When Seconds Count: Why the Firefighters of Local 42 Endorsed My Campaign

The Kansas City firefighters of IAFF Local 42 have unanimously endorsed my campaign for Platte County Presiding Commissioner. It is an honor I don’t take lightly, and I want to tell you why it matters and what it says about the kind of commissioner I intend to be.

Local 42 represents more than 1,800 firefighters, emergency medical technicians, paramedics, and public safety officers across Greater Kansas City. These are the people who run toward the emergencies the rest of us run from. When they put their name behind a candidate, they are not making a political statement. They are telling their neighbors who they trust to have their back. I am grateful they decided that person is me.

Why the Kansas City Firefighters backed this campaign

My campaign rests on a simple premise. Platte County government has two core missions, public safety and public infrastructure, and our job is to fund those missions fully and execute them well before we spend a dollar on anything ancillary. Everything else the county might want to do comes after that, not before it.

Public safety, fire and emergency medical response sit at the very center of that mission. The men and women who answer the call need the staffing, the apparatus, the training, and the pay that the job actually requires. And they need elected officials who will say so out loud, in public, when the budget is being written and the hard choices are being made.

The partners we too often overlook

Much of the fire and EMS protection we rely on in Platte County comes from independent fire protection districts, each its own taxing district, with its own board and its own funding. That structural separation is sometimes used as an excuse to treat fire protection as someone else’s problem.

I don’t see it that way, and I never will. Whether the truck rolling up to a house fire says Platte County on the door or carries a district’s name makes no difference to the family standing in the yard. What matters is that the response is professional, fast, and there. That makes every district and department serving our residents a critical partner in delivering on the county’s most basic obligation to the people who live here.

There is only so much revenue that can be generated in this region. Protecting the funding capacity of the partners who are already doing this work well has to be a priority. That is how we attract and keep the best firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs, rather than watching our best talent drain away to other jurisdictions. Retention takes competitive wages and benefits, which are essential, but it also takes something money can’t buy. It takes our people knowing that their local government has their back, with visible, vocal, unambiguous support from the officials they elected. I am committed to providing exactly that.

Backing the badge is something my family already lives

Public safety is not a campaign line for my family. It is something my wife Leah and I already invest in with our own time, technology, and money. Through our Parkville based company, Relevate One, we provide an AI enabled Overwatch platform, including gun detection and real time threat identification, to local public safety teams and event organizers at no cost to them and no cost to taxpayers. We were doing this long before I ever entered politics, because we see it as a matter of public service, full stop.

Most recently, we were recognized in the Platte County Landmark and by the Parkville Old Town Main Street CID for donating those services at this year’s Memorial Day Carnival. We do this work because we see firsthand what crime and emergencies do to a community, and because backing the people who run toward danger is not optional for us.

Thank you

To every member of IAFF Local 42, thank you. Thank you for your service, thank you for the risks you take on behalf of strangers every day, and thank you for your confidence in this campaign. I will not let you down.