KC Council incumbent, fired aide & longtime politician trying comeback all want this seat

Ten times Kansas City voters picked Henry Rizzo to represent them at the county courthouse and Missouri’s capital.

But it’s been 17 years since he last prevailed at the polls and more than a dozen since he lost his seat on the Jackson County Legislature and receded from the headlines.

Can a seasoned pol who’s been out of the game that long make a comeback?

A few months shy of his 70th birthday, Rizzo is trying, having restarted the political career he began when he was in his mid-20s to run for Kansas City Council this year.

Specifically the 4th District seat that 41-year-old Eric Bunch won narrowly in his first run for political office four years ago. Bunch, a transit advocate and co-founder of the group BikeWalk KC, represents some of the city’s more affluent and poorest neighborhoods south of the Missouri River, as well as some territory north and west of North Kansas City.

His district includes the Old Northeast area that for many years was Rizzo’s base of support as head of the Old Northeast Democratic Club and whose voters Rizzo hopes will remember him when they cast ballots in the April 4 primary.

Bunch is counting on those same voters and those who weren’t around when Rizzo was to re-elect him based on his support of things like zero fare buses and his advocacy for affordable housing.

Rizzo, meanwhile, is waging a campaign that paints Bunch as a progressive who is unresponsive and out of touch with constituents who are annoyed by the protected bike lanes that Bunch promotes and are more concerned with keeping their neighborhoods clean and free of crime.

“We are going back to Back to Basics,” is his slogan.

To make it even more interesting, factor in the third candidate in this race: Bunch’s former legislative aide Crissy Dastrup.

Until she announced her candidacy a year ago, Dastrup’s previous experience in electoral politics was supporting others who were running for local office and getting herself elected to the streetcar taxing district board.

She hired on with Bunch the day he took office in August 2019 with the intention of learning the inner workings of City Hall in preparation for her own eventual run for an open seat on the city council.

She never thought she’d end up instead challenging Bunch, but then he fired her in September 2021.

It wasn’t as if Dastrup, 41, didn’t see it coming. She felt Bunch wasn’t working as hard at the job as she thought he should have been, especially during the first years of the pandemic, and had too narrow of a focus on transportation. Problem was, she told him so.

“I basically called him a piece of s—,” she said in an interview. “And he said, ‘Well, you’re terminated.’ ”

When asked if that was all there was to it, Bunch is diplomatic.

“She was not fulfilling the basic duties of her job,” he said. “And she was going outside the scope of her job duties. Maybe that’s the most succinct way I could put it.”

Dastrup also had run-ins with Rizzo, who entered the race, he says, at the invitation of neighborhood groups who weren’t pleased with Bunch’s performance.

It gripes him to no end that Dastrup keeps bringing up a criminal case from 30 years ago that sent him to prison for one month and then a halfway house for two more months. It stemmed from Rizzo pleading no contest in 1991 to a federal misdemeanor in a case involving a check kiting scheme.

“Crissy has got no base. She’s got no endorsements,” Rizzo said. “This is the only tool, or only card she has to play with. And she’s trying to get you to play it. And I think that’s wrong.”

All those ingredients make this one of the more intriguing races to watch in the knockout round of this year’s non-partisan municipal election. The top two vote getters will go onto the general election in June.

Five other incumbent council members and Mayor Quinton Lucas are all seeking re-election. Six council members are term limited and their seats are open.

Rizzo, Bunch and Dastrup have their policy differences on the margins, but they all agree that the city needs to do more to address issues like crime, affordable housing and basic services like trash removal.

More than anything at community forums, they have sought to differentiate themselves based on how committed they say they will be to serving constituents’ needs over the next four years, as well as on their experience and qualifications for the job.

Rizzo and Dastrup both accuse Bunch of not returning constituents’ phone calls. Bunch says he has always looked out for his constituents and makes a point at candidate forums of giving out his private cell phone number.

Here’s a look at each of the candidates, their stands on the issues and their level of support:

Bunch

Four years ago, Bunch finished second in yet another three-way primary race, then for an open seat, and won the general election with a margin of 361 votes.

Bunch hopes he’s built more support with his accomplishments since then and says the experience he’s gleaned will make him more effective at City Hall than his challengers might be.

“It takes four years to figure stuff out,” he said. “We have to know a lot of things. We have to build relationships with key stakeholders and the communities we’re serving. And that takes time.”

He lists among his accomplishments his work to create more affordable housing by voting to create a separate housing department and working toward passage of a bond issue to invest $50 million in a housing trust fund.

