John Grady announced his candidacy for Missouri State Representative, District 61, at the Rosebud Chamber of Commerce meeting Feb. 17, asking voters for the privilege to serve his community again. His campaign is centered on limited government, constitutional restraint and protecting rights.

Grady said he is grounded in the founding idea that government answers to the people, stays limited and respects individual rights. He is a farmer and the husband-and-wife team in hemp. Helping his wife, Kara Grady, keep the Hemporium, Missouri’s first hemp general store, running; he says the only wins that matter are team wins.

A veteran of multiple contingency deployments, including two to Iraq, Grady returned home days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall and was among the first responders. He said experiences taught him what it looks like when systems fail and why neighbors matter more than politics.

In 2008, his son Charles was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and Grady says that kind of fight strips away political theater and replaces it with duty, truth and results.

Grady said he decided to run for the office after the Missouri House of Representatives perfected HB 2641 and sent it to the Senate, advancing language that effectively bans hemp in Missouri and hits the entire hemp industry, even swallowing its own beverage carve out, allegedly in favor of a marijuana industry that remains federally illegal. He said it is a clear example of government overreach that threatens lawful farmers, compliant businesses, and access to affordable hemp based therapy for veterans, seniors and working families. Grady claims the passage of the bill is not for safety, but for profit.

He said his campaign is bigger than any single issue and will focus on a small government bound by the Constitution, defending rights even when it is unpopular, insisting on restraint as the point of public office, and restoring accountability to a system that too often forgets who it works for.

Grady’s campaign slogan is, “Rights from God, Power from the People.”