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Ryan Meyer

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Ryan Meyer
Image of Ryan Meyer
Elections and appointments
Last election

August 2, 2022

Education

Bachelor's

Rockhurst University

Personal
Birthplace
St. Louis, Mo.
Religion
Catholic
Profession
Consulting
Contact

Ryan Meyer (Democratic Party) ran for election to the Jackson County Legislature to represent District 2 At-Large in Missouri. He lost in the Democratic primary on August 2, 2022.

Meyer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.

Meyer was a 2014 Democratic candidate for District 28 of the Missouri House of Representatives.

Biography

Ryan Meyer was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He earned a bachelor's degree from Rockhurst University and has experience working in consulting.

Meyer has been affiliated with the following organizations:[1]

  • United Steel Workers
  • Greater Kansas City Women's Political Caucus
  • American Public Square
  • Missouri Democratic Party
  • Had Enough Inc
  • Divided We Beg
  • College Democrats

Elections

2022

See also: Municipal elections in Jackson County, Missouri (2022)

General election

General election for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large

Donna Peyton defeated John Murphy in the general election for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large on November 8, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Donna Peyton
Donna Peyton (D) Candidate Connection
 
59.3
 
125,709
John Murphy (R)
 
40.5
 
85,829
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.2
 
335

Total votes: 211,873
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large

Donna Peyton defeated Zac Sweets and Ryan Meyer in the Democratic primary for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large on August 2, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Donna Peyton
Donna Peyton Candidate Connection
 
64.6
 
37,559
Image of Zac Sweets
Zac Sweets Candidate Connection
 
22.6
 
13,139
Image of Ryan Meyer
Ryan Meyer Candidate Connection
 
12.8
 
7,456

Total votes: 58,154
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Republican primary election

Republican primary for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large

John Murphy defeated Bob Stringfield in the Republican primary for Jackson County Legislature District 2 At-large on August 2, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
John Murphy
 
65.1
 
22,166
Bob Stringfield
 
34.9
 
11,908

Total votes: 34,074
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

2014

See also: Missouri House of Representatives elections, 2014

Elections for the Missouri House of Representatives took place in 2014. A primary election was held on August 5, 2014, and a general election on November 4, 2014. The signature filing deadline for candidates wishing to run in this election was March 25, 2014. Incumbent Tom McDonald defeated Ryan Meyer in the Democratic primary and was unopposed in the general election.[2][3]

Missouri House of Representatives, District 28 Democratic Primary, 2014
Candidate Vote % Votes
Green check mark transparent.pngTom McDonald Incumbent 78.2% 1,678
Ryan Meyer 21.8% 468
Total Votes 2,146

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

Ryan Meyer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Meyer's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

A longtime progressive activist, I am seeking to serve Jackson County as an advocate for those who don't normally have a seat at the table. I am a bridge and consensus builder for common sense progress and am incredibly excited to build on previous successes while learning from the past. Jackson County is faced with a pivotal decade ahead, and I'm fighting for a safe and sustainable future that will be shared across the entire community.
  • Safe schools. Smooth streets. Shared Prosperity.
  • Our shared success hinges on our ability to take care of our neighbors.
  • I stand unwaveringly beside every community defending its dignity regardless of their power or their lack of it.
I have been a labor activist as long as I can remember. I am also personally committed to and personally connected to the areas of racial equality and green community development.
The women in my life have always been the model of strength that I try to live up to. Politically, I look up to Harry Truman. He was principled and honest. He fought tooth and nail for what he believed, and he took no guff from anybody. I would like to live up to that tradition in Jackson County Missouri politics.
Honesty and backbone. These two form integrity in public office.
Honesty, hard work & tenacity, commitment to the community.
To speak up for the voiceless and be tenacious stewards of the public's dollars in order to better the community.
A safer and more prosperous Jackson County and Greater Kansas City region that enjoys a shared experience of the gains in safety and prosperity.
I was a soccer referee starting when I was 12 and did that until I could get a regular job when I was sixteen.
Pastoralia by George Saunders. It is a collection of short stories, but it captivated me. I still can't explain exactly why.
Come and Get Your Love by Redbone haha
My family experienced ups and downs economically. So, I have lived on both sides of the fence and both sides of the tracks. I also have dealt with depression since I was a child and have a unique bond to the mental health community of patients and providers.
Absolutely not haha

