Missi Hesketh

In high school, Missi Hesketh played tennis, edited the school newspaper and worked two jobs after school.¹ Born in the Chicago suburbs, she attended Forsyth High School and has lived in the Ozarks community where she later became mayor.¹ She has described raising three children mostly as a single parent and budgeting by the week, month and year.²

Hesketh worked in business and finance before earning degrees from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, Drury University and Missouri State University.¹ She has spent twenty two years teaching in classrooms.³ In 2023, she completed an education specialist degree in special education and assessment at Missouri State.²

After three terms on the Forsyth City Council, she was elected mayor in 2023.¹ Her work included updating ordinances covering dangerous buildings and nuisances and overseeing the Gateway Trail project for hikers and mountain bikers.¹ She is now a former mayor and is making another congressional bid after running against Eric Burlison in 2024.³

Hesketh supports moving toward universal health care and raising corporate tax rates to help finance it.³ Her platform also calls for stabilizing rural hospitals, paid family and medical leave, higher teacher pay and a ban on congressional stock trading.⁴ She favors federal spending audits aimed at specific costs, such as energy use and travel, rather than indiscriminate staff cuts.³ In November 2026, she faces Eric Burlison and Libertarian Kevin Craig.³