Who is Phil LeVota? What to know about Jackson County’s new interim executive
After an accelerated process to select an interim Jackson County executive, attorney Phil LeVota is stepping into countywide leadership for the first time.
LeVota beat out 12 other candidates who filed to serve for the remaining time left in former County Executive Frank White Jr.’s term. Five of the nine members of the county legislature – Sean Smith, DaRon McGee, Donna Peyton, Venessa Huskey and Manny Abarca IV – voted to appoint LeVota, while the other four voted for 28-year former legislator Dan Tarwater III.
LeVota’s appointment concludes a historic process to recall White, which began more than two years ago with a petition in eastern Jackson County. Between 2023 and June 2025, Jackson County residents collected more than 43,000 signatures to get a question about White’s removal on the ballot, with the help of Democracy in Action, a “dark money” political action group whose funding sources are not publicly disclosed.
White, a Democrat and former Hall of Fame-awarded player on the Kansas City Royals, was county executive from 2016 to the end of September. As interim county executive, LeVota will serve for about 14 months. A new county executive will be elected in November 2026 and will take office on January 1, 2027 for a standard four-year term.
LeVota will be sworn in on Thursday, replacing former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, who served as temporary county executive following White’s exit. He has named former legislator and current Raytown alderperson Theresa Garza as his intended chief of staff, and has publicly pledged to serve only in this interim capacity and not run for re-election in 2026.
While LeVota has not held a county office before and may not be a household name, he has been a familiar name in Jackson County political spaces for years. A former chairperson of the Jackson County Democratic Party, LeVota has worked on political campaigns, as a lobbyist, for state government and on local boards and committees. He was also involved in the Frank White recall effort from a legal standpoint, representing a group of Jackson County citizens in one of two dueling lawsuits surrounding the timeline for the recall election.
So who is LeVota? And how does he plan to use his time at the helm of Jackson County?
Jackson County lifer
During his interview with the Jackson County Legislature, LeVota emphasized that his upbringing in Jackson County would inform his leadership style as interim county executive.
LeVota attended Truman High School in Independence and the University of Central Missouri before earning a master’s degree in management from Baker University and a law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Past roles landed him in Missouri’s Department of Social Services, the Governor’s Public Relations Task Force and the Juvenile Law Enforcement Coalition Committee of the Independence Police Department, along with several neighborhood and nonprofit organizations.
After graduating from UMKC, LeVota worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney under then-Jackson County Prosecutor Claire McCaskill before opening a private law practice in 2006. The Law Offices of Phil LeVota now have branches in Kansas City, Independence and Jefferson City.
LeVota previously chaired the Jackson County Democratic Party and served on a committee for reapportionment of the county legislature.
LeVota is also the president of Midwest Mediation and Consulting LLC, a lobbying firm whose clients have included the cities of Independence and North Kansas City. However, during his interview with legislators, LeVota said that he has not been directly involved in political lobbying in over a decade.
“I haven’t been involved in organizing or managing political campaigns in a while,” LeVota told legislators Monday.
His brother Paul LeVota was a Missouri state representative from 2003 to 2011, where he was House minority leader from 2007 to 2010. Paul LeVota was then a Missouri state senator from 2012 to August 2015, when he resigned after being accused of sexually harassing legislative interns.
During the recall process, Phil LeVota represented former county Republican Chair Mark Anthony Jones, along with Jackson County residents Fawn Collins and Jay Perry, in a lawsuit asking a Jackson County judge to hold the special recall election on Aug. 26.
An opposing lawsuit filed the same week sought to delay the recall question until the November 4 general elections, when it could go on a pre-existing ballot. The two lawsuits were ultimately consolidated, and Jackson County Judge Marty W. Seaton set the recall for Sept. 30.
Campaign controversies
LeVota has been open about his view that the current Jackson County Legislature is inefficient and at times troubled.
However, the new county executive has his own history of political controversy. The Missouri Ethics Commission has cited LeVota for alleged violations related to campaign finance disclosure, some of which he successfully appealed.
In 1998, LeVota became affiliated with a political organization called the Show-Me Council, according to Missouri Ethics Commission filings. When the Council got involved in campaign efforts related to a 2013 county ballot question, it allegedly both received funds from other organizations and disbursed funds to LeVota without reporting them correctly to the Missouri Ethics Commission, according to court documents.
The Missouri Ethics Commission audited the Show-Me Council in 2015 after a whistleblower reported LeVota during a 2014 Independence City Council race he was involved in as a lobbyist. The Commission was also tasked with assessing whether the organization had properly disclosed its financial involvement on campaign mailers, and whether LeVota had properly reported several withdrawals made from Council bank accounts.
The state commission fined LeVota $20,000 for funding disclosure issues, and LeVota appealed the decision.
The commission made a final ruling in 2022 that LeVota had improperly withdrawn a total of $5,310 from the Show-Me Council’s bank accounts while he was not an active member of its board and issued a $10,000 fine that could be suspended as long as LeVota paid $1,000 and avoided future violations.
