In Clay County, Presiding Commissioner Nolte reelected; three members win new seats

Presiding Clay County Commissioner Jerry Nolte coasted to a third term on Tuesday night after defeating challenger Dan Troutz by a wide margin for the commission’s top elected spot.

Nolte won 72% of the vote to Troutz’s 28%, according to unofficial results shared by the Clay County Board of Elections. The county commission is a nonpartisan race, and both candidates are longtime area Republicans.

Before joining the Clay County Commission as presiding commissioner in 2014, Nolte was an elected member of the Missouri House and is a former teacher. He is set to remain in his leadership role over county government for the next four years.

Under a new county charter, backed by the voters in 2020, Clay County government has shifted from its model as a three-member panel to a one consisting of seven elected officials. Its districts are divided into two — Eastern and Western — each of which has three representative members. Each district has one member elected at large.

Changes to Clay County’s government structure came amid a push by residents who raised serious questions about potential Missouri Sunshine Law violations, misuse of funds and misappropriation of budgets. In March, Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway, a Democrat, issued a damning report — giving the county the lowest possible ranking of “poor” — that outlined financial abuses, irregularities in employee compensation and wasteful government spending.

Unofficial results on Tuesday night showed clear victors for the three newcomers vying for seats on the new commission.

The one nail-biter contest was between Jason Withington, one of those at the forefront of the resident-driven movement to make changes in Clay County, and Kenneth Jamison, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and small business owner, for the Western District at-large seat.

Withington ultimately beat Jamison by about 1,900 votes. Withington’s win of 51% of the vote represented the closest of any Clay County Commission race on election night.

In the race for an Eastern Commissioner at large, Jo Ann Lawson won 57% of the vote, beating Scott Walcott by a margin of almost 14 percentage points. And for Eastern Commissioner Seat 2, Jay R. Johnson won the contest with 57% of the vote to Sherry Duffett’s 43%.

Three of the seats — Western Commissioner Jon Carpenter, Eastern Commissioner Megan Thompson and Western Commissioner Seat 2 Scott Wagner — were not up for grabs in Tuesday’s election. The most recent addition of those three is Wagner, who gathered three percentage points above a 50% voting threshold in the August primary, a margin that meant no general election contest would be held for that seat on Tuesday.