Overland Park voters will see two familiar names on the ballot this November when they go to cast their votes for mayor.
On one hand, there is the current Mayor Curt Skoog, who is seeking reelection to a second term. Previously, he served 16 years on the Overland Park City Council. He touts the growth of the city under his watch, both as mayor and councilmember, particularly in the downtown area and along Metcalf, and the city’s perennially high quality of life rankings as evidence that his approach has worked.
On the other hand, there’s former city councilmember Faris Farassati, who ran for mayor four years ago but failed to advance out of the primary. After losing a subsequent race for reelection to the city council in 2023, he has emerged again this year, hammering many of the same themes of his past campaigns: lowering taxes, cutting spending and opposing incentives for development.
The two men’s diverging ideas for the future of Johnson County’s biggest city have come into focus this race, as have their different approaches to campaigning.
Skoog is running a more traditional, well-funded campaign. Through July, he had reported more than $160,000 in campaign donations and was using those funds to produce social media videos and television ads as well as campaign signs.
Farassati, for his part, reported that he’d raised just $25 through July. He has also rebuffed multiple opportunities to appear with Skoog at public forums (including one hosted by the Johnson County Post), opting instead to send much of his campaign messaging through social media, where he routinely attacks Skoog and the current state of the city.
“My opponent has a history of being a loud voice without putting in the hard work required to implement his vision for the future,” Skoog said in a recent interview. “In fact, it’s not clear what his vision is for the city moving forward. You can’t implement your vision by posting notes on Facebook and Nextdoor.”
Farassati organized his own town hall event this past Friday at Central Resource Library, where he took questions from Mike Czinege, who lost to Skoog in the 2021 mayoral race, and former Johnson County Republican Party chair Maria Holiday.
At that event he vowed to be an independent voice for Overland Park voters.
“The vision that I have is a government free to a certain extent, from the influence of special interest groups, so not big, deep pocket developers try to pick your city council members and your mayors for you,” he said.
Skoog: $160,000 in campaign donations
Critics of Skoog — including Farassati and some of his allies — accuse him of getting too cozy with developers, and they zero in on his large campaign war chest as evidence.
Czinege, who beat Farassati in the 2021 mayoral primary election but lost to Skoog in the general, has since forged a friendship of sorts with Farassati. He says he sees “the sphere of influence that developers and the development community have over the city council” as “the substantive issue” for Overland Park.
“[Skoog] does what the developers want him to do; he does their bidding. That’s what I believe,” Czinege said. “[Farassati], he’s always been there for residents. I believe he wants to put residents first.”
Czinege and others cry foul over Skoog’s acceptance of several thousand dollars in financial contributions this year from developers and their affiliates for his campaigns, calling it a conflict of interest.
In his amended receipts and expenditures report covering Jan. 1 to July 24, 2025, Skoog reported a total of $165,526.03 in campaign contributions. He came into the period with $25,795.24, either leftover from previous campaigns or raised prior to the start of the year, bringing his total available cash to $191,321.27.
Of that money, Skoog received $40,000 from accounts tied to the Price Brothers, an Overland Park-based developer, and their large Bluhawk mixed-use project in southern Overland Park.
He also received at least $3,000 from affiliates of Curtin Property Company, the developer behind the Brookridge redevelopment effort at the corner of 103rd Street and Antioch Road; $1,000 from Mission Farms West; and $1,000 from Fred Merrill, the developer of Prairiefire; among other developer-related contributions.
“I believe that it’s important to be in front of people and share your beliefs,” Skoog said during an Oct. 2 mayoral forum hosted by the Post. “Unfortunately, in the American political system, that takes money.”
How does Skoog vote?
During a review of city council meeting minutes since Skoog was sworn in as mayor on Dec. 6, 2021, the Post found no instances where Skoog cast a vote on incentive packages or other applications tied to Bluhawk, Brookridge, Prairiefire or Mission Farms.
In general, Skoog as mayor has voted on few items of city council business, typically only casting tie-breaking votes. Many of those tiebreakers are on rezoning applications of various kinds, frequently for multifamily or mixed-use projects.
For his part, Skoog defends his record, dating back to this four-term tenure on the city council.
“I think you can look at my 20-year history, and if you don’t think that I have made decisions that are good for Overland Park, then you shouldn’t vote for me,” Skoog said during the Post’s forum. “I make all my decisions based on what I think is right for the city of Overland Park and what I think comes from listening to residents of Overland Park.”
He said that if voters see things like the revitalization of downtown Overland Park and efforts to reimagine the Metcalf corridor as the right path, then he encouraged them to cast their ballot for him.
