Gachagua takes his 2027 campaign to America

From Kansas City to the ballot box: Kenya’s most impeached man is building a presidential campaign on foreign soil, one diaspora meeting at a time.

By James Mwangi

Rigathi Gachagua, leader of the Democracy for the Citizens Party, met business executives at Silo Modern Farmhouse in Kansas City, Missouri, on Friday, laying out an ambitious economic vision that doubled as the most detailed policy pitch of his 2027 presidential campaign to date.

The Kansas City meeting was the latest stop on a fifty-day tour of the United States that Gachagua began on 26 August, accompanied by his wife, Rev. Dorcas Rigathi. The itinerary, published by the DCP, takes him through Spokane, Portland, Kansas City, Dallas and Boston before concluding in early October. What has unfolded across those cities is not a sentimental homecoming tour. It is a structured, disciplined pre-campaign operation, executed far from Nairobi’s daily news cycle but generating headlines back home with almost every engagement.

Kansas City was his third stop, following Spokane, Washington, where he held meetings with Kenyan communities from 4 to 10 September, and Portland, Oregon, where engagements ran from 10 to 16 September. At each stop, the pattern has been consistent: community meetings, policy pronouncements, and the careful construction of a political brand around the idea that the man impeached as deputy president in October 2023 is not finished — he is preparing.

In Kansas City, the policy content was substantive. Gachagua urged Kenyans living abroad to consider establishing a diaspora-owned bank that would reduce the fees and commissions they pay to financial institutions when sending money home, arguing that such an institution would allow Kenyans abroad to retain a greater share of what they currently lose through banking charges. The proposal is the kind of crowd-pleasing idea that travels well on diaspora circuits, but it also signals something more deliberate: Gachagua is constructing an economic narrative, not just collecting goodwill.

He went further. He pledged that a future administration would prioritise the payment of government pending bills and the completion of stalled projects, arguing that delayed payments were putting contractors, suppliers and their families under severe financial pressure. “Kenyans are suffering. Their homes are being auctioned. People have suffered depression. Families are broken,” he said. He claimed that national and county governments collectively owe businesses and contractors more than KSh900 billion, and proposed restoring the credibility of Local Purchase Orders as instruments that businesses could use to secure bank financing. “You’d get an LPO for 20 million shillings, walk to the bank with the LPO, and get 10 million shillings loan without any other security other than the LPO,” he said, recalling a period of greater institutional trust.

The sharpest line of the Kansas City engagement, however, was reserved for the Safaricom-Vodacom controversy. Gachagua criticised the government’s handling of its sale of a 15 per cent stake in Safaricom to Vodacom, questioning why the Court of Appeal lifted conservatory orders that had temporarily halted the transaction. “Why the judges of the Court of Appeal lifted the conservatory orders in the first place?” he asked. The High Court had ruled on 15 September 2026 that the government’s divestiture did not comply with constitutional and statutory requirements and ordered that the shares be restored to the government. By placing himself on the right side of a ruling that embarrassed the Kenya Kwanza administration, Gachagua demonstrated that he has not stopped thinking like a politician who intends to be measured against the man currently in State House.

That instinct, applied consistently across the tour, explains why the United States leg of his roadmap matters far beyond the meetings themselves. Kenyans abroad in a dozen countries, including the United States, are increasingly courted as a mobilisation and funding base ahead of next year’s vote. An extended diaspora tour lets a politician test messaging away from Nairobi’s daily news cycle while still generating coverage back home. Gachagua’s remarks from Spokane travelled through Kenyan outlets within hours of being delivered — proof that the diaspora circuit has become a legitimate campaign stage, not a ceremonial one.

The strategic framing of the tour sits against the backdrop of a 2027 opposition whose arithmetic remains unresolved. Gachagua has declared his readiness to serve as Edwin Sifuna’s running mate in a potential 2027 bid, saying he has “no problem” in such an arrangement. That positioning — a former deputy president publicly placing himself below a senator in the national hierarchy — is either the most generous act of opposition solidarity in recent Kenyan political history, or the most calculated. Probably both. It keeps Gachagua central to negotiations without requiring him to win the argument about who should lead. And it ensures that whatever ticket emerges, his endorsement is worth something.

Vihiga Senator Godfrey Osotsi has said Linda Mwananchi will present Sifuna as its presidential candidate, and that Sifuna has committed to formally declaring his bid at an upcoming event. Meanwhile, Jubilee’s Fred Matiang’i, backed by former President Uhuru Kenyatta, continues to consolidate the Mount Kenya institutional vote. Matiang’i’s backing by Kenyatta — the same political machine that lost in 2022 — has prompted sceptics to ask whether old alliances will translate into new votes. Gachagua, operating across both camps by his proximity to Uhuru and his stated openness to a Sifuna ticket, has positioned himself as a bridge that neither side can fully afford to burn.

Back in Kansas City, the reception that greeted him was emblematic of what the tour has produced. Kenyans gathered at the airport sang as they welcomed him, and the moment underscored the emotional connection that diaspora communities maintain with political figures who speak directly to their anxieties about the country they left behind. For Gachagua, who spent much of 2024 and 2025 in the aftermath of a politically bruising impeachment, the warmth of those crowds is not merely gratifying — it is oxygen.

Kenyans living in twelve countries were able to vote in the 2022 General Election, with 10,444 diaspora voters registered, compared to just 4,223 in 2017. Those numbers are still modest in absolute terms, but the symbolic and fundraising weight of diaspora support has grown considerably. Kenyans abroad sent approximately KSh370 billion home in the first seven months of this year alone — a figure that underlines why every serious 2027 contender has found a reason to board a flight to America.

Gachagua is scheduled to depart Kansas City by 24 September and move to Dallas, then Boston, before returning home with a network built across the American continent, a set of policy pledges tested on real audiences, and a campaign narrative refined far from the scrutiny of the Nairobi press gallery. Whether the man who was impeached from the second-highest office in the land can convert all of that into the highest is the question Kenya will spend the next eleven months answering.

He is not waiting for the question to find him.

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