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Sanders, Democrat, Wins County Executive Seat in Largely Republican Election

Kansas City, MO – One of the few bright spots for Democrats last night was the Jackson County Executive race, where Mike Sanders handily beat Republican challenger Robert Stringfield.

Sanders says he's not worried about what the congressional sea change may mean for county government.

"You know what, we'll deal with it," says Sanders. "The reality is we've had to cut budgets. We're down almost 35% since I took office. Whatever happens at the state level, the national level, we'll deal with what we have to deal with on the local level. What it comes down to is making sure that we're efficient with the dollars that we have, focusing on doing our job, and we can do that with the tax base we currently have."

Sanders is one of the few Democratic county executives left standing in Missouri, after yesterday's vote.

 

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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