“If you think that the way that we run the city financially, with the lowest property tax, the highest quality of life, rated one of the best places to live, work, play, start a business, rent an apartment, then you should vote for me,” he continued at the forum.
It’s a sentiment he repeated later in an interview with the Post.
“If anybody doubts my choices, you can look at what I’ve done for the last 20 years,” he said, listing his support of things like new city parks, sidewalk repairs and public safety initiatives. “I stand on my record and am proud to say that I make decisions based on what’s right for Overland Park.”
Farassati: $25 in campaign contributions
After the 2023 city council elections, Farassati reported that he had less than one dollar on hand. And, his campaign finance report from Jan. 1 through July 24, 2025, shows that he raised just $25. He logged no campaign-related spending in that period.
For comparison, between Jan. 1, 2021, and July 23, 2021, Czinege raised around $45,000, headed into the primary election for mayor, according to his campaign finance report. Farassati, in his own primary campaign for mayor in 2021, reported more than $57,000 in fundraising.
Finance reports showing fundraising and campaign expenses for the period between July 24, 2025, and the end of the general election likely won’t be available for a few weeks for either candidate.
During the Post’s candidate forum earlier this month, Skoog called into question the accuracy of Farassati’s campaign finance report for this race and in years past. (In 2021, the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission issued Farassati a Notification of Material Error or Omission pertaining to his campaign finance report for the mayoral primary election, ordering he submit a correction.)
When asked after his own Friday town hall, Farassati said he has raised several hundred dollars more since July but that he “didn’t think money is going to be a factor” in the race.
“I have decided to ‘vote-raise’ and not fundraise,” he said. “Instead of donating money, I tell people to just talk to 10 of your neighbors.”
Farassati skipped the Post’s candidate forum
In late August, after the Post had finalized plans for its annual slate of candidate forums for contested races across Johnson County, Farassati sent a list of conditions he said would need to be met for him to participate in the forum for the Overland Park Mayor race scheduled for Oct. 2.
Among his conditions was that he wanted four questions from “our side” to be asked by Post Editor Kyle Palmer, who moderates these forums, “in exact verbiage.” He also wanted to “know and approve the order of questions.” Farassati also wanted candidate notes to be banned and asked for an open mic for the audience “to ask questions for half of the forum time.” (According to a Post reporter who attended, there was not an open mic at the town hall event Farassati hosted Friday. Instead, he took questions from the audience via index cards, the same process the Post uses.)
Farassati did not participate in the Post’s forum, but Skoog did. On social media, Farassati posted his reasoning for not doing the forum, listing his conditions that the Post did not agree to. He also said there was a standing invitation for Mayor Skoog to join him in “a fair and informative debate, anytime and anywhere.”
Skoog told the Post that Farassati has not formally challenged him to any debates or conversations beyond what he’s posted on social media.
“20-year track record” vs. “independence”
Skoog told the Post that he sees Farassati’s decision to skip the Post’s mayoral candidate forum as a disservice to the voters.
“What I know is that Overland Park residents and voters expect candidates to interact with them, to talk with them at their front doors, to meet with them in public forums, and to share their goals and objectives,” he said. “At least from what I’ve seen, my opponent has chosen not to do that.”
Skoog said that in his experience as an elected official in Overland Park, he has observed that it takes someone willing to put in the hard work and show up “to implement change.” He said voters should keep in mind who has a track record of “implementing the community’s vision” when they head to their polling place, and that’s something he believes he offers.
“I have a 20-year track record of moving the community forward across the board, and for the next four years, my task is to implement the new community vision,” Skoog said, referencing the new comprehensive plan called Framework OP.
Farassati has continued to rail on social media against the city’s property tax rate, its approach to street maintenance, the new city hall project, the prospect of a Royals stadium in Overland Park, how the city gives developers incentives and what he calls the “apartment invasion.” He also recently posted a response to one of the questions at his forum, saying he would try to continue saving community pools.
“I think this year’s election goes a little bit beyond me versus Skoog, or ‘A versus B,'” he said at his town hall. “It’s about the path for Overland Park to choose independence, to choose an evidence-based approach, free from tangles and streams to special interest groups, versus the way that the business has been going for the last 15 years.”
Below is one of a few video clips from Farassati’s town hall on Friday. Other clips can be found on his Facebook page here.
Now what?
Skoog and Farassati are facing off in the general election for mayor, which is on Nov. 4. Early voting begins on Oct. 15 by mail, or Oct. 25 in person. More information about advanced voting can be found here.
Find out about your polling place here.
Watch the Post’s full Overland Park mayor forum here.
Roxie Hammill contributed to this report.
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