Platte County’s first Black state lawmaker flipped seat last election. Will she keep it?

The last time voters in the southern part of Platte County chose their state representative, they made history.

In 2022, Democratic Rep. Jamie Johnson became the first Black person to be elected to represent a Platte County district in the Missouri General Assembly. In that election — the first after the latest round of legislative redistricting — she flipped the previously Republican-held seat with 52% of the vote.

Now, she’s fighting to keep her spot in the legislature against challenger Mike Jones, a Republican small business owner from Parkville. Each candidate ran unopposed in the August primary, and the results between the two were extremely close: Jones got just 176 more votes than Johnson.

Johnson said she’s running on a similar platform as her freshman campaign two years ago: well-funded public schools, affordable health care, protecting vulnerable neighbors, empathy and inclusivity.

In her time in Jefferson City, she has sponsored legislation to try to get health insurance to cover doula services for expecting parents and to make it against the law for a minor to have a gun on public property. She also served on a special committee dedicated to property tax reform.

Jones’ campaign also includes support for public schools, focusing on the need for school safety and higher teacher pay. He has emphasized restrictions on transgender students playing school sports or accessing gender-affirming medical care, cutting property taxes, increasing funding for law enforcement and increasing prison sentences for crimes, according to his website.

The Star shadowed Johnson on the campaign trail to get a better sense of how she’s working to keep her seat.

Jones declined The Star’s request for an interview over the phone or in person, as well as an opportunity to shadow his campaigning, to “minimize miscommunication about his beliefs and values.” Instead, he answered a list of questions through email.

Targeting ‘Maybe’ Voters

Rep. Johnson said she’s doing her best to stay focused on the task at hand: Keeping her House seat.

“We need to hold the seat, and this is a flippable district. It is a swing district,” she said, noting that keeping her District 12 seat would bring what she sees as needed balance to an embattled, Republican-dominated legislature.

“But I’m also not worried in the sense that there’s so much support in this community, and people really have expressed that in multiple ways.”

Johnson settled in the Northland almost 18 years ago when Hurricane Katrina forced her family to flee from New Orleans. Her husband at the time worked at the University of Kansas Medical Center, so they found a middle ground between the only family she had in the area, which lived in Leavenworth and his job. She said they chose Platte County for its charming and close-knit community.

As a state representative, Johnson said she has enjoyed educating voters on different issues and being a resource for residents who contact her — even outside her power as a state representative — such as helping small businesses obtain liquor licenses or addressing grassroots problems in neighborhoods.

Because the district could flip either way, Johnson is focusing her efforts on people in her community who are considered “maybe voters.”

She has garnered a few endorsements across the aisle — including from former Republican Platte County commissioner and Parkville mayor Kathy Dusenbery and Missouri’s largest business advocacy group , which otherwise supported mostly Republicans — as well as from Kansas City’s major trade unions, gun safety organizations and abortion rights groups.

As the election nears, she’s out in neighborhoods knocking on doors on a daily basis. She’s using an online program based on state records to look at residents’ voting scores to make sure she’s introducing herself to people who may not otherwise turn out to vote.

While she’s mainly focused on flipping ‘maybe’ voters, sometimes she said she’ll stop at houses that have signs to vote yes on Amendment 3, which if it passes would assert abortion rights in Missouri and overturn the state’s ban. Johnson said she supports the amendment and individuals’ rights to make their personal health care decisions.

At one house in southern Platte County, she stopped to knock on the door even though it wasn’t on her list because of a rainbow flag indicating support for the LGBTQ community. Johnson and the homeowner spoke about his voting plan, and what he’s looking for in a state representative.

The homeowner said he usually isn’t strictly with a party, but since the 2016 election, he has voted for anyone listed as a Democrat. They talked about making schools more inclusive for LGBTQ students and staff and early voting.

“Conversations like that really do fuel me for the next couple of weeks because sleep is a luxury at the moment,” she said.

Johnson inevitably runs into voters who don’t share her views, too. She recalled one time in particular when she spoke to a voter who was mainly concerned about gender and sports, a policy area she thinks the legislature should leave to experts.

“I said, we can’t govern with a broad brush and just be like, ‘Here is what’s good for everybody’ when we don’t know the individual situation,” she said.

Johnson said she enjoys talking to people in her community in-person. Leading up to Election Day, she’s been speaking at public forums and community events, such as a candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters.

She said she tries to keep her social media usage to a minimum with timers on her phone that keep track of how much time she spends on the apps.

‘Reeling’ the voters in

On the other hand, Jones, her opponent, has embraced social media and leaned into bringing his perspective straight to voters’ cell phones.

His active Facebook page shows behind the scenes of the Mike Jones for State Representative campaign through reels, a short-form video feature. Supporters get a look into his life as the owner of a painting company, father and husband. Videos include cameos from his grade-school-age daughter, shots of him on job sites and old photos of him and his wife in the Air Force.

“I thought reels would be the best way for the folks in my district to get to know me more quickly,” he said in an email to The Star. “I did a series of them and tried to take people through a timeline of my life.”

In one of his reels , he holds up a printed article about Imane Khelif, a female Olympic boxer from Algeria, who has become a bit of a lightning rod online among conservative individuals concerned about gender and sports. In a decision that has been widely criticized by sports officials around the world , Khelif was disqualified from competing in a 2023 tournament because of allegedly high testosterone levels. Her participation in the Paris Olympics this summer sparked outrage and a flurry of misinformation from far-right pundits across the internet, who falsely claimed she was a man.

“We can all agree the madness has to stop,” Jones said. “Unlike my opponent, I’ll fight to permanently protect my daughter and your daughters from biological males both on the field and in the locker room in the state of Missouri.”

He has also spoken frequently about his support for law enforcement and has secured endorsements from Platte County’s prosecutor Eric Zahnd and sheriff Mark Owen, as well as the police union.

In the early 2000s, Jones remembered visiting his parents when a state representative candidate knocked on their door. He deeply appreciated the exchange and said he’s trying to foster a similar feeling with voters now that he’s running for office for the first time.

Jones said he’s knocked on 8,000 doors himself and also has volunteers knocking on his behalf.

“That’s how I truly get to know the concerns of the people that I want to serve,” he said.

“Personal property tax is easily in the top three of issues voters talk to me about when I’m standing on the front porch with them,” he said in a reel while holding up his tax bill. He broke down the different taxes a person pays on a vehicle in Platte County and Missouri. He then promised to propose and fight for vehicles 10 years or older to no longer be taxed through personal property taxes.

“Whether they are small business owners or not, everyone feels overtaxed, even before the additional burden of high inflation,” Jones said.

Johnson said she has yet to speak to Jones, who has not joined her at a public debate or forum so far.

Platte County residents can vote on their District 12 State Representative now for early voting through Nov. 5 election. To find your polling location, you can check your voter registration.