Phil LeVota files to run for Jackson County executive despite promising not to
Interim Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota has filed to run for re-election later this year, despite repeated public pledges not to seek the county executive seat in a permanent capacity.
LeVota formalized his candidacy Tuesday afternoon, just minutes before the deadline. He’s seeking a four-year term in the county’s top office, on top of his ongoing 14-month temporary term.
LeVota was the eighth candidate to file for Jackson County Executive. Jackson County Legislator and former Legislative Chair DaRon McGee has also established his candidacy, along with Bill Baird, Stacy Lake, Ryan Meyer, Holmes Osborne, Alan Rohlfing and Erik Steffen.
LeVota’s candidacy for county executive directly contradicts one of his most frequent and emphatic campaign promises leading up to his interim tenure. The registered Democrat and Kansas City attorney has publicly stated several times that he would not run for a four-year term this year if he were nominated as interim county executive following the recall of former County Executive Frank White, Jr.
During his brief campaign for interim county executive, LeVota was among those who signed a publicly circulated, but not legally binding, pledge signaling to voters they wouldn’t run for the permanent seat this year if elected.
“This position (County Executive) is something that I didn’t want to do,” LeVota wrote on Facebook on March 18. “...It was the right thing to do and I don’t regret a minute of it.”
LeVota said Tuesday that he changed his mind and opted to run for the full county executive term at the urging of constituents, and after reviewing the other candidates in the field, whom he feels are not up to the task.
“Things change,” LeVota said. “Opinions evolve. And what I didn’t know back in September, I know now. And I know we’re making progress in Jackson County, and I hope to continue to do that.”
LeVota has denied recent media inquiries into the possibility of his candidacy. However, he told Fox4 Kansas City late last week that he had been “rethinking” his promise to not run amid the current candidate field, expressing a particular lack of confidence in Lake and McGee. (Lake, who has run once before for county executive, has accused LeVota of excessive politicking in his interim appointment, which she called “a decision made behind closed doors”.)
“My goal to hand this over to someone else – those people aren’t there,” LeVota told Fox4 last week. “Our friends in labor, our friends in the community, a lot of people are telling me that. Experience, leadership, someone that can stable (sic) the vote. Whether you like it or not, I’ve got a direct cellphone to the governor.”
LeVota’s first six months
LeVota has been in the county’s top office for about five and a half months. In that time, several county financial issues have come to a head, including property assessment concerns, nonprofit funding needs and the future of the Truman Sports Complex.
The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals will both allegedly vacate Truman Sports Complex by 2031. When LeVota took office, he pledged to prioritize keeping both teams in place, submitting a last-ditch financial proposal called Operation Save Arrowhead as the Chiefs entered talks with Kansas officials in late December.
As the Chiefs formalized their plan to jump across state lines, LeVota continued to blame White for eroding the county’s relationship with the team. The interim county executive has recently established a county task force to create a first round of proposals for the future of the 400-acre double stadium site, though he said he’s leaving a door open in case the Royals choose to stay.
LeVota previously 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.
Before taking office, LeVota also repeatedly emphasized that he felt Jackson County voters had lost trust in then-County Assessor Gail McCann Beatty, who was frequently a target of frustration in relation to residents’ property tax concerns.
In the months since, LeVota has fired McCann Beatty after issuing a public ultimatum for her resignation. McCann Beatty filed an employment discrimination lawsuit, which is ongoing and which Levota has said the county will not pay to settle.
Property tax debacle
When he took office, LeVota said that his first priority would be revamping the Jackson County property assessment process. He planned to roll back residential property valuations to 2022 levels, then attempt to work with the state to implement a potential cap on increases in the value of commercial properties.
LeVota did implement a cap on commercial properties by instructing county staff to manually adjust the values of more than 6,200 spaces. He also implemented a plan to issue tax credits over three years to homeowners whose residential property values increased by more than 15% in the 2023 assessment cycle.
However, residents’ final tax bills were significantly delayed by the implementation of LeVota’s new tax relief programs, causing the county to extend its property tax payment deadline by a month. LeVota also told some commercial property owners to “estimate” their own tax bills, though he offered assistance in the form of a new county-run tax hotline.
Multiple school districts, including the Hickman Mills district in south Kansas City and the Independence School District, have since told The Star that recent Jackson County tax policies have hurt their bottom lines. Interim Hickman Mills Superintendent Dr. Dennis Carpenter said in January that abrupt changes to the county’s tax system effectively widened the district’s debt from $11 million to $14 million.
In Independence, Interim Superintendent Dr. Cynthia Grant said that recent tax changes destabilized the district’s most stable source of income, contributing to its strong support of an incoming $150 billion artificial intelligence data center.
“Importantly, the growth in the commercial tax base reduces reliance on residential property taxes,” Grant said in February.
Who is Phil LeVota?
LeVota became interim county executive following the recall of White in a landslide vote last fall. Jackson County residents mounted a successful referendum campaign to force a special election to recall White, accruing just under 43,000 signatures with significant help from “dark money” political action group Democracy in Action.
An attorney by trade, LeVota had a significant role in White’s recall, representing a group of Jackson County residents in one of two dueling lawsuits surrounding the timeline for the recall election.
During the recall process, White accused LeVota of getting involved in the lawsuit as an act of revenge after White allegedly declined to create a position for LeVota within the Jackson County municipal court system. (LeVota had denied these allegations.)
Jackson County legislators selected LeVota as interim county executive in October. By a margin of 5 votes to 4, LeVota beat out more than a dozen applicants and eight other interviewees for interim county executive, including former County Legislator Dan Tarwater III and current legislative candidate Justice Horn.
If LeVota is elected as county executive, it will be the first time he has won a political office by public vote rather than appointment. 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 previously chaired the Jackson County Democratic Party and served on a committee for reapportionment of the County Legislature.
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.
The Missouri Ethics Commission has previously cited LeVota for alleged violations related to campaign finance disclosure, some of which he successfully appealed.
If LeVota is not re-elected, his term as interim county executive will expire on January 1, 2027.
This story was originally published March 31, 2026 at 5:23 PM.
