A Candidate Shaped by Service, Work, and Responsibility
John Grady isn’t running because he wanted to. He’s running because he couldn’t justify standing aside any longer.
His life has taken him from the streets of Florissant to the United States Marines, then to the Navy Seabees with deployments to Iraq and disaster response after Hurricane Katrina. He’s rebuilt communities, managed complex construction projects, reported on the people and issues of rural Missouri, and built a business with his wife Kara in the heart of District 61.
That’s not a résumé. That’s a life lived in service to something bigger than himself.
Rights from God. Power from the People.
A REPORTER WHO COVERED THIS DISTRICT BEFORE HE RAN IN IT
Before John was a candidate, he was a journalist — covering Gasconade County for the Hermann Advertiser-Courier. He sat across from elected officials. He asked the questions voters deserved answers to. He watched government work, and watched it fail.
That experience gave him something most candidates don’t have: he already knows this district from the inside. The people of Montgomery, Gasconade, Osage, and Miller Counties aren’t abstractions to him. They’re his neighbors, his customers, his community.
FROM SEABEE TO SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
After returning home, John built a career in construction management and advanced building technology before planting roots in Gasconade County. He and Kara founded Slaphappy Beverage Company LLC — home of Slaphappy Hemp and the Slaphappy Hemporium, Missouri’s first hemp general store.
Through their initiative A Thousand Ripples, John and Kara provide free cannabinoid therapies to veterans and cancer patients who need them most. It’s the same mission that’s always driven him: show up, do the work, take care of people.
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WHY HE’S RUNNING
When the Missouri legislature moved to shut down small hemp businesses like his — not in the name of public safety, but to protect well-connected competitors — John had a choice. Stay quiet or stand up.
He’s standing up.
John Grady is not a politician and has no ambition to become one. He’s a statesman — a steward of every family, farmer, veteran, and small business owner across all four counties of District 61. He believes public office is not a career. It is a responsibility.
The people of this district don’t need another Jefferson City insider. They need someone who has actually built something, served something, and sacrificed something.
That’s John Grady.
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