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

2014

Meyer's website highlighted the following campaign themes:

Working Families

In Missouri, we have a tax system that takes most of the heavy lifting off of the rich, and instead, places it on the middle class and working poor. Many Republicans in the House are trying to do away with the income tax on our most affluent friends and replace it with a massive sales and property tax hike for the rest of us. I disagree with this, and I am already fighting not only to stop the march towards this terrible idea but also to move towards a fairer share of the tax burden that will make life just a little bit less stressful for our working families.

Labor and Unions

I am an avid and die-hard supporter of labor. Labor has a rich history in our community and our country shaping a better life for everyone, not just the workers paying dues. From the 40 hour work week, overtime, weekends and an end to forced child labor in our country, many of the privileges we sometimes take for granted were fought and won by organized labor. I have family all over the labor spectrum. Aunts, uncles and cousins in every direction who are printers, pipefitters, teamsters, machinists and the list goes on. I am union blood. And, if there is anything I fight for, it is family.

I am against, what corporations call paycheck fairness and we call paycheck deception. What they want through this legislation is to defund the unions' ability to fight back against corruption and attacks on working peoples' rights.

I am against what they call Right to Work and what I call Freeloader's Law. In my office, anyone who uses the term Right to Work has to put a quarter in a jar because it is past the time when we should have stopped using the terms that they think sound good. It is high time that we call things as they are. The Freeloader Laws are just another attempt to take money from the unions so they cannot protect their members.

Education

In today's political dialogue, teachers take on the brunt of criticism when it comes to the short fallings of our education system. Let me start by saying that teachers are not the problem with our schools. Great teachers are the solution to the problems in our schools.

Women

May I first say, my mom is a woman? I know it seems a little bit obvious, but it is lost on many of our state leaders. I have a sister. I have grandmas. I have aunts and a whole troop of women particularly important to me. For these reasons as well as reasons of dignity and respect, I am pro-woman.

The laws that have been proposed in our state regarding access to health care and equality in the workplace have been deplorable in their attempts to degrade and undermine the status of women in our state. I am not going to give space on my website to the hate that these proposed laws seek to instill. I am against them.

If there is a particular question you may have over a proposed statute or any other issue regarding our sisters, feel free to email or call me. I am willing to speak on the record on any such issue that might affect my mom or sister or your mom or sister.

Seniors

I come from a traditional background. I believe in affording our seniors the respect and dignity they deserve after building the community we now share.

Recent proposals by Republican lawmakers in Jefferson City have included provisions that would remove the Circuit Breaker. This is a special part of Missouri's tax code that exempts many seniors from property taxes as they are on fixed incomes and these taxes could force them into poverty or worsen the poverty they already suffer. I support maintaining our state's Circuit Breaker. Seniors have enough to worry without their taxes going through the roof.

The same tax bills that have been offered in the legislature remove an exemption that prescription drugs enjoy from sales tax. In order to afford the tax cuts for extremely wealthy people, sales tax would be applied to prescription drugs. The vast majority of prescription medications are prescribed to fixed income seniors. This change would not be right and it is not the recipe for economic success that Republican lawmakers purport it to be.

Medicaid expansion is probably the single most important issue facing our seniors in Missouri. Many people think that Medicaid is designed for minorities or the inner city poor. This could not be further from the truth. Medicaid is designed for all of the poor, and as seniors can not work often, many are poor. Over two-thirds of all Medicaid spending is on folks that already have Medicare coverage. The Medicaid expansion would increase coverage beyond Medicare for many of our seniors. I support this wholeheartedly and without reserve.

Voting and Election Integrity

Access to the polls is the only way we can maintain the democracy that we all enjoy and cherish.

