Guide to the Democratic ballot for the 4th District US Congressional seat

By Kathy Feist

In an effort to add Republican seats in Congress, Kansas City was split from one district into three, with boundaries now going deep into rural territory. The 4th District, represented by Mark Alford, goes as far north as the Missouri River and travels south almost to Springfield. Its east-west boundaries are the state line to Troost Ave. in Kansas City. Alford is being challenged by two Republicans. Seven Democrats vie for the position of challenger in the General Election.

Jordan Herrera

Jordan Herrera is a constitutional lawyer and former military biomedical engineer. A Nebraska native, he joined the Air Force in 2006,  moved to Missouri in 2011 and served at Whiteman Air Force Base near Kansas City and later Scott Air Force Base in St. Louis. As part of the Air Mobility Command, he specialized in patient evacuations and healthcare installations. He led operations across 70 military installations and was deployed to Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq.

   In 2022 he retired from the military to study law. In just two years he received his law degree from Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.  He worked as an assistant attorney for the Missouri Attorney General where he helped shape transgender and HIV policy in the Missouri prisons as well as defended the public parks system. 

Herrera says he is more experienced in foreign policy than the other candidates claiming to have been involved in the Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA) discussions in Turkey and Germany. He is critical of “war without evidence or exit strategy.”   

As a Latino American, Herrera is very interested in securing a more humane immigration policy. He believes better economic partnerships with countries that have a high immigration rate could help decrease the migration.

Herrera believes there may be practical solutions for data centers. “Data centers have been around for over a century.  So we have to be clear about our language on what we are talking about and how we address that problem. For me, clean nuclear power could be one of the solutions [to AI-generated data centers].” Herrera isn’t referring to the large nuclear facilities associated with Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Rather he specifies the fourth-generation small mobile reactors (SMR) the size of a gas station that produce clean energy. “I’m a green technology guy. I want to make sure that we are going to zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

On the subject of taxation, he is pessimistic of trickle-down economics and believes the top 1% to 5% of corporations should be paying taxes rather than the working class. “I don’t believe in taxing working people if we’re going to put in tools and algorithms which are going to displace workers. Let’s tax the things that are displacing workers, like data centers and AI [based corporations].”

Wayne Russell

Wayne Russell lives in Columbia, MO. Columbia in the 5th District, not the 4th. But according to state law, there is nothing wrong with that. A candidate can run for a district where he does not reside, in keeping with the US Constitution that only specifies that a candidate must live in the state he represents.

But Russell is in this predicament because of redistricting. The gerrymandering that the state recently imposed moved Boone County out of the 4th District after Russell had already filed and invested money to run within the old boundaries. 

     Nevertheless, Russell’s passion is similar to many Democrats’ regardless of location.

Russell has retired from the nursing profession after 30 years. He was once a medic in the US Army. He says he has experienced and witnessed racism in the military, in inner-city schools in the 1990s, and in a predominantly white district where he and his family were confronted by the Ku Klux Klan in Liberty, Missouri (around 2000). He wrote a book about the experience, titled “Pugsley Stands.”

Russell decided to run for office because of Trump’s attitude toward women, minorities and disabled people. He says he is tired of the daily lies and broken promises. Because his mother was a Hitler youth in Germany, he says he knows how fascism starts and is concerned for the direction of the country. 

His platform centers on restoring funding to the community, especially public education and healthcare. “We brought in DOGE individuals to save all this money. But we’ve spent $113 billion on this war [with Iran],” he says. 

He supports programs where students are guaranteed a job or college education. 

He’s concerned for the future of healthcare. “Rural hospitals are getting shut down, doctors aren’t being paid. It has all culminated to not only inner city people but rural Americans not getting healthcare they need.”

Hartzell Gray

Hartzell Gray is nothing if not passionate–and excited–about the future of the country. Excited because of the progressive movement growing among younger Democrats. 

Gray grew up in the Waldo area before moving to Lee’s Summit. He double-majored in sports management and political science. He was the voice of Sporting Kansas City soccer team, and most recently with KCUR-FM. It was due to his passion that he was dismissed from KCUR for conflict of interest after he became loudly involved in a protest while covering the story. 

He’s moved on and others have moved with him. He says his run for Congress has generated thousands of volunteers.

His platform is in much the same vein as US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani: a larger working‑class, pro-labor, pro-tenant movement.

Gray supports social housing. “I define social housing as a home that is owned by working people, is off the market, democratically controlled, and funded in perpetuity. And we can do these things when we tax the rich and invest in working people.”

He would like to see a federal rent control and a national tenants’ bill of rights. “If you can pay your rent, you have the right to stay and live in a safe, maintained unit.”

As for tax policies, he believes “billionaires should not exist” and be taxed at 100%. The taxation would fund health care, housing, and public services. “We all deserve to be free and fed, given universal health care, guaranteed housing and a guaranteed union protected job at $25 an hour.”

Gray wants to eliminate the income cap on Social Security contributions so higher earners pay on all their income. 

Gray wants a complete moratorium on data centers and describes them as “parasites to our community.” However, he does believe in public ownership of the data centers regulated as a public utility.   

Gray positions himself as a pro‑peace candidate who wants the U.S. to divest from the war machine. “We don’t lead with labels. We lead with listening.”

G Rick

Rick, an entrepreneur and Los Angeles native who recently relocated to Missouri, is running for the Democratic nomination in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District.

Rick originally planned to run for State Representative. However, after learning he did not meet the state’s two-year voter qualification requirement, he shifted his focus to the U.S. House of Representatives.

A social progressive with beliefs rooted in science and facts, Rick advocates for trusting the scientific consensus on major issues. He brings 40 years of competitive business experience, where his success was directly tied to the success of others. This background, Rick says, taught him that speaking truth to power and advocating for others is a rising tide that lifts all boats. He also maintains a strong belief in the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments.

