less likely to take positions against and question the powers that be.
Which is just going to make the billionaire tax we all pay for large projects even higher, and leave fewer crumbs for the rest of us.
Lucas
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