There has been attempts to restrict access to the vote by some among us. It is done under the guise of protecting our elections from fraud. The National Republican Lawyers Association conducted a study of voter fraud claims. They found 0 actual cases of voter fraud and advised the party to not pursue the laws they have been proposing because it may lead to the perception that they are designed to suppress the vote. Of course, this did not stop them, and they continue to push for these laws because they are designed to suppress democratic votes.

I stand vehemently against any attempt to stop eligible voters from exercising their rights. In fact, I stand for increasing access to the polls through more polling locations, early voting and no excuse absentee voting.

Health

Medicaid expansion is necessary to reach 100% healthcare coverage for Missouri citizens.

Many people are concerned about these changes because they are called Obamacare and a myriad of other names. The truth is, this is a series of changes that were originally proposed by Republicans. They do not solve every problem, but they are certainly a start.

As an experienced healthcare professional, I support the expansion of Medicaid. As a fiscally conservative Democrat, I support the expansion in Medicaid in our state. As we expand Medicaid in Missouri, the federal government will send back the money we have spent in income taxes in order to employ nurses, doctors and support staff at hospitals and clinics. Why should we not have our tax dollars sent back to us to employ our neighbors and support the least among us?

Homeowners and Real Estate

Homeowner rights are one of the most important areas under attack by the current legislature. There have been bills offered that undermine our constitutional right to privacy. Others bills have been introduced to gut the tax credit used to restore historical buildings in our state. In the previous legislature session, Republican lawmakers even tried to eliminate a tax break on retired seniors that helps them cover their homes' property taxes.

I am against the law proposed that would allow local government to search a home if the yard of that homeowner is not "up to code." There is such a thing as the Constitution, although some people have forgotten that.

I am against the proposed gutting of the Missouri Historic Tax Credit. The rationale for this cut is that the tax credit is underused. Of course it is! We are in a recovering real estate market, still aching from the collapse of 2007-2009. We cannot dismantle a tax credit that has been so instrumental in the success of the Kansas City region, as well as the rest of the state, because business does not feel safe yet. This incentive will prove invaluable as local employers, businesses and developers feel a more steady economic climate developing, as has been happening in recent months.

In Missouri, we have a provision in the tax code called the Circuit Breaker. Some Republican lawmakers have tried to remove this in order to finance tax cuts for corporate executives and corporations. This is a provision that allows low-income seniors to have help paying local property taxes when they can't afford them. It only seems right that we as a community help these seniors as many of them have spent decades paying income taxes and property taxes and sales taxes into the community, while paying off their mortgages. How can we expect a fixed income neighbor who cannot work any longer to keep paying "rent" to the government through property taxes long after their careers and paychecks end? I will fight to protect our seniors. Period. That is just the end of it! I know where my line is drawn. Please read more about this issue in my section on seniors.

Tort Reform and Victims Rights

Tort is the name given civil lawsuits in our legal system. When a doctor or lawyer commits malpractice or a corporation sells an unsafe product and an individual or group files suit, this lawsuit is filed under the tort statutes in our law.

Of course, corporations and practitioners would like to see this go. Laws have been introduced that would allow there to be limits to how much or when a person can sue.

I reject the premise of such attempts. If a doctor makes a mistake that costs someone their life or a lawyer makes a mistake that costs someone their house or life's savings, they should not be shielded from civil action. They have insurance for this anyway.

The rationale that is used for these laws is that the malpractice insurance drives up the cost of everything. Many have claimed that malpractice insurance is the leading cause of our sky high medical costs in this country. Remove the need for malpractice insurance, they say, and the costs will go down.

The reality does not support this. Texas passed a law that almost entirely did away with malpractice suits. Their savings? .2%. So, 99.8% of the problem remains. I will fight for the rights of victims. Legislators are not sent to Jeff City to fight for the big guys. They are sent there to fight to defend the small guys.[4][5]

See also


External links

Footnotes

  1. Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on July 14, 2022
  2. Missouri Secretary of State, "All Results - State of Missouri - Primary Election - August 5, 2014," accessed August 26, 2014
  3. Missouri Secretary of State, "Certified Candidate List - Primary Election," accessed July 24, 2014
  4. Meyer for Missouri, "Issues," accessed July 21, 2014
  5. Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.