A nine-year resident of Platte County, Jason and his wife Leah are raising their family here — and, like a lot of Platte County families, they have watched the cost of living climb, property taxes climb, and county government drift away from the things it is actually supposed to do. Jason is running to change that.

Jason and Leah are active in the community through their small business, donating technology, services, and support to help improve community safety and strengthen the place they call home. Jason is a lifelong learner who takes time to mentor early-career professionals and help women-owned businesses get off the ground. A father and devoted husband of 18 years, Jason is proud of his upbringing, his conservative values, and the work ethic that shaped him.

Off the clock, Jason is a youth football coach with both the YMCA and the Catholic Youth Organization, donating his time to help kids enjoy sports, learn the fundamentals of teamwork and focus, do the little things right, be accountable to others, and build discipline.

In the private sector, Jason has spent his career in the technology industry, working alongside Leah to build a small business of their own. He brings the discipline of someone who has had to make payroll, balance a budget, and answer directly to customers — not to political donors.

Platte County is Special

Jason spent the first thirty-six years of his life in Hennepin County, Minnesota. He watched a place that was once a lot like Platte County is today — family-friendly, affordable, with neighbors who looked out for each other — turn into the kind of community that lands on the national news for all the wrong reasons. He has seen firsthand what special interests and the slow, steady, incremental growth of government can do to a once-thriving community. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens by degrees: fiscal discipline erodes, accountability disappears, affordability slips away, and pet projects and social experiments crowd out the things local government is actually supposed to do.

When Jason and Leah were looking for a place to raise their family, they saw how special Platte County is — and fell in love with it. Jason is running because he knows what happens when the wrong policymakers take hold of local government, little by little: a community becomes unrecognizable, unaffordable, and beholden to interests other than the families who live there. Platte County is too unique — and too worth fighting for — to let that happen here.

Why He’s Running

Jason’s view of county government’s role is plain: Platte County’s job is public infrastructure and public safety — including the administrative services that support them. County government should fund the mission, execute the mission, and stay focused on the mission. That is what taxpayers are paying for, and that is where every county dollar should go — not pet projects bolted onto the county’s core responsibilities.

More taxes aren’t the answer. In the last eight years, Platte County residents have been asked to raise their own taxes 44 times — more than five times a year. That isn’t governing; it’s a habit. The groups pushing those increases aren’t going to stop on their own. They will keep coming back for more. It takes a commissioner willing to hold the line, refocus the county on its core mission, and say it every time: more taxes aren’t the answer.

The rising cost of living is hitting real families, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. The people we elect should be held to what they said they’d do.

What Jason believes is straightforward. People have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — and that includes the freedom to retain what they produce. Working families and the small businesses that anchor this community deserve a county government that has their back, not one that quietly costs them more every year.

A Record of Standing Up

Long before he ever considered running for office, Jason experienced an Erin Brockovich-like moment. As a private citizen — without a law degree — he taught himself Missouri’s Sunshine Law and spent two years standing up to City Hall, simply bringing light to how large portions of taxpayer dollars were being redirected away from public safety, schools, and other community priorities into private projects. He went on to establish one of the largest open-records settlements in Missouri history and was honored as a “Sunshine Hero” by the Missouri Press Association and the Missouri Sunshine Coalition for his work holding local government accountable to the community it serves and to Missouri’s open-records laws. That is the same stubborn, evidence-driven oversight he will bring to the Platte County Commission: dig into the details, scrutinize the promises made by those seeking taxpayer resources, ask the questions, and refuse to be brushed off.

What Voters Can Expect

A presiding commissioner who treats public money like it belongs to the public. Who shows up. Who does the work. And who never loses sight of what matters most: Is life in Platte County getting more affordable? Is the quality of life going up for the families who live here?