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Missouri voters head to the polls on August 4, 2026 for the state primary election, and this year the stakes are much higher than most primaries. Here is what is on your ballot and what it means.

Doniphan is a town of roughly 1,800 people in one of the poorest counties in Missouri, where nearly 1 in 3 residents lives below the poverty line, the nearest hospital closed in 2018, and every elected official who represents them is a Republican who has voted for policies that make their lives harder. In 2026, that can change. This guide tells you exactly what is at stake, who is running, what the Republicans have done to this community, and why the Democrats challenging the

Aaron Joseph Metzger is not a career politician. He is a CT technologist who has worked the night shift at a Joplin hospital for 13 years, scanning patients through car wrecks, heart attacks, strokes, and every emergency that does not wait for daylight. Now he is running as the Democratic candidate for Missouri House District 161, which covers most of Joplin north of the Newton County line.

Joplin, Missouri sits on a federal Superfund site where one in six residents lives in poverty, 460 children are homeless, and wages run $28,000 below the national average, the direct legacy of industrial extraction that built fortunes and left workers with poisoned soil. Yet Joplin votes Republican by 74% margins, rejected its own minimum wage increase by 731 votes, and sends to Washington two senators who have not lifted a finger to address the very conditions their party cr

Missouri Republicans, at direct instruction from †rump, have gerrymandered a Black congressman's district out of existence, put the abortion rights voters just won up for repeal, and are now trying to make sure citizens can never use the ballot initiative process to fight back again. This is the 2026 playbook. And Missouri is ground zero.

Access. Affordability. Accountability. Southwest Missouri deserves all three from its representative in Congress. For three-plus years, Eric Burlison has delivered none of them. Missi Hesketh is running to change that.

Missi Hesketh, running for Congress in Missouri's District 7, will be at the Town Hall TONIGHT. Be there!

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April 7 came and went. Some results hurt. Some inspired. And now, with August 4 on the horizon, southwest Missouri Democrats cannot afford to sit this one out. Here, we break down everything that happened on April 7 — from SB 3 to the Joplin City Council race that is still not officially called — and lays out exactly who we are voting for and why on August 4.