From The Downballot.
Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe has summoned lawmakers for a special session beginning on Wednesday, during which he wants them to adopt a new congressional gerrymander that would flip Missouri’s 5th District from blue to red. Democrats, however, have more than one way of thwarting the GOP’s aims.
Kehoe also wants the Republican-dominated legislature to adopt a new constitutional amendment that would make it much harder for citizens to pass amendments of their own in the future—a dream the Missouri GOP has long pursued without success. Even if the proposal does make it to the ballot, though, it would still have to earn voter approval before becoming law.
Depending on how Democrats respond, the new map could also go before voters. The redrawn lines would radically overhaul the western part of the state by splitting up Kansas City, which has long formed the heart of the 5th District and ensured its status as a reliably blue bastion.
Instead, the city would get chopped up between three different districts, all of which would be solidly red. The revamped 5th would stretch almost from the state border with Kansas deep into rural central Missouri some 200 miles away, with a stop in the capital of Jefferson City along the way.
Kehoe, who issued his summons just before the holiday weekend, has made it difficult to examine the proposed map because he provided only a PDF of the new districts rather than standard data files. Consequently, the Downballot’s Daniel Donner recreated the map in Dave’s Redistricting App by hand. (Given the poor quality of the PDF, there may be some minor incongruities.)
Based on 2024 election results uploaded by DRA users, Donald Trump would have carried the new-look 5th by a 58-40 margin; four years earlier, he would have won it by a similar 56-42 spread. Two neighboring districts would also ingest parts of Kansas City but still would have gone for Trump last year: the 4th by a 60-39 margin and the 6th by an even wider 63-36 spread.
The plan would also make the 2nd District in the St. Louis suburbs a few points redder, shifting it from 53-45 for Trump to 55-43. There, Republican Rep. Ann Wagner faces a potential challenge from billionaire businessman Bob Clark.
As for the 5th District’s longtime representative, Democrat Emanuel Cleaver previously indicated to Punchbowl that he’d run for a 12th term no matter what Republicans do, but he was less absolute in a statement he released in response to the new map.
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While the Missouri Supreme Court is dominated by Republican appointees, it has acted as a check on GOP power grabs in recent years. Most notably, it thwarted a Republican effort to prevent citizens from placing an amendment on the ballot last year to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. (It ultimately passed.)
As state constitutional law expert Quinn Yeargain notes, the court might be amenable to claims that partisan gerrymandering violates the state constitution, which mandates that “all elections shall be free and open.”
In addition, opponents of the new map could seek to qualify a “veto referendum” for the ballot. Under this process, organizers would collect signatures to place a measure before voters asking whether they approve of the map. Should they gather enough signatures, the map would be suspended until an election could be held; should the “no” side prevail, it would be repealed.
Imagine having a state Supreme Court that might plausibly protect voting rights. Crazy, I know. Missouri would add one more to the ill-gotten Republican for 2026 if they succeed. Other states are still circling around the issue, and it may be several months before we know where it all ends up. The single best thing we can do here in Texas to minimize the effect of this travesty is to defend as many of the Republican target seats as we can. That starts off with finding and supporting good candidates in CDs 09 and 35 – if there’s been any chatter about who might be running in those districts, I have not heard it – and should also include bolstering the candidates in the Republican-held districts that could maybe put up a fight in a true-blue year. The point here is to fully engage and not give anything away. I don’t know who might be working on recruitment for those two districts I named, but I sure hope they’re on it. Mother Jones has more.