Ryan Meyer
Ryan Meyer (Democratic Party) ran for election for Jackson County Executive in Missouri. He lost in the Democratic primary on August 4, 2026.
Biography
Ryan Meyer was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He earned a bachelor's degree from Rockhurst University and has experience working in consulting.
Meyer has been affiliated with the following organizations:[1]
- United Steel Workers
- Greater Kansas City Women's Political Caucus
- American Public Square
- Missouri Democratic Party
- Had Enough Inc
- Divided We Beg
- College Democrats
Elections
2026
See also: Municipal elections in Jackson County, Missouri (2026)
General election
The general election will occur on November 3, 2026.
The candidate list in this election may not be complete.
General election for Jackson County Executive
Stacy Lake (D) and Alan Rohlfing (R) are running in the general election for Jackson County Executive on November 3, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | Stacy Lake (D)  | |
| Alan Rohlfing (R) | ||
| ||||
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Democratic primary
Democratic primary for Jackson County Executive
The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for Jackson County Executive on August 4, 2026.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Stacy Lake | 45.9 | 39,872 |
 | Bill Baird | 20.2 | 17,533 | |
 | Dan Tarwater | 19.8 | 17,220 | |
 | Manny Abarca | 9.5 | 8,260 | |
 | Ryan Meyer | 2.6 | 2,302 | |
 | Holmes Osborne | 2.0 | 1,751 | |
| Total votes: 86,938 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Republican primary
Republican primary for Jackson County Executive
Alan Rohlfing (R) advanced from the Republican primary for Jackson County Executive on August 4, 2026.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Alan Rohlfing | 100.0 | 25,563 | |
| Total votes: 25,563 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
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2022
See also: Municipal elections in Jackson County, Missouri (2022)
General election
General election for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large
Donna Peyton defeated John Murphy in the general election for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Donna Peyton (D) | 59.3 | 125,709 |
| John Murphy (R) | 40.5 | 85,829 | ||
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.2 | 335 | ||
| Total votes: 211,873 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large
Donna Peyton defeated Zac Sweets and Ryan Meyer in the Democratic primary for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large on August 2, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Donna Peyton | 64.6 | 37,559 |
 | Zac Sweets | 22.6 | 13,139 | |
| Ryan Meyer | 12.8 | 7,456 | |
| Total votes: 58,154 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Stephanie Burton (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large
John Murphy defeated Bob Stringfield in the Republican primary for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large on August 2, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | John Murphy | 65.1 | 22,166 | |
| Bob Stringfield | 34.9 | 11,908 | ||
| Total votes: 34,074 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
2014
Elections for the Missouri House of Representatives took place in 2014. A primary election was held on August 5, 2014, and a general election on November 4, 2014. The signature filing deadline for candidates wishing to run in this election was March 25, 2014. Incumbent Tom McDonald defeated Ryan Meyer in the Democratic primary and was unopposed in the general election.[2][3]
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
|---|---|---|
 Tom McDonald Incumbent |
78.2% | 1,678 |
| Ryan Meyer | 21.8% | 468 |
| Total Votes | 2,146 | |
Campaign themes
2026
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Ryan Meyer did not complete Ballotpedia's 2026 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign website
Meyer's campaign website stated the following:
Take a stand.
Make your voice heard.
Fight for a safer, greener, cleaner community in Jackson County.
The Ideals
Justice
I feel filled with a sense of duty to restore faith in our community with its elected officials and public institutions. I know this government can work for everyone. And I will see that it does. A community cannot thrive without justice for its members.
Many of our friends, family, and neighbors have felt unheard, or worse, mistreated by our government. Justice comes down to a very intense kind of fairness where the community’s assets are available to all of the community and the penalties we agree on through law are equally applied and only when necessary.
Equity
Equity requires a seat at the table for everyone in our County: man, woman, or child; homeowner, renter, or homeless. That seat provides a voice and access to all the County has to offer and prevents any one group shouldering too much of the cost.
Equity is a necessary part of justice in a community. Jackson County’s resources need to be focused on our weak spots so we may begin to thrive in the most underserved areas as we have thrived in our most successful.
We have all seen the news stories and social media posts of unnecessary confrontation with the law; a fire under a bridge that took the life of Elizabeth Lindsey who was housing insecure. And we have all driven across a block or two and seen which houses have perfect streets and sidewalks and which have potholes and sidewalks that children can’t bicycle along.
Strong, vocal leadership can manifest the political will for us to arrive at a future Jackson County where these discrepancies are fewer and fewer.
Green Government
Green government is an area where the principles of justice and equity comingle with a healthier community for all. Too often our marginalized communities suffer the worst effects of pollution and climate change. I am committed to programs that offer weatherization and energy efficiency progress across Jackson County. The County has already taken some early steps such as the Green Build Program, but that program is limited in scope to unincorporated areas. We must expand that program across the County, and I commit whole-heartedly to making the Jackson County Government itself carbon neutral.
Growth
Justice, equity and green government are extremely important components of a just and properly distributed growth strategy. We must continue to press for growth. And that growth must happen broadly across the entire County and contribute to a stronger community overall through shared prosperity.
