A Champion for Community

Keith Davenport’s story begins in the farmland outside Polo, Illinois, home of the Marcos (the high school mascot). It was a small town where everyone knew more than just your name, they knew your entire family. On three acres shared with goats, chickens, ducks, sheep, rabbits, dogs, and three generations under one roof, Keith learned early that everyone has a role to play in lifting a family forward.

The oldest of four children in a single-parent household, he grew up watching his mother, an elementary school teacher, stretch every dollar and every ounce of energy to create opportunity for her kids. His grandmother, who will turn 101 in January 2026, lived with them, embodying the kind of multi-generational care and resilience that defined Keith’s childhood. She can still make a mean holiday meal. 

When Keith was seven years old, his father left, and Keith stepped into responsibility far too early. He embraced it and called his siblings “the kids,” and helped look out for them at school and at home. This early experience molded him to be the type of leader who fights for justice and protects others.

Music, academics, and service shaped him. He sang in choir, played saxophone in band, captained the scholar bowl team, learned guitar and bass, and became a youth leader in local and statewide church programs. It was through one of those programs that he met his future wife, Allison, a Kansas girl from Olathe South, long before either of them imagined they would build a life together in the community they now serve.

He left home in Polo to attend Olivet Nazarene University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Pastoral Ministry, ran for student body president as a freshman, and completed his degree in only three years. During this time, he also began writing — at 27 publishing his first book, followed by dozens of articles and essays on nonprofit leadership, public speaking, criminal justice, marketing, and tax policy. His voice was already developing a characteristic blend of thoughtful analysis and hopeful pragmatism, the same qualities that would later define his career and public service.

Keith and Allison married over their college senior-year winter break and moved to Kansas City to begin their life together. Keith worked in a grant-funded role at a local church, led an after-school program at F.L. Schlagle High School, taught ESL, and served on the board of a food pantry. He pursued and earned his Master of Divinity from Nazarene Theological Seminary before serving as a pastor in Lawrence and working full-time in student development at Johnson County Community College.

At JCCC, he helped lead initiatives that expanded student employment, taught leadership courses, and helped steward a more connected campus through events, engagement, and committee work. He became known not just as someone who could organize a team, but someone who could draw people together and exceed expectations.

In 2018, Keith joined the Johnson County Manager’s Office, managing the county’s official social media accounts and helping provide strategic communication direction across more than 30 departments. His talents quickly drew him to Johnson County Mental Health Center, where he led community outreach efforts, helped advance the Zero Reasons Why suicide-prevention campaign, and served on the founding team of the National Co-Responder Conference, a national movement integrating mental-health professionals into police, fire, and EMS departments. 

Keith returned to graduate school at the University of Missouri’s Truman School of Government and Public Affairs, focusing his Master of Public Affairs on the workings of local and state government. He completed the degree during the pandemic while working full-time and raising four children.

In late 2021, Keith became Executive Director of the Missouri Center for Employee Ownership, educating business owners, bankers, attorneys, accountants, and public officials on employee-ownership models that protect jobs and strengthen rural economies. This is the kind of future-focused innovation Kansas desperately needs.

But while his work stretched across Missouri, his heart stayed rooted in Gardner, where he and Allison had moved in 2015 and raised their four children. In 2022, Keith ran for the Kansas House of Representatives. As a complete political newcomer, he significantly outworked and out-fundraised his multi-term incumbent opponent, cutting the margin in half and proving that voters were ready for a change.

In 2023, he began helping local candidates across Johnson County run for school board and city council. That same year he launched Blazer Strategies, the first of four businesses he would bring to Gardner over the next two years. In July 2024, Keith and Allison became the new owners of Groundhouse Coffee, not to reinvent it, but to carry its community-minded legacy forward. Today Groundhouse remains a gathering place built on community connections.

In 2025, he ran for school board and won, unseating a multi-term incumbent with a message focused on educational outcomes, standing up to the state on special education funding, opposing discriminatory behavior, and standing up against book banning. A family move prevented him from serving, but not from standing up for the community that trusted him.

Keith’s journey has not always been easy. When he and Allison were young parents working full-time, earning degrees, and expecting their first two children, they relied on Medicaid and WIC. Without those social safety nets, they would have been tens of thousands of dollars in debt. The businesses they now own, the jobs they now create, the stability they now provide for others, simply wouldn’t exist. They never forgot what it meant to have help when it mattered.

And Keith never forgot what it meant to be raised in a household where the difference between making it and falling behind depended on hard work and the strength of community.

Keith and Allison live in Gardner with their four children, three dogs, and a turtle named Sheldon. He’s running for the Kansas House because our community deserves more than a benchwarmer for billionaires. It deserves a champion for affordable housing, better jobs, childcare that works, and drama-free education.