BY JOE ARCE AND COREY CRABLE
Kelly Thompson has the Girl Scouts to thank for her foray into local politics.
Thompson, a Democrat and mother of two who is running for Jackson County Legislature Chairman Manny Abarca’s seat on the governing body, says she was called in 2016 and urged to serve as a troop leader. Initially, Thompson declined the offer, but then thought of the recent results of the presidential election, which saw Donald Trump elected to his first term in the
White House.
“(Girl Scout representatives) call back and they say, ‘Do you want to do it?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Because there was some urgency around, ‘Who’s going to model for our kids that their voice still matters?’”
Thompson said, “I was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, in a family rooted in both Polish and Mexican traditions, I grew up celebrating my heritage through food, family, and many stories passed along around the dinner table about life in Mexico and the relatives who still call it home. While Spanish was lost in my family over time, a story common to many Mexican American families, I chose to reclaim that connection by raising my daughters bilingual in Spanish and English. For me, preserving culture isn’t just about honoring the past, it’s about ensuring the next generation has every opportunity to embrace their
family’s story.”
A graduated from the University of Missouri, Thompson has a long and diverse career. She worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., establishing her media outlet’s first online video unit for the Congressional Press Corps she and her family eventually moved back to Kansas City, where Thompson earned her master’s degree. For the past decade, she has collaborated with multiple businesses and organizations, helping them to study and better understand their clients, their consumers, and their teams.
Within the past few years, Thompson says she has realized not only the importance of being engaged in national politics, but local politics as well. In 2024, she ran for a seat on the Kansas City Public Schools Board of Education, a move that she says prepared her for a decision to run for the Legislature. It’s a governing body, Thompson says, that needs a calming presence amid the chaos of the past few years – at least, that’s what voters have been telling her throughout her campaign so far.
“They didn’t want to talk about that. They wanted to talk about how county government should be showing up,” Thompson says, “and they wanted to talk about the things that actually matter in their life. That is exactly why I’m running, because this is not about the drama. That’s not why I’m here for it.”
Thompson also made mention of County Executive Phil LaVota’s new plan to address the property tax debacle that has plagued the county for years. Under that plan, tax credits would be granted to eligible property owners for the next three years.
“My belief is that you can make the process of collecting taxes transparent and really work with the city to consider tax incentives. I think residents are paying about 60% versus 40% being paid by corporate. In most places, that 60-40 percentage is actually inverted,” Thompson says. “And so I’d like to really work on, do we take the burden off individuals and start to shift that a little bit more so that we have a more fair taxing
system here?”
She also called for transparency throughout the assessment process.
“The other part is residents themselves have no insight into the assessment process. And obviously it has moved to a place of lawsuits and wanting to remove some of the contractors who were involved in the assessment process,” she says. “So there needs to be an audit of that, but not only an audit, it needs to be transparent to taxpayers about what is happening and how do we fix it.”
Thompson, a survivor of domestic violence, says she would bring much-needed empathy to her role, being a voice for those who feel marginalized or ignored by their elected officials.
“Not only that, I bring with it this experience of organizational management and what it means to be an empathetic leader and to be able to serve,” she says. “And I think that those are fundamentally what communities want our leaders to be.”
For more information, visit www.kellythompsonfor
jacksoncounty.com/.
