Assistant Missouri House Minority Leader Marlon Anderson of St. Louis speaks during a Thursday news conference on congressional redistricting. He was joined by, from left, state Reps. Michael Johnson, D-Kansas City, David Tyson Smith, D-Columbia, and Melissa Douglas, D-Kansas City. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)
Black leaders in the Missouri legislature said Thursday that they will fight any attempt to redraw the state’s congressional districts, pointing to the courts as the venue where they have greatest hopes to prevail.
State Rep. Michael Johnson, a Kansas City Democrat who chairs the Legislative Black Caucus, said any effort to remake maps is a pure power grab by Republicans seeking to shield President Donald Trump from congressional scrutiny.
“This is a desperate distraction,” Johnson said. “This move by the Missouri Republicans is a clear intent to shield their national counterparts from impending and inevitable loss that would be suffered in 2026 by an electorate demanding accountability for a hostile administration.”
Missouri has eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, with six held by Republicans and two held by Democrats. The seat being targeted in an effort to draw a seventh district where the GOP was certain to prevail is the 5th District in Jackson and Clay counties currently held by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City.
In a little more than two weeks, the possibility of lawmakers meeting later this summer or early fall to redraw the maps has gone from remote to likely. Gov. Mike Kehoe, who would issue the call for lawmakers to meet, told reporters Tuesday that he’s generally supportive of the push but didn’t give a date for lawmakers to convene.
“We want to keep the House in Republican control, so what we look at, what we’re going to do here in Missouri, we’ll work with our leadership group and see if there’s a path or something that makes sense for Missourians,” Kehoe said, according to KYTV in Springfield.
Johnson was joined by three other Black members of the Missouri House for a state Capitol press conference: state Reps. David Tyson Smith of Columbia, Marlon Anderson of St. Louis and Melissa Douglas of Kansas City.
They said redistricting now is illegal under the Missouri Constitution.
The Missouri Constitution directs lawmakers to revise the maps after every census. The text does not grant, and it does not deny, the power to revise it at other times. The silence, taken with how courts have interpreted similar gaps in specific powers, means the courts would toss any new map as unconstitutional, Smith said.
“What’s happening right now is disgusting and it’s outrageous and it’s shameful,” Smith said.
The last time lines were redrawn between censuses was in the 1960s, following the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision that districts had to be drawn as closely as possible in population to preserve equal representation, known as the one person, one vote decision.
In 2022, when the current districts were drawn, Republican leaders in the Missouri Senate had to resort to little-used maneuvers to outwit opponents within their caucus who wanted to break up the 5th District and push the partisan split to 7-1. The 5th District has been Democratic for decades.
The push to redraw district lines is playing out in several states, most dramatically in Texas. Republicans hold a thin 219-212 majority in the U.S. House with four seats vacant, including three previously held by Democrats. The GOP is hoping to add seats to the majority by drawing lines around Republican voters but governors of Democratically controlled states are considering ways to counter the mov.
In Texas, every Democratic member of the state Legislature left the state to deny Republicans a quorum to do business. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said the FBI, at his request, is helping track down the missing members.
Missouri Democrats hold fewer than one-third of the seats in both chambers and their absence would not prevent the GOP members from passing legislation.
The lawmakers at Tuesday’s news conference said they are hoping Republicans will join with them to block a revised map. Several Republican members have told The Independent that they question the fairness of congressional redistricting at this time but would likely vote for the bill anyway.
Johnson called on those Republicans to resist the new map.
“There are some Republicans, some of our Republican colleagues in this building that don’t want to see this happen,” Johnson said.
One of the maps touted as 7-1 three years ago would have run from Kansas City to Branson by including all the counties on the western border to the Arkansas line and then running the boundary east to Taney County.
Statewide, Missouri is about 40% Democratic. The two seats currently held by Democrats are 25% of the delegation. A fair map would give Democrats three seats, not one, Johnson said.
Missourians will see the true reason if lawmakers are called to draw a new map, Smith said.
“This is nothing but a power growth, a power grab by the Trump administration to maintain control of the (U.S.) House,” Smith said, “and we cannot allow that to happen.”
Comments