Legislator Donna Peyton makes history
Published on August 24, 2026
Jackson County 2nd District At-Large Legislator Donna Peyton is making history as the first African American woman to serve as the Chair of the Jackson County Legislature.
“It is monumental. It truly is,” she said. “First of all, it is quite the honor and even more, it is an honor that my fellow legislators voted me in.”
Peyton hopes her accomplishments can inspire others. “It is so important for people to be able to see themselves in roles of leadership so that they know it is attainable. Particularly for me, I am a single mother raised by a single mother so to reach this monumental position. It is so important to me and so important to others who may think it is not possible. I am living proof that it is possible.”
Peyton said her children are very supportive and encouraging of her work with the legislature. “It is so important to them and has inspired them,” she said. “My daughter is our family historian so is like, ‘This is history.’”
She began her political career after retiring from the postal service after 26 years and then caring for her mother. She went to work in the Hickman Mills School District as an attendance clerk, which transitioned into the administrative attendant to the superintendent and board secretary.
Working as the board secretary led her to run for office. “I was a single mother, and I thought that I was doing amazingly when it came to school. I was talking to the teachers, I was going to PTA meetings, I was going on field trips, I never however understood how important my voice was to the board of education,” she said. “I viewed them as this lofty elected position and I never thought that they would have listened to me, or that it would have made a difference. So having served as board secretary gave me a totally different view and my first elected position was as a board member for the Raytown C-2 School District.”
Peyton is in her first term as a county legislator. She was elected to the legislature in 2022 and took office in 2023. In the last three years she has been on and chaired several legislative committees, something she said has prepared her for her new position.
“I try to serve with integrity. I try to serve with collaboration, and I strive to always be fair. I think that is why I was able to get the support of my fellow legislators. They know me as someone who will collaborate. They know me as someone who will stand up for them and our constitutes and stay focused on service. I think that we as a legislature needed some stability and I think that they believe that I can bring that stability, and I am hoping that I will never let them down.”
Her proudest accomplishments as a legislator thus far are a combination of things. “Being the first in some areas,” she said. “The first to bring on a Housing and Homelessness Committee, bringing things to the Second District for the first time, such as American Public Square which had never been to the Urban Core. Being a cosponsor with Jalen Anderson on the senior tax levy, which the legislature passed.”
She is also proud of serving people in such a way that it brings them into the conversation by hosting a variety of public forums such as public safety and senior fraud. “Those are my proudest moments because they were firsts.”
Among her goals for the future, Peyton would like the legislature to have greater stability and more transparency to help build trust with the community.
“The things I am working on right now are policies for travel that legislators will need to follow that have everything standardized, that we can understand and that we as a group will ascribe to. That is one thing that I am working on that I really want to get accomplished,” she said.
There will be at least seven new people joining the legislature following the election in November. Peyton said before becoming the chair of the legislature she was chair of the budget committee and began work to make things easier for the incoming members.
“I know that for me when I was coming in it was like drinking water from a firehose because it was so much. We have already looked at outside agencies. We have been through that process and interviewed those outside agencies so we should be able to make recommendations as to the agencies that we want to see get money next year,” she said. “I want to make sure that we have a budget that is ready for them to approve, so that they will just need to review it and understand it and not have to try to figure everything out within two weeks.”
She would also like to have the opportunity to sit down and talk with the new legislators and explain the things they need to know.
When her time on the legislature is finished, she would like people to remember that she made history. “I want them to have an opinion of me that is one that represents what I want to be. I want to be someone who serves the people. That’s it.”