He supported efforts to protect tenants against evictions, led the effort to create the state’s first LGBTQ commission, and was instrumental in getting 30 miles of protected bike lanes installed in less than two years.

“I think we’ve been able to get a lot of good stuff done, despite the challenges with the pandemic,” he said. “I think the focus of my campaign has been on and communicating with voters that we’ve made some progress over the last few years, but there’s still a lot of work left to do.”

For a couple of years Bunch was in the council majority that aimed to hold the police department more financially accountable, which made him a target for a recall campaign that never came to a vote and set up the statewide ballot initiative that increased the amount of money the city must give the department.

He has been endorsed by a number of large labor unions, including the firefighters’ union Local 42, the AFL-CIO, Operating Engineers Local 101 and the Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council. He’s also gotten endorsements from the Sierra Club, KC Tenants and Our Revolution KC, a group that supports liberal causes.

In fundraising, Bunch came in a close second to Rizzo, receiving $45,000 as of Feb. 23, and had spent about half of that.

At $2,975, his largest contribution came from Operating Engineers Local 101 Political Action Committee; followed by Chad Haines, a construction company owner in Liberty, who gave $2,900; and Paul Ideker, a contractor in St. Joseph, who gave $1,800.

Rizzo

Rizzo believes public safety and affordable housing are the top two issues that concern Kansas Citians and that he, more than his opponents, can effectively address those concerns on the council due to his many years of legislating.

He served 18 years in the Missouri House of Representatives, which were bookended by the two stints totaling nine years that he was on the Jackson County Legislature.

“I think the whole problem right now is that we aren’t building enough coalitions,” he said at a recent voter forum. “I have the ability to reach into state government and county government. So I think I can definitely make a difference in all those fields.”

As a state legislator, he said he worked to pass the legislation that led to the development of the Home Depot and Costco stores on Linwood Boulevard.

During this campaign, he’s stressed his support for local law enforcement and supports community policing to make neighborhoods safer.

The Fraternal Order of Police union endorsed him, as did the Black political club Freedom Inc., the Citizens Association and the union representing fire department battalion and division chiefs, Local 3808.

Other supporters include former Kansas City Police Chief Jim Corwin and a host of long-time political figures, both Republicans and Democrats. They include current City Councilwoman Theresa Loar and former council members Bonnie Sue Cooper, Ed Ford, Bill Skaggs and Jim Glover.

His son, state Sen. John Rizzo, leads the list of endorsements on Rizzo’s website.

Rizzo leads the pack in fund-raising. He had received $54,000 as of Feb. 24, his campaign finance report shows, and had spent only $13,000 on the primary.

His largest contributions have come from Public Safety Concern, a political action committee affiliated with the union representing fire department battalion and division chiefs, as well as businessmen John Strada, Joe Sacco and Charles Cacioppo Jr. All gave $1,800, reports show.

Dastrup

Dastrup and her family moved to Kansas City’s Hyde Park neighborhood about 15 years ago and she quickly got involved in the community.

She founded the Troost Market Collective, a nonprofit that supports businesses and art projects along Troost Avenue. She says she was instrumental in advancing Bunch’s agenda while his aide, including establishing the LGBTQ Commission.

Dastrup says that involvement shows that she will be more committed to district residents than her opponents who, she says, “have broken trust with their community by only showing up during campaign season.”

She opposes incentives on what she describes as luxury housing, unless there is some kind of community benefit.

She supports increased code enforcement related to housing safety and “community-based program and crime prevention techniques,” and a regional plan to create transitional housing for the homeless.

“The general public is disgusted that we don’t have solutions for our homeless,” she said in an interview.

Other than receiving the endorsement of the union representing the bus drivers at the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, Dastrup has no others from organized groups.

However, she lists a number of community leaders as her supporters, including the Rev. John Modest Miles of Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, Ruby Jean’s Juicery owner Chris Goode and Celia Ruiz, vice chair of the Kansas City LGBTQ Commission.

Dastrup reported raising $39,000 as of her latest campaign finance report on Feb. 23 and had spent half of that.

Among her largest donors were Michelle Markham, Troy Kearns and Randall Behrmann, all giving $1,800.

This story was originally published March 13, 2023 at 5:30 AM.

Mike Hendricks

The Kansas City Star

816-234-4738

Mike Hendricks covered local government for The Kansas City Star until he retired in 2025. Previously he covered business, agriculture and was on the investigations team. For 14 years, he wrote a metro column three times a week. His many honors include two Gerald Loeb awards.