‘Stop Rezoning Prairie Village’ are not your father’s Republicans. They’re extremists | Opinion

How did Stop PV Rezoning, also known as Stop Rezoning Prairie Village and PV United, get its start?

You have probably seen the “Stop” yard signs and heard a lot of racket coming from Prairie Village as we near the November election. A group was formed a year and a half ago to thwart the efforts of Prairie Village’s diversity committee, which was exploring ways by which it could offer more attainable housing in a demographically monolithic city. Still reeling from the city passing an LGBTQ ordinance a few years earlier, the Stop contingent appeared determined to cede no more ground.

First, a little about me: I was a longtime Republican, having even joined the Johnson County Young Republicans in the mid-1990s. I supported campaign efforts locally for Bill Graves, Jack Kemp and Bob Dole, and even served as an assistant to the recruitment committee leader one year. Since the tea party/MAGA uprising, however, I have become an independent. The current strain of my former party is nothing like the people for whom I campaigned 25 years ago. I know that many Kansans, known to be fiscally conservative but socially laissez-faire, feel the same way.

Before we tackle this movement, we should also talk a little about Prairie Village itself. The city was established in concept and code by J.C. Nichols. Its zoning ordinances ensured that people of color could not own property in Prairie Village. There are many sources through which you can educate yourself on the role Nichols played in codifying systemic racism, which spread not just here but nationally. My favorite source has been Richard Rothstein’s book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.”

The people who are rising now in opposition to the efforts to establish some remediation of Nichols’ trajectory are not bipartisan, nor centrist, as they contest. They emanated from an extreme, right-wing group called Northeast Johnson County Conservatives. These are not your father’s Republicans. The group attempted to thwart civil rights initiatives that Prairie Village codified for the tiny minority of nonbinary folks in 2018, and they are hell-bent on not losing more ground to societal evolution this time with affordable housing considerations.

Denounced ‘affordable, attainable’ housing

To reiterate, these are not your father’s Republicans. These are people who stand at podiums extolling J.C. Nichols and what he stood for, with public testimony such as resident Nick Schulze’s at a September 2022 City Council meeting. As he works as a mortgage banker, it is particularly troubling to me that Schulze should make these comments.

“I’d like to openly question the decision made by the City Council and mayor to incorporate affordable, attainable housing in Prairie Village,” he said. “I question why people that moved to and relocated their families to this wonderful city would want to change it from what it is. The founders of this city, the men and women that wrote the codes that establish the current zoning, did so with a plan, and that plan is evident today in the city we all live in.

“We moved here because of what it is, and what it has been specifically designed to be. … If you want a diversified area with multiple kinds of housing options, that’s great. Those options are available. Go live there.”

For video of the entire speech, visit the City of Prairie Village Government Facebook page. Schulze starts speaking at about the 1:15 mark.

That pretty much sums the Stop Rezoning agenda, which comes to us via the Northeast Johnson County Conservatives. The effects Nichols’ redlining plan had on systemic racism and the denial of property ownership to people of color helped the residents of Prairie Village. That, my friends, is not a worldview of the people I knew in the old Republican Party. It’s an extremist, far-right goal, and one not befitting a forward-thinking community such as Prairie Village.

Candidates devoted to enforcing J.C. Nichols’ redlining

If you had told me that the Northeast Johnson County Conservatives could mount a tenable effort to seat six far-right candidates in Prairie Village three years ago, as they bragged at a recent meeting, I would have told you that you were making no sense. In Shawnee or Olathe, maybe — but not Prairie Village. Prairie Village was the city with all the “Love Wins” and “BLM” signs. Heck, it even hosted a march during the George Floyd summer.

But that’s where we are. Six Prairie Village candidates were sought and most were registered in time to run for the sole purpose of opposing people who had the gall to consider exploring ways to improve the J.C. Nichols legacy. Those candidates are Terry O’Toole in Ward 1, Lori Sharp (who famously got an exception to tear down the single-family houses she says she wants to protect to construct a boxy law firm building in a residential area) in Ward 3, Tyler Agniel in Ward 4, Nicholas Reddell (who excused the Nichols legacy with the statement, “Not everybody gets to live in the most desirable places”) in Ward 5 and Kelly Wyer in Ward 6. One candidate did not register in time and was relegated to mounting a write-in campaign against Inga Selders in Ward 2. His name is Edward Boersma.

It’s one thing to be right-wing, but quite another to be so while denying it publicly. The Stop collective is telling people that its candidates are nonpartisan and not politically affiliated. So why do the extremists at Northeast Johnson County Conservatives, supported by the troubling Molon Labe (“come take them”) cell group, boast that they have a full slate of candidates in Prairie Village and Shawnee in video posted publicly on the Rumble video site, which hosts conspiracy theories and misinformation banned by mainstream platforms? (Note that the embattled hard-right Kansas GOP chair Mike Brown was a featured speaker.) Or, another Molon Labe confirmation of Stop’s affiliation can be seen in a video from the account MolonLabeTruth, called “How to Run for Local Office & Challenge Property Taxes,” where failed Overland Park mayoral candidate Mike Czinege was the keynote speaker.

Well, that’s who Stop PV Rezoning is. Recently, Stop leader and candidate Lori Sharp became the first person in the nonpartisan Mainstream Coalition’s four-decade history to have her rating revoked. Mainstream Coalition has figured out who the people behind this group are. I hope all of Prairie Village does before November.

Shawn M. Stewart is songwriter and demographer in Kansas City.