Jason Kander, a Democratic activist and former Missouri Senate candidate, dropped out of the race for Kansas City mayor Tuesday, citing his struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“I thought that if I could come home and work for the city I love so much as its mayor, I could finally solve my problems. I thought if I focused exclusively on service to my neighbors in my hometown, that I could fill the hole inside of me. But it’s just getting worse,” Kander wrote in a post on Medium.
Kander, the former Missouri secretary of state, narrowly lost to Republican Sen. Roy Blunt in the 2016 Senate elections. He garnered national attention for a viral campaign ad which showed him assembling a rifle while blindfolded. In the ad, Kander noted his support for gun rights, while also explaining why he supported background checks on people seeking to buy guns.
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Kander became a national figure after the election, founding an organization called “Let America Vote,” a group dedicated to ending voter suppression. He wrote a book, “Outside the Wire,” which was published in August and landed on the New York Times bestseller list. In June, he announced that he was running for mayor of Kansas City, his hometown. He spoke to “CBS This Morning” host John Dickerson about his book and his mayoral race last week.
Kander wrote in his Medium post that he had denied his own PTSD symptoms for years, feeling like he didn’t “earn” it.
“I went online and filled out the VA forms, but I left boxes unchecked — too scared to acknowledge my true symptoms. I knew I needed help, and yet I still stopped short. I was afraid of the stigma. I was thinking about what it could mean for my political future if someone found out,” Kander wrote. “That was stupid, and things have gotten even worse since.”
He acknowledged how his depression and suicidal thoughts had impeded his life and his campaign. Kander wrote that after finding out his campaign had raised more funds in the first quarter than any other mayoral campaign, he nonetheless found himself calling the VA’s Veteran Crisis Line admitting to suicidal thoughts.
“I’m done hiding this from myself and from the world. When I wrote in my book that I was lucky to not have PTSD, I was just trying to convince myself. And I wasn’t sharing the full picture. I still have nightmares. I am depressed,” he wrote. “So after 11 years of trying to outrun depression and PTSD symptoms, I have finally concluded that it’s faster than me. That I have to stop running, turn around, and confront it.”
Kander said that he went to the Kansas City VA to seek regular help. To focus on his recovery, he is dropping out of the Kansas City mayoral race and stepping back from day-to-day operations of Let America Vote. Kander wrote that he decided to go public with his reason for dropping out of the mayoral race because he felt that being honest about the situation would help him, and because he hopes his truthfulness “helps veterans and everyone else across the country working through mental health issues realize that you don’t have to try to solve it on your own.”
Kander closed his post by saying that he would return to public life after working through his mental health issues.
“I’m passing my oar to you for a bit,” Kander wrote. “I hope you’ll grab it and fight like hell to make this country the place we know it can be.”
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