Taigan Plummer, the Democratic Party candidate in the 54th Legislative District, hasn’t been waiting to engage with people in the district. Listening to legislative district voters this morning at a local coffee shop:
Taigan Plummer (D).
On Tuesday:
Unofficial Results
as of 8/7/2026 3:31:55 PM
State of Missouri – Primary Election, August 04, 2026
Office/Candidate Name Party Votes % of Votes
State Representative – District 54 8 of 8 Precincts Reported
Joe Plemons Republican 680 16.437%
Brandon Phelps Republican 3,457 83.563%
Party Total: 4,137
Taigan Rayne Plummer Democratic 2,010 100.000%
Party Total: 2,010
Total Votes: 6,147
[emphasis added]
Interestingly:
State of Missouri – State of Missouri – Primary Election, August 04, 2026
Unofficial Results
as of 8/5/2026 6:45:40 AM
[….]
Johnson County
Constitutional Amendment No. 4 10 of 10 Precincts Reported
YES 2,237 22.580% NO 7,670 77.420%
Total Votes: 9,907
Constitutional Amendment No. 5 10 of 10 Precincts Reported
YES 1,687 17.030% NO 8,219 82.970%
Total Votes: 9,906
[emphasis added]
The right wingnut controlled Missouri General Assembly’s out-of-state dark money funded anti-Democratic constitutional amendments failed miserably in Johnson County, the 54th Legislative District, and across the entire state.
Amendment 4 (HJR 3) would have placed restrictive requirements on initiative petitions.
Amendment 5 (HJR 173) would have repealed the state income tax, providing right wingnut welfare for millionaires and billionaires while increasing the regressive tax burden on working Missourians.
Brandon Phelps (r) [2025 file photo].
Brandon Phelps (r), the rubber-stamp incumbent in the district, voted to place both amendments on the ballot. Last Tuesday the voters in the district and across the state disagreed – vehemently. Maybe he should have listened.
Will Westmoreland (D): ….I want people to remember until the day they die that something that robbed health care from millions of Americans, took the food out of the mouth of children, and closed schools all over this country, those horrible things happened, and all they could think to name it was ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’….
Will Westmoreland, spoke at the regular monthly meeting of the Johnson County, Missouri Democratic club lats Thursday evening in Warrensburg. There were over sixty individuals in attendance, some from neighboring counties.
Will Westmoreland (D).
Will Westmoreland (D): …I went on to social media before the last election and, uh, we have 700,000 people following BackForty Action now. And I’m gonna tell you what I think it was and you tell me if you agree. I don’t think it’s because I’m super good at this. I think people would flip across a social media channel and they’d see this fifty-something year-old white farmer with a red Cardinals hat on….and I think they thought they were gonna get one message and when they got the completely opposite message I think it rewired their brain. And maybe they said I want to hear a little bit more from this guy….
Will Westmoreland (D): “….Have any of you ever read about the Grange movement? [voice: “No.”] Do you know what it is? If you, if you don’t know don’t be embarrassed ’cause most people don’t. Raise your hand if you’ve never heard of it.
The Grange movement was a political movement in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, even before the great depression, and farmers and rural people, tell me if this sounds a little familiar, they got fed up with monopolies. They got fed up with prices for all the inputs on their farm and their businesses in rural America being set by monopolies in the big cities and in other countries.
They got fed up because their kids didn’t have school books and textbooks. Not that they weren’t up to date, they weren’t funded at all unless the local community paid for it. And when you were dealing with the economic crisis they were dealing with in the late eighteen hundreds communities didn’t have the dollars in a lot of cases to do that.
Things were bad.
It was also the largest progressive political movement in the history of our country. It was so progressive that in the late eighteen hundreds they had African-Americans and women on their leadership boards across the country.
It was the largest per capita political movement ever to exist in the United States of America. And it started on the streets of Kansas, and the streets of Missouri, and the streets of Nebraska, and the streets of Iowa. In little towns of fifty people, ten people, a hundred people.
We did it once before, we can do it again. But we gotta get fired up. And if ever there was a time to get fired up it’s right now while our way of life is under attack. And I’m not talking ‘way of life’ the way the Republicans talk about it, which is the more white people walking down the street in rural America who foster the same Christian values as us, the better off we’re gonna be.
I’m talking about our real values. The values of diversity, and when people get sick they can get care in our little rural towns, and kids regardless of where they go to school in this country get the same opportunity, and you can open a small business and employ people and be prosperous, and foster, in a small town, just like you can in a suburb or a big town.
We can do that again if we have the willpower to do it. And I think we do and I think you think we do, too. But we’ve got to start today. We don’t have the time to sit back and wait for somebody else to do it for us….
On a t-shirt worn at the Johnson County Democratic Party booth last night:
“We rejected monarchy in 1776, America has no king”
“We are not OK”
The weather was balmy, overcast, with a light breeze. People strolled by, some stopped to talk with the half dozen individuals manning the booth. In Knob Noster, Missouri.
Johnson County, Missouri Democrats gathered on a trailer for a ride in the Knob Noster Fair Parade this evening. The parade route started at the high school and ran through downtown. The parade rolled off at 7:00 p.m. There weather was warm, the sky was overcast. There was a good crowd through the entire parade route.
Appropriate attire:
“Resist”
“Vote. We’re Ruthless.”
On the trailer:
Mike Walbom, the Democratic Party candidate in the 57th Legislative District.
Johnson County Democrats met in a park in Warrensburg on Saturday evening for Blue Dogs in the Park, a regular gathering featuring conversation, food, information, and candidate speeches. Around fifty individuals attended.
Mike Walbom, candidate in the 57th Legislative District and Jeanette Cass, candidate in the 4th Congressional District.