LeVota told The Star that he has a history of litigating against the Missouri Ethics Commission beyond the campaign finance controversy, and that continuing to focus on the incident is “just more negative dirty tricks.”
“I’m proud to fight on behalf of myself and my clients against the Missouri Ethics Commission, because they’re not always doing the right thing,” LeVota said. “If someone thinks that me fighting against what the MEC is doing is wrong, then I just have to disagree.”
In 2018, LeVota sued former County Executive Mike Sanders, who had resigned in 2016, claiming that Sanders used campaign funds to strong-arm Independence leaders into cutting off a contract with LeVota’s lobbying firm two years earlier for his own benefit. Sanders was convicted and sent to federal prison around that same time over a wire fraud scheme.
Others in the county political arena have also said they consider LeVota’s appointment controversial or disappointing.
During the recall process, White accused LeVota of getting involved in the recall date lawsuit as an act of revenge after White allegedly declined to create a position for LeVota within the Jackson County municipal court system.
White also accused LeVota of “openly lobbying legislators to make him interim county executive if a recall succeeds” and “doing the bidding of the teams (the Chiefs and Royals) in the press.”
In response to White’s criticism, LeVota told the Star that he did not converse directly with any representative of the Chiefs and Royals during the interim selection process, and that he felt White was working to distract voters from the ongoing issues in the 2025 tax assessment process.
“I’m the biggest Chiefs and Royals fan you know,” LeVota said. “Frank wanted to make stadiums an issue and run away from the tax assessment.”
White isn’t the only one who has voiced concern about a significant level of politicking behind the scenes of LeVota’s appointment. Kansas City attorney Stacy Lake, who is running for the next full county executive term in 2026, said Tuesday that LeVota’s ascension to interim county executive was “a decision made behind closed doors”.
“Jackson County needed a fresh start, not another insider deal,” Lake said. “Phil Levota’s appointment as county executive raises serious questions about ethics and accountability in government.”
LeVota referred to Lake’s criticism as “sour grapes” and said that her criticism of an interim process which she did not participate in directly was “unfortunate.” Following a public-facing interview and application process for interim county executive, LeVota said, should preclude him from being accused of making secret deals with legislators.
“For Stacy to run around and say there’s some behind-the-door-deal being done – it’s irresponsible and reckless to the people of Jackson County,” LeVota said. “I was proud that they went through the process, I was proud to go through the process, and now we’ve got people upset that their candidate didn’t win or they didn’t win.”
Plans and platform
LeVota may be just days into his term as county executive, but he’s already put a lot of thought into his political agenda.
During his candidate interview Monday, LeVota presented legislators with a detailed packet outlining his vision for the next 14 months of executive actions. He told members of the press to expect changes as early as next week in relation to the ongoing appeals process for the 2025 property tax assessment cycle.
LeVota previously said that he would support rolling property tax values back to 2022 levels, then attempting to work with the state to implement a potential cap on increases in the value of commercial properties.
He has also spoken publicly about a perceived lack of trust in Jackson County Assessor Gail McCann Beatty, which has surged ahead of a November ballot measure that could convert county assessor from an executive appointment to an elected role.
The incoming county executive has also come out in favor of attempting to keep both the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County, as at least the latter team searches for a potential new stadium site. LeVota has said he hopes to re-open streams of communication with leadership on both teams, claiming that White had essentially cut contact with both organizations.
LeVota said that he would like to see the Royals strongly consider a move to downtown Kansas City, though not without a community benefits agreement and some kind of input from the voters who “knocked down” a 30-year county sales tax that would have funded both teams’ stadiums.
“The stadium issues are a difficult and important situation,” LeVota said. “…(The teams) have had this legislature talking to them, but no one at the end of the hall, and that has to start.”
Though a declared Democrat, LeVota said he plans to bring a “bipartisan cabinet” to the county executive office during his term. He criticized the county legislature Monday for having a “history of terrible politics” and a recent surge in public-facing infighting.
“I’m looking for people with experience in the outside world and in county government,” LeVota said. “I do have some people that I have talked to and discussed opportunities within the county.”
In the days leading up to White’s recall, LeVota said that he had been approached by multiple parties asking him to apply for interim county executive. After winning the nomination Monday, LeVota admitted that some of his supporters “would have interests outside of county policy” but pledged to remain neutral in any legislative action taken from his new seat.
“No one will have any influence on me,” LeVota said. “My name’s on the door. My name’s accountable. And whether I have some fantastic supporters that helped me along this, that doesn’t mean that they have my ear and they’re going to direct my position.”
LeVota has said that he will prioritize the distribution of $70 million in ARPA dollars that remained dormant in county coffers in the last year of White’s term. During his interview with legislators, LeVota also described himself as pro-union, referencing his involvement in unionizing the prosecutors’ office staff with IAFF Local 42.
“You won’t find a bigger labor guy than I am,” LeVota said Monday.
This story was originally published October 15, 2025 at 4:24 PM.