The Ideas
Property Tax Assessment
The property tax system in Jackson County is shattered. This did not begin in 2019. It was decades in the making. The simplest way to prevent the property tax nightmares we have faced in the past is simple oversight by the Legislature to make sure the department is doing its work properly. There is an array of ways the County could change its assessment procedures as well. The decision to make the assessor an elected position answerable to the people is a move in the right direction but not a final step.
Mental Health
The Jackson County Health Department must be fully funded and undergo a streamlining of its programs in consultation with similar municipal programs across the County.
Far too often we rely on the fire department or police to do jobs that are better suited for other professionals simply because we have not prioritized this work. Adding insult to injury, we do not properly prepare them for how to approach certain unpredictable situations like mental health crises.
Many leaders fail to take seriously enough the effects our public safety personnel experience just from doing their jobs keeping our community safe. They take care of us, and we must take care of them.
A holistic and cohesive collection of programs that work in tandem would also provide enormous dividends addressing the endemic homelessness and violent crime our region has been experiencing for far too long.
New Detention Center
The new Jackson County Detention Center is a major investment by the government and a critical part of the region’s overall law enforcement and public safety infrastructure. It is necessary to provide for humane and dignified detention of defendants and inmates as well as safety for the employees, visitors, and inmates alike.
The project has taken years to reach completion and cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. It is imperative we have leaders who will ensure jobs are staffed by local union labor representing underserved communities as well as minority and woman owned businesses.
The Stadiums
Kauffman and Arrowhead have been near and dear to most of our hearts. I often refer to Arrowhead as “The Cathedral.“ I am committed to keeping the Royals in Jackson County and preventing another debacle similar to the loss of the Chiefs to Kansas. It seems very possible that current leaders will approve a move of the Royals to a location downtown. I commit to defending the best possible deal for the taxpayers of Jackson County.
There must be a plan in place prior to any agreement to redevelop and reinvigorate the Truman Sports Complex. Additionally, the construction must be done by local union labor that is properly represented by the people that live in the affected neighborhoods. And like the detention center project, minority and women owned businesses must have a seat at the table.
— Ryan Meyer's campaign website (July 3, 2026)
2022
Ryan Meyer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Meyer's responses.
| Collapse all
- Safe schools. Smooth streets. Shared Prosperity.
- Our shared success hinges on our ability to take care of our neighbors.
- I stand unwaveringly beside every community defending its dignity regardless of their power or their lack of it.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
2014
Meyer's website highlighted the following campaign themes:
| “ | Working Families
In Missouri, we have a tax system that takes most of the heavy lifting off of the rich, and instead, places it on the middle class and working poor. Many Republicans in the House are trying to do away with the income tax on our most affluent friends and replace it with a massive sales and property tax hike for the rest of us. I disagree with this, and I am already fighting not only to stop the march towards this terrible idea but also to move towards a fairer share of the tax burden that will make life just a little bit less stressful for our working families. Labor and Unions I am an avid and die-hard supporter of labor. Labor has a rich history in our community and our country shaping a better life for everyone, not just the workers paying dues. From the 40 hour work week, overtime, weekends and an end to forced child labor in our country, many of the privileges we sometimes take for granted were fought and won by organized labor. I have family all over the labor spectrum. Aunts, uncles and cousins in every direction who are printers, pipefitters, teamsters, machinists and the list goes on. I am union blood. And, if there is anything I fight for, it is family. I am against, what corporations call paycheck fairness and we call paycheck deception. What they want through this legislation is to defund the unions' ability to fight back against corruption and attacks on working peoples' rights. I am against what they call Right to Work and what I call Freeloader's Law. In my office, anyone who uses the term Right to Work has to put a quarter in a jar because it is past the time when we should have stopped using the terms that they think sound good. It is high time that we call things as they are. The Freeloader Laws are just another attempt to take money from the unions so they cannot protect their members. Education In today's political dialogue, teachers take on the brunt of criticism when it comes to the short fallings of our education system. Let me start by saying that teachers are not the problem with our schools. Great teachers are the solution to the problems in our schools. Women May I first say, my mom is a woman? I know it seems a little bit obvious, but it is lost on many of our state leaders. I have a sister. I have grandmas. I have aunts and a whole troop of women particularly important to me. For these reasons as well as reasons of dignity and respect, I am pro-woman. The laws that have been proposed in our state regarding access to health care and equality in the workplace have been deplorable in their attempts to degrade and undermine the status of women in our state. I am not going to give space on my website to the hate that these proposed laws seek to instill. I am against them. If there is a particular question you may have over a proposed statute or any other issue regarding our sisters, feel free to email or call me. I am willing to speak on the record on any such issue that might affect my mom or sister or your mom or sister. Seniors I come from a traditional background. I believe in affording our seniors the respect and dignity they deserve after building the community we now share. Recent proposals by Republican lawmakers in Jefferson City have included provisions that would remove the Circuit Breaker. This is a special part of Missouri's tax code that exempts many seniors from property taxes as they are on fixed incomes and these taxes