Roberta “RB” Burford, Vice-chair of the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee
RB spoke on the recent Missouri Supreme Court decisions on redistricting and the current obstruction by Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (r) of the voter referendum challenging the right wingnut controlled Missouri General Assembly’s blatantly gerrymandered congressional district map.
Denny Hoskins (r) [2023 file photo]
Over 300,000 Missouri voters signed the referendum petition. Denny Hoskins’s (r) foot-dragging on certification leaves congressional district voters and candidates with no clarity on the district maps. Warrensburg is either in the 4th of the 5th Congressional District. depending.
Ray James, Chair of the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee
Jordan Herrera, candidate in the 4th Congressional District.
Mike McCaffree, the Democratic Party candidate in the 28th Senate District.
Taigan Plummer, the Democratic Party candidate in the 54th Legislative district.
Mike Walbom, the Democratic Party candidate in the 57th Legislative District
Yesterday in Warrensburg the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee hosted its 19th annual James C. Kirkpatrick celebration. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D) was the keynote speaker.
Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D).
.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D): ….It was one of the tur, turbulent moments in the history of our nation. In fact, it was the time of the birth of our nation. And General George Washington, uh, had committed himself to lead the Continental Army. There was no turning back. And that was, uh, they’d gone too far in their fight against, uh, the Brits.
But in 1782, uh, one of the colonels in the army, a guy by the name of Lewis Nicola, uh, wrote a famous letter to General George Washington. And in that letter he asked that the general consider becoming the first king of the United State of America. In May, May twenty-first, 1782 General Washington responded to the colonel and said, that no graver disease can befall me as a general in this army than to even remotely consider being the king. After all, we’ve just been fighting the king. [applause] And so, um, that hushed the talk of making him a king although it, it was very, very popular among the soldiers. Uh, many of them, uh, saw themselves, you know, the soldiers protecting the, the king. And so he put it to a standstill and then, uh, everything was fine until the Don [laughter], King Don [laughter], uh, came to the throne. Uh, who is a, uh, a dictator [voices: “Yeah.” “Yes.”], uh, and I have seen it first hand….
….I have never seen anybody who could lie, uh, repeatedly, and actually believe themselves [laughter]. The hoodlums that I was around, they, they knew they were lying [laughter]. And they would confess if you got around the corner. ‘Oh, yeah, I was making it up.’ This man lies, I say he lies on the lie….
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D): …Ladies and gentlemen, this is a crisis that even those early soldiers could not have anticipated. And all of a sudden it becomes a requirement if you are a Republican – you have…the first place you have to respond to is that you have to lie and say that, uh, Donald Trump won the election. First thing, you gotta lie. And the second thing you have to do is become politically subservient to a man who knows nothing about government, or frankly…[laughter], doesn’t know anything about government. And, uh, is just making up stuff. His chief of staff, one of the top generals in the United States Army, said after he resigned, Donald Trump, he said, I’m quoting him, is the most flawed human being he had ever been around in his life. And when people come out, when they retire or quit, and then finally it’s okay to tell the truth. Then, some of them, by now publicly saying, yeah, this happened and this happened, and he said this, he lied about that. It goes on and on and on….
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D): …So, I think that, uh, we’re in a, a troublesome spot. Uh, but, we have had dark days before. And if you look at the history of the United States there, there was a moment of darkness before we became a nation. Then we became a nation and then there was a great light. And then, uh, periodically there have been dark, dark, dark moments for us.
But we’re the light. We’re Democrats. What I’d like all Americans to know is that there is no such color of dark or black. It’s not a color. We’re thinking, we have dark days, we’re trembling. Black is not even a color. Black is the absence of color….
….And the way that you defeat darkness is with light [voice: “Yeah.”]. And you are the lamplighters for America. [applause] The lamplighters for America. We, we are going to defeat darkness. [applause]…
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D): …I want to make sure that all of us understand right now that we’re gonna vote. What do we want to win, t’ain’t enough. We right now are willing to do whatever we can to make sure that this nightmare ends. T’aint enough. We are the men and women who will save this country. Our children and our grandchildren will talk about the fight we put up and how we won. And brought back the light into the United States. And make it the citadel of justice and peace….
Yesterday in Warrensburg the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee hosted its 19th annual James C. Kirkpatrick celebration. The program started with a welcome and Tribute to Immigrants by Roberta Burford and an invocation by Barbara Curtis. The master of ceremonies was Judge Joe Dandurand and the keynote speaker was Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D). Raymond James was recognized with the Doris Houx Kirkpatrick Service Award. Marion “Woody” Woods was recognized with the James C. Kirkpatrick Heritage Award. There were over 150 individuals in attendance. The annual event honors individuals who have served the community in the spirit of the Kirkpatricks and serves as a fundraiser for the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee.
Jeanette Cass (D), candidate in the 4th Congressional District (left) and Taigen Plummer (D), candidate in the 54th Legislative District (center).
Sunday afternoon over a hundred Missourians gathered in the cold and snow on the Johnson County Courthouse lawn in downtown Warrensburg, Missouri. It was another one of many community organized demonstrations against the excesses of Donald Trump (r), his administration, and his paramilitary.
“Worst of the worst…”
“Trans Rights = Human Rights”
“No to Trump’s Fascist, murdering regime”
“ICE is Trump’s Gestapo!”
“…Defund ICE”
“….just stupid and reckless”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere”
This afternoon over a hundred Missourians gathered in the cold and snow on the Johnson County Courthouse lawn in downtown Warrensburg, Missouri. It was another one of many community organized demonstrations against the excesses of Donald Trump (r), his administration, and his paramilitary.