Rick’s platform focuses heavily on rural economic and community health. To protect local livelihoods, he proposes breaking up corporate agribusiness monopolies to “Save the Family Farm” and securing “right to repair” laws for farmers. He also aims to address critical healthcare shortages by protecting local clinics, lowering prescription drug costs, and expanding access in both rural and urban areas.

Modernizing infrastructure is another cornerstone of Rick’s campaign. Noting how the interstate system transformed Missouri travel, he advocates for continued infrastructure investment, specifically focusing on expanding high-speed broadband to every corner of the district.

Rick is a dedicated “ailurophile,” or cat lover, who lives on 30 acres of Missouri fields and woods. He shares his home with a dog, two donkeys, seven cats, and nine goats. Rick emphasizes he is not a career politician, but an independent thinker ready to bring common sense and real accountability to Washington.

(G Rick granted us an interview on the basis that he produce his own candidate profile. – Editor)

Jeanette Cass

Jeanette Cass isn’t from Cass County but she has strong ties to it. Cass County is named after her great-great-great-great uncle Louis Cass, who served in the US Senate under presidents Andrew Jackson and James Buchanan. If the bloodline runs strong, she may be joining his Capitol Hill legacy. 

Actually Cass lives on a family farm near Niangua in Webster County. She retired after 30 years as a dues-paying postal worker and letter carrier. She credits her union job for making it possible to raise her child as a single mother. She currently serves on the school board and has been active getting the vote out since she lost a 4th District race in 2024. She ran numbers and was appalled at how few registered voters actually vote. For instance, she discovered 157,335 registered voters in Jackson County and the 4th District rural counties didn’t show up for the presidential election.

While Cass may live in a rural district, she says she’s running to “represent everybody” and stresses that urban and rural communities have similar problems regarding jobs, infrastructure and healthcare access. In the rural communities, where there are few hospitals, patients must drive an hour or two for a medical appointment. “It can be devastating.”

Gray says she is skeptical of “trickle‑down” housing programs that mainly reward developers. She would like to challenge corporate property ownership and provide grants that help renters and first-time buyers, not just large investors. 

Regarding data centers, she would like strict local regulations that limit numbers, noise, and water consumption. Additionally, no tax abatements for multibillion‑dollar tech firms; they should pay full local taxes.

She says if elected she would defund or pause ICE while reworking the system. Instead money should be redirected toward more immigration attorneys and faster, humane processing instead of large-scale raids. 

Ashleigh Rogers

Ashleigh Rogers graduated college with a degree in interior design. She has worked at architecture firms and currently oversees staffing for 18 offices and more than 600 employees as America’s Resource Manager.  She’s organized, and it’s clear in her research on the issues. It’s easier to work across the aisle when you’ve researched the solutions from both angles, not just one.

That ability might be one reason she is running for office. The other is that she lives in Kansas City but grew up in Dade County, both now in the Fourth District. “I’m one of the few people who intimately knows both our urban and rural communities, and I’m running because I believe we’re more alike than we are divided and it’s time to get us talking about the same things again.” 

She believes the living minimum wage is too low across the country. “But how do we raise it without putting the pressure on smaller businesses?” She believes the Fourth District can provide an answer to that question. Due to its location, its a stronghold between biotech infrastructure, crop producers and universities and schools. (See her Facebook for indepth explanation.)  Ultimately taking advantage of those three can bring in well-paid jobs.

Rogers proposes a wealth tax dedicated to public education: 3% tax on households making over $50 million and 5% tax on households making over $1 billion. She would like to reduce reliance on local property taxes so a ZIP code doesn’t determine school quality.

She would work on more accessible healthcare and more doctors, especially in rural and urban underserved areas. She would like to help crumbling hospitals that must choose between paying for more doctors outside of a federal cap, or spending money on upgrades. 

Rogers wants incentives for farmers that adopt green, sustainable practices (soil, crop, and water management), protection from negative impacts of AI data centers, and farm aid and government incentives for family farms. 

She would like to replace ICE with a more humane border security system and create paths to citizenship so immigrants can enter the workforce. 

Randy Miller

Longtime Kansas Citians will remember Randy Miller for his wacky personality as the popular morning dj on Q104-FM. (Not too different from Alford’s fun and wacky personality as a morning TV anchor.) The chemistry is still there, but he has taken on a more serious role. 

Currently he is now Communications Director for Armed Forces Radio Network which reaches 400 stations and 3 million active duty military personnel globally. 

Miller lives in Lone Jack, positioned not too far from the Whiteman Air Force Base. The Air Force Base is Miller’s top priority, with plans to make it the largest defense and technology hub in the Midwest. He says when they did this 15 years ago in Dayton, Ohio, it immediately created 80,000 new jobs. 

He says farmers could access the technology developed at Whiteman Air Force Base. He’s concerned about farmers in the 4th District. “It’s unbelievable Missouri has nobody on the agriculture committee in Washington D.C. Missouri is the leading producer of corn and soybeans in the nation.”

He would like to see former POWs and disabled vets exempt from property taxes. “With less than 1% of the population that serves in the military, I don’t think it’s going to be a tremendous burden in the fourth district.”

He supports the “Keep the Pay Act” in which joint filers pay no federal income tax below $75,000 in income. That would be balanced out by a substantial tax increase on individuals making $5 million or more. 

He would call on accountability on tax revenue from sports gambling and cannabis sales. “There’s just no transparency.”

Miller calls himself a “common sense Democrat.” He would like to reach across the aisle, much like US Rep. Mike Skelton did 10 years ago.  “I’ve been in communication all my life. I can break down barriers with anybody.”