could force them into poverty or worsen the poverty they already suffer. I support maintaining our state's Circuit Breaker. Seniors have enough to worry without their taxes going through the roof. The same tax bills that have been offered in the legislature remove an exemption that prescription drugs enjoy from sales tax. In order to afford the tax cuts for extremely wealthy people, sales tax would be applied to prescription drugs. The vast majority of prescription medications are prescribed to fixed income seniors. This change would not be right and it is not the recipe for economic success that Republican lawmakers purport it to be. Medicaid expansion is probably the single most important issue facing our seniors in Missouri. Many people think that Medicaid is designed for minorities or the inner city poor. This could not be further from the truth. Medicaid is designed for all of the poor, and as seniors can not work often, many are poor. Over two-thirds of all Medicaid spending is on folks that already have Medicare coverage. The Medicaid expansion would increase coverage beyond Medicare for many of our seniors. I support this wholeheartedly and without reserve. Voting and Election Integrity Access to the polls is the only way we can maintain the democracy that we all enjoy and cherish. There has been attempts to restrict access to the vote by some among us. It is done under the guise of protecting our elections from fraud. The National Republican Lawyers Association conducted a study of voter fraud claims. They found 0 actual cases of voter fraud and advised the party to not pursue the laws they have been proposing because it may lead to the perception that they are designed to suppress the vote. Of course, this did not stop them, and they continue to push for these laws because they are designed to suppress democratic votes. I stand vehemently against any attempt to stop eligible voters from exercising their rights. In fact, I stand for increasing access to the polls through more polling locations, early voting and no excuse absentee voting. Health Medicaid expansion is necessary to reach 100% healthcare coverage for Missouri citizens. Many people are concerned about these changes because they are called Obamacare and a myriad of other names. The truth is, this is a series of changes that were originally proposed by Republicans. They do not solve every problem, but they are certainly a start. As an experienced healthcare professional, I support the expansion of Medicaid. As a fiscally conservative Democrat, I support the expansion in Medicaid in our state. As we expand Medicaid in Missouri, the federal government will send back the money we have spent in income taxes in order to employ nurses, doctors and support staff at hospitals and clinics. Why should we not have our tax dollars sent back to us to employ our neighbors and support the least among us? Homeowners and Real Estate Homeowner rights are one of the most important areas under attack by the current legislature. There have been bills offered that undermine our constitutional right to privacy. Others bills have been introduced to gut the tax credit used to restore historical buildings in our state. In the previous legislature session, Republican lawmakers even tried to eliminate a tax break on retired seniors that helps them cover their homes' property taxes. I am against the law proposed that would allow local government to search a home if the yard of that homeowner is not "up to code." There is such a thing as the Constitution, although some people have forgotten that. I am against the proposed gutting of the Missouri Historic Tax Credit. The rationale for this cut is that the tax credit is underused. Of course it is! We are in a recovering real estate market, still aching from the collapse of 2007-2009. We cannot dismantle a tax credit that has been so instrumental in the success of the Kansas City region, as well as the rest of the state, because business does not feel safe yet. This incentive will prove invaluable as local employers, businesses and developers feel a more steady economic climate developing, as has been happening in recent months. In Missouri, we have a provision in the tax code called the Circuit Breaker. Some Republican lawmakers have tried to remove this in order to finance tax cuts for corporate executives and corporations. This is a provision that allows low-income seniors to have help paying local property taxes when they can't afford them. It only seems right that we as a community help these seniors as many of them have spent decades paying income taxes and property taxes and sales taxes into the community, while paying off their mortgages. How can we expect a fixed income neighbor who cannot work any longer to keep paying "rent" to the government through property taxes long after their careers and paychecks end? I will fight to protect our seniors. Period. That is just the end of it! I know where my line is drawn. Please read more about this issue in my section on seniors. Tort Reform and Victims Rights Tort is the name given civil lawsuits in our legal system. When a doctor or lawyer commits malpractice or a corporation sells an unsafe product and an individual or group files suit, this lawsuit is filed under the tort statutes in our law. Of course, corporations and practitioners would like to see this go. Laws have been introduced that would allow there to be limits to how much or when a person can sue. I reject the premise of such attempts. If a doctor makes a mistake that costs someone their life or a lawyer makes a mistake that costs someone their house or life's savings, they should not be shielded from civil action. They have insurance for this anyway. The rationale that is used for these laws is that the malpractice insurance drives up the cost of everything. Many have claimed that malpractice insurance is the leading cause of our sky high medical costs in this country. Remove the need for malpractice insurance, they say, and the costs will go down. The reality does not support this. Texas passed a law that almost entirely did away with malpractice suits. Their savings? .2%. So, 99.8% of the problem remains. I will fight for the rights of victims. Legislators are not sent to Jeff City to fight for the big guys. They are sent there to fight to defend the small guys.[4][5] |
” |
See also
2026 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on July 14, 2022
- ↑ Missouri Secretary of State, "All Results - State of Missouri - Primary Election - August 5, 2014," accessed August 26, 2014
- ↑ Missouri Secretary of State, "Certified Candidate List - Primary Election," accessed July 24, 2014
- ↑ Meyer for Missouri, "Issues," accessed July 21, 2014
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
