In KC’s suburbs, a sleepy congressional race is suddenly wide awake | Opinion
Nathan Willett is not waiting around.
That was the message conveyed Tuesday night by the 30-year-old Kansas City councilman, who held his launch party for a congressional bid less than a week after longtime U.S. Rep. Sam Graves announced his retirement.
“There are some individuals who’ve said, ‘It’s not your turn. You need to work for the system, not for the people,’” Willett told a packed barn at First Creek Farm. “The people of north Missouri, those 33 counties in this district — their voices are the ones who get to decide this election. Not hand-picked individuals. Not the system that’s been trying to do that this past week.”
He didn’t name any names. But he didn’t have to.
He was talking about Jeff Roe — the GOP strategist who helped elect Sam Graves a quarter-century ago and went on to build Axiom Strategies into a full-service political firm that managed the presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz in 2016 and Ron DeSantis in 2024. Roe lives in Houston now, but his name still draws a lot of water in northwest Missouri.
Tuesday’s event was supposed to be a fairly routine kickoff for Willett’s previously announced run for state Senate. But seats like Graves’ don’t come around very often. It’s a big prize: a comfortably Republican district that spans the entire length of northern Missouri, with the highest concentration of voters in the suburbs north of Kansas City.
That’s Willett’s backyard. So he’s gone all in: ditching his state Senate plans, lining up support, and filing Monday to run to replace Graves. In doing so, he is going against what amounts to a machine in Missouri Republican politics — a loose but highly influential network that includes Roe’s firm and the Herzog Foundation, a well-funded nonprofit that has become a hub for education advocacy and conservative policy in the state.
Willett had the support of that apparatus in his state Senate race. But Graves’ seat is a different story. They already had their preferred candidate. Graves on Tuesday morning officially endorsed Chris Stigall, a conservative radio host who also works for the Herzog Foundation.
Roe and Stigall are old fraternity brothers. They were members of Tau Kappa Epsilon at Northwest Missouri State University, Stigall told me Thursday.
Technically, the race for Missouri’s 6th congressional district is wide open. Three Democrats have filed to run for the seat — Scot Pondelick and Matt Levine of Kansas City, and Josh Smead of Liberty. But those liberal heathens don’t stand a chance in God’s country of northern Missouri. The race will be decided in the August 4 Republican primary.
Three other Republicans have also filed: Nathaneal Schultz of Bowling Green, Cody Oshel of Maryville and Jim Ingram of Kansas City. They could play a spoiler role at the margins. But as of now, this is shaping up to be a two-person fight: Willett vs. Stigall.
It is also shaping up into a different kind of test about Roe’s influence in the place where he built his empire.
Inside the barn Tuesday night, you could squint and see some answers starting to take shape.
Dispatch from First Creek Farm
First Creek Farm sits about 20 miles north of downtown Kansas City near the county line that divides Clay and Platte. Several local Republican politicos and business types were in attendance. That included Heather Hall, the former Kansas City Councilwoman who was recently denied a spot on the board of police commissioners. She led the crowd in a prayer to start things off.
Terry Kilroy was there. He’s a Kansas City attorney who does fundraising on the side and has helped power campaigns for Governor Mike Kehoe and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley. He told me he plans to back Willett and raise money for the campaign.
Pete Mundo, the local radio host who emceed the night, found himself in a somewhat awkward position: he had agreed to the gig weeks earlier, when the race was for state Senate. Now he was introducing a candidate running against a friend and former colleague in Stigall.
Mundo emphasized afterward that his presence should not be construed as an endorsement.
“I like both guys,” Mundo told me. “I told them both, whoever wins, I’m happy for you.”
Others in the room were less circumspect.
Eric Zahnd, the Platte County prosecutor, had already endorsed Willett over the weekend, doing so in a joint statement with Platte County Commissioner Scott Fricker. The two men openly despise one another, but briefly stood together as Willett spoke — a small show of unity for his campaign.
Zahnd has been around Northland politics for decades. He described Willett to me as an up-and-comer who “understands the needs of both Kansas City and rural Missouri.” Zahnd also sketched the challenge ahead in more candid terms.
“Stigall will have the Herzog machine behind him,” Zahnd said. “They’ve won a lot of races in northwest Missouri, but that doesn’t mean someone talented like Nathan can’t come in and take them on.”
Speaking to the crowd, Willett praised President Trump, calling him the “greatest fighter this country has ever seen,” and rattled off a familiar list of conservative talking points about guns and faith, police and agriculture.
Willett also endeavored to portray Roe, and by extension Stigall, as “anti-Trump” due to Roe’s campaign work for candidates who ran against Trump in 2016 and 2024. Because of that, Willett is the true MAGA candidate in this campaign, in his telling.
Like Mundo, not everyone there Tuesday was ready to pick a side. Some were just feeling things out. Jane Brown, a former Clay County judge who’s running for Kansas City Council next year, was in the room but didn’t respond to a follow-up about who she’s supporting. Neither did Brian Klippenstein, a veteran GOP operative who served as chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Kit Bond and later worked on the Trump administration’s USDA transition.
Chris Stigall’s thoughts
Stigall, for his part, told me in a phone call Thursday that “everyone I know was pretty shocked that Nathan decided not to run for state Senate. But he made that decision to pivot, and God bless America. But he was working with Axiom just a few weeks ago until he decided to change direction.”
Stigall lives in Holt and does his radio show from Kearney. He professed to never having considered running for elected office until learning that Graves intended to step down.
“And I thought, you know, after 25 years of being behind a microphone, talking about the issues, doing battle, communicating with politicians, understanding and studying the ways of Washington — I thought the effort needs better communicators,” Stigall said.
As for the charge that he’s not Trumpy enough, Stigall noted the multiple visits he’s made to the White House to interview the president and members of his administration.
“I one hundred percent support the president’s agenda, and the White House knows that,” Stigall said.
But does the president know how close Stigall is to Roe, who came at the king twice — first with Cruz, then with DeSantis — and missed? Does he care?
It sounds a little silly to say it, but that may turn out to be one of the most important questions in this race.
Roe, a bare-knuckled political bruiser who declined to comment for this column, has been an asset for local Republicans for so long that it’s hard to fathom a Missouri race where he’s a liability. But Trump scrambles everything. As recently as 2024, Trump and his inner circle were reportedly telling people not to hire Axiom for campaigns due to their disloyalty. If he’s feeling spiteful enough, the president might back someone just because Roe’s guy is on the other side of the ballot. Willett is probably the underdog in this race, but a Trump endorsement would change things overnight.
And with Trump, as we keep learning over and over and over, almost nothing is ever off the table.
This story was originally published April 3, 2026 at 5:08 AM.
