Despite his lack of delivering gambling to his favorite newspaper columnists, Platte County State Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer continues to be on statewide office radar. The Missouri Times recently put Tony as “first off the bench” in their rankings of Republicans and statewide races approaching in 2024.
The Times reports Team Tony has $955,466 on hand with his political action committee having another $309,202 spare change sitting around. That will buy his dog Truman a lot of dog food. The Times mentions Tony as a potential attorney general candidate, throwing his hat in as a Missouri Supreme Court candidate or just sitting back, counting his money and waiting for just the right statewide office to open up.
They didn’t say anything about “counting his money,” I added that part, but somebody’s gotta count it and Truman doesn’t have thumbs.
On the Democratic side, the Times ranks Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas as its No. 2 off the bench. They report Mayor Q as having $706,186 on hand after raising $1,081,161 in the last cycle before cruising to another term as mayor. The US Senate continues to be the predicted path for Lucas, where he would be an underdog but would leave the race with a national profile, regardless of outcome.
The Times notes his prowess in raising money and having the “most charisma” in the party as attributes that could vault him from mayor to a statewide position.
I feel like reporting on players coming off the bench is something I am well qualified for, which is why Foley assigns me these tasks. I was third or fourth off my JV basketball team bench, depending if eight or nine players showed up. I’d like to remind you though that I once scored 10 points against DeKalb in 1982 in a hotly contested JV matchup. I’m no Scott Wedman, but I could ball on occasion.
Q and Tony could make it rain with that kind of cash. I’d like to get those guys together and we could throw some $1 bills around and talk about police funding and stuff. That’d be fun.
I got my city fix in last week. Took the streetcar for the first time and went down to the NFL Draft setup prior to its opening. Speaking of money, the NFL apparently has a bunch of it because they built an entire city within the city and then just packed it up and went home. The entire thing impressed me. I’m still a little streetcar skeptical of the cost benefit, but Kansas City really did shine and it was an incredible national showing. There were a ton of pretty people in town and they seemed to enjoy it, and so I’m assuming we can call it a success.
Just so you don’t think I’m getting weak kneed with Kansas City pride, I will remind you that Kansas City Fraternal Order of Police President Brad Lemon tweeted out these stats last week: “KCPD’s full staffing is 1412 sworn officers, but today we have 1090 officers, 322 fewer than needed. With a decrease of 23% sworn staffing and 55-year low KC now has 57 homicides, a 24% increase over 2020 which was the most deadly year in our history.” That’s probably not good, no matter how many NFL Drafts that the city hosts, but I’m not an expert, seek your own opinion.
(Guy Speckman can be reached a gspeckman@me.com or offering to count politician’s cash on the weekends)