The political news from Eastern Jackson County is the sudden resignation of Brian Yates and an impending special election in HD56 in February.

Yates resignation is coupled with his announcement that he will be endorsing a conservative mystery candidate from Lee’s Summit in the 8th Senate District primary on Monday to oppose Bryan Pratt and Gary Dusenberg. Let’s get to some of the facts here.

Barring unexpected twists, the Republican nominee will be Mike Cierpiot and the Democratic nominee will be Dave Coffman. Coffman has raised $3300 through the 3rd quarter in the short time he has been a candidate. Cierpiot has raised $24K including $12,001 from personal injury lawyer Mike Ketchmark whose political contributions are both large and in the form of Price is Right Contestants Row bids.

Mike Cierpiot’s wife is former State Rep. Connie Cierpiot. Cierpiot’s treasurer is former State Rep. Derek Holland. Both Holland and Cierpiot were mentioned as parts of the “Lazies v. the Crazies” (Patrick Dwyer’s words, not mine) scuffle in Jackson County Republican politics in the 1990s.

Ketchmark was also mentioned in the 8/15/1993 KC Star article in reference to the story of how Derek Holland got nominated (with help of his wife) to replace Bob Johnson in the State Senate (an election Holland lost to Margaret Rennau). It’s a virtual guarantee that this group of Republicans, who were on the “hard right” before it was “cool”, have ruffled people in both parties over the last few years. And when you consider that Bob Johnson was running for the State Senate in 2006 against Matt Bartle, it’s not like the scuffle is over. It has just been extremely one-sided recently.

As for electoral numbers..

Yates defeated Chris Ruggles by a 62-38 margin last November as John McCain defeated Barack Obama by a 58-41 margin amongst district precincts (Our apologies if the absentees tilted in a weird enough way to change that percentage significantly).

The 56th district is made up of the I470 corridor of Lee’s Summit, some parts of Lee’s Summit closer to US50 (but not downtown), Lake Lotawana, Lone Jack, assorted parts of Southeastern Jackson County, Lake Jacomo, and all those fun areas. The Lee’s Summit precincts went 57/42.49 for McCain while the rest of the precincts went 61/38 McCain.

Having to deal with an under 2 month long campaign, with a portion of that over Christmas, is going to be tough for the Dems to deal with. But it could be educational when it comes to seeing what could work in regards to their hopes in the 2010 elections. Plus, weird things happen in February special elections.

Happy Thanksgiving voters, have a Special Election!