Kansas City mayor scrambles after being linked to effort to kill new Royals stadium

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas initially denied knowing who paid for a poll seemingly designed to sink North Kansas City’s chances of landing a new Royals baseball stadium.

But newly obtained documents show the poll was commissioned by Lucas’ own re-election campaign.

The poll was released in August 2023 and showed 70% of Clay County voters opposed a new sales tax to fund a stadium in North Kansas City. Rumors swirled about who paid for the poll, and Lucas side-stepped a television reporter’s questions at the time.

The Independent revealed last week that the poll was paid for by United We Stand PAC, an independent spending committee formed to support Lucas. To ensure the PAC’s involvement remained unknown, Lucas’ then-chief of staff, Morgan Said, requested the PAC change its disclosure of the expense from “polling” to “research.”

Lucas, a Democrat and attorney who was elected mayor in 2019, insisted in an interview last week that he would not have known how United We Stand spent its money because Missouri law prohibits him from coordinating with the PAC on spending.

Records show, however, that a staffer for Lucas’ campaign actually requested United We Stand pay for the poll. Tom Keating, who was doing ethics compliance for both the PAC and Lucas’ campaign, later received the request from the campaign staffer and was asked to process the payment. He said he and other staff were misled about the purpose of the poll.

“They weren’t honest about it from the get-go with their own people,” Keating said. “They put their own people in harm’s way about this, and then they weren’t honest with the public about it.”

Kansas City mayor accused of skirting city gift ban by using nonprofit to pay for travel

In an email, Lucas’ spokeswoman, Jazzlyn Johnson, said he did not direct the campaign to request the PAC pay for the poll. She did not clarify when Lucas found out the PAC had paid for the poll or how it was kept from him despite the involvement of his chief of staff and re-election campaign committee.

“The mayor has repeatedly made clear to the public his preference the Royals and Chiefs remain in Kansas City,” Johnson said. “As a result, neither he nor anyone would be surprised that an entity established to support the mayor of Kansas City and initiatives in Kansas City would conduct research pertaining to keeping the Royals in Kansas City.”

Keating has worked on ethics compliance for political campaigns for two decades, with a list of clients that include Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, former Kansas City Mayor Sly James, former state Sen. Greg Razer and the Missouri House Democratic Campaign Committee.

In addition to his role with Lucas’ campaign and PAC, he also did compliance work on a volunteer basis for the Mayors Corps of Progress for a Greater Kansas City, a nonprofit set up to promote economic development in the city. Keating said he processed reimbursements but did not have the authority to approve expenses before they were made.

He left the Mayors Corp in 2023 after expressing concerns about how Lucas and Said were using the nonprofit’s funds.

In one case, the nonprofit paid more than $23,000 for Lucas, Said and two security personnel to attend the Super Bowl in 2023 at the same time it received a $24,000 donation, raising concerns that the exchange may have violated a prohibition on city officials receiving gifts.

“They took advantage of me for my good reputation that I built over 20 years of working for Democrats in politics,” Keating said. “…And then when it got to the point where I was being lied to and being asked to do things that put me in legal jeopardy, it was degrading.”

Keating, who supplied The Independent with documents concerning Lucas and Said’s use of the Mayors Corps and the PAC’s involvement with the poll, said he agonized about coming forward for more than a year.

He said his recommendations to improve Mayors Corps were ignored, and he feared he would be blamed for the spending despite having no power to stop it. He told Lucas and Said shortly after the Super Bowl that he felt tension in his communications with them and no longer felt comfortable providing advice regarding the Mayors Corps. Lucas responded with an invitation to talk in person about several projects Keating was working on.

Keating also said he thought it was unfair that the Royals poll made North Kansas City all but ineligible to be the site of a new Royals stadium.

“They misled us about what it was for…and then weren’t honest with the public about who paid for it,” Keating said, “when they knew who paid for it. It was their own PAC.”

Johnson said Lucas takes pride in the team he has assembled to help in public office and for civic efforts.

“Like almost any elected official, the majority of the mayor’s time is consumed not with compliance…but with governance and, during campaign seasons, fundraising,” she said. “As a result, he relies on staff to resolve any internal disagreements concerning compliance. The mayor has confidence that staff resolved disagreements in a manner that aligned with all applicable rules and regulations.”

In a statement to The Independent, Said agreed with the mayor that attorneys had signed off on the nonprofit’s spending and called Keating’s concerns “baseless.”

‘Push poll’ in the Northland

Emails show that in August of 2023, a staffer for the mayor’s reelection campaign, which had concluded less than two months before, asked the treasurer of United We Stand PAC to approve an expense “for a poll we are wanting to run in the Northland regarding taxes.”

The expense was forwarded to Keating to process payment, and a week later, a poll was released by Bold Decisions LLC showing Clay County voters would overwhelmingly oppose a new sales tax to help finance a stadium.

The poll was seen by officials in Clay County as an attempt to stymie their chances of landing the new stadium.

“The only reason why you’d try to put out something publicly like that is to both suggest to the public and specifically to a team that you won’t win, therefore you have to come over here,” Clay County Commissioner Scott Wagner said in an interview last week.

Wagner is also a former Kansas City City Council member.

When the poll was released last year, Lucas side-stepped questions about whether he knew who paid for it.

“You know what I’ll say is this: What I understand is that I think these polls, and I think hopefully one in Jackson County — I hear there have been those done, too, and maybe they haven’t leaked, maybe they have — but I’d like us to have a good set of all of the information possible that’s out there,” Lucas told a Fox 4 reporter at the time.

Months later when United We Stand PAC’s quarterly filing was due to be filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission, Said reached out to Keating to ask that the expense be described as “research” instead of “polling” in an attempt to keep the public from learning the PAC paid for the poll.

Asked about Said’s efforts last week in an interview with The Independent, Lucas still denied involvement in the poll, saying, “I don’t actually know that what you just said is true.”

“I help raise money for PACs,” Lucas said. “And that’s the full extent of my involvement in a political action committee.”

Lucas acknowledged the PAC paid for the poll in a conservative talk radio interview two days later and told a Fox 4 reporter that he learned about United We Stand’s involvement after the poll was released.

Johnson called the issue “stale political intrigue.”

“The mayor has been asked and answered poll questions in several forums, including The Missouri Independent,” she said. “The community has moved on and so have we.”

Patrick Tuohey, a senior fellow at the conservative Show-Me Institute, said Lucas’ campaign staffer’s involvement showed the mayor was likely involved in the effort to move the Royals from their current stadium at the Truman Sports Complex to downtown well before the public knew.

Lucas endorsed a ballot initiative meant to pay for a downtown Royals stadium only three days before the vote. The initiative failed by a 2-to-1 margin.

It seems unlikely, Tuohey said, that Lucas’ campaign acted without his direction to ask the United We Stand PAC to pay for the poll.

“That seems the clearest thing is that he directed his campaign to seek a poll that concluded that the people of Clay County would not support a Royals stadium north of the River,” Tuohey said.

Mayors Corps

The mayor’s spending has drawn scrutiny since The Independent reported last week that he and Said spent more than $35,000 on travel, Chiefs tickets and dinners through the Mayors Corps in his first term.

Keating, who was processing reimbursements through the Mayors Corps, said the expenses didn’t strike him as problematic at first. But he became concerned when Said sought reimbursement for more than $20,000 for tickets and hotel costs for her, Lucas and two security personnel to attend the Super Bowl in Phoenix last year.

The day after the 2023 Super Bowl, the Mayors Corps took in a $24,000 donation from the Heavy Constructors Association, making Keating concerned the exchange might run afoul of the city’s ban on high-dollar gifts for officials.

The charge was on Said’s personal credit card. Keating said he felt rushed to process the reimbursement so she wouldn’t incur fees.

Keating said he consulted an attorney who said the Super Bowl expenses were reasonable. But out of concern about a possible gift ban violation, he recommended that the Mayors Corps refund the Heavy Constructors Association donation and suggested Said seek reimbursement for the trip through the United We Stand PAC.

“That’s what I pushed them to do, but they really wanted to do it from Mayors Corps,” Keating said. “I didn’t get an explanation for that.”

Said was also given a debit card tied to the Mayors Corps bank account, but Keating canceled it when it was used for gas and meals in Phoenix during the Super Bowl.

Johnson noted Keating signed off on the expense when legal counsel said it was likely allowable, but did not address Keating’s later emails expressing concern about the expense and recommending that Said seek reimbursement through the United We Stand PAC. She said the expenses had subsequently been reviewed by attorneys at Husch Blackwell and Elias Law Group and “found no compliance concerns.”

She declined to detail Lucas’ expenses to attend this year’s Super Bowl and referred questions to legal counsel.

Lucas told The Independent last week that Mayors Corps had a board of directors with members who are attorneys that could review expenses. But he said he did not know who was on the board.

As it turns out, he and Said are two of the three members, according to filings with the Missouri Secretary of State’s office.

Past and present members of the Mayors Corps board during Lucas’ time as mayor who were mentioned in Mayors Corps’ documents told The Independent they were never involved in approving expenses and had little involvement with the organization at all.

In March 2023, Said was informed by Charles Renner, a partner at Husch Blackwell, that the Mayors Corps had been administratively dissolved in the fall of 2022 for failing to file a biannual report with the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office. The notice had not been forwarded to Keating or Said — as neither of them were the registered agent for the nonprofit on file with the state — at the time it was dissolved.

State law dictates that a dissolved organization cannot conduct business activities “except those appropriate to wind up and liquidate its affairs,” raising questions about the legality of the Mayors Corps transactions during the five months it was dissolved.

Johnson said the mayor was confident any past issues had been resolved.

At the time, Keating recommended an attorney to help bring Mayors Corps back into compliance, but emails show Lucas preferred to use Husch Blackwell. Said worked with Renner to get the organization reinstated.

By May 2023, Keating informed Renner he could no longer be involved in the organization.

“I’m not able to be more involved with Mayors Corps than this,” Keating wrote in an email to Renner along with the earlier recommendations he sent to Lucas and Said with a ledger of financial activity. “I put a lot of time and energy into advocating that it be used differently, and I’m out of time to spend on it.”