Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a brand new U.S. Home map into regulation Sunday as a part of President Trump’s plan to attempt to maintain on to a slim Republican majority in subsequent 12 months’s midterm elections.
Kehoe’s signature places the redrawn districts into state regulation with a purpose of serving to Republicans win one further seat. But it surely will not be the ultimate motion. Opponents are pursuing a referendum petition that, if profitable, would pressure a statewide vote on the brand new map. Additionally they have introduced a number of lawsuits in opposition to it.
U.S. Home districts had been redrawn throughout the nation after the 2020 census to account for inhabitants modifications. However Missouri is the third state this 12 months — following Texas, which then triggered a response from California — to attempt to redraw its districts for partisan benefit, a course of generally known as gerrymandering.
Republican lawmakers in Texas handed a brand new U.S. Home map final month aimed toward serving to their get together win 5 further seats. Democratic lawmakers in California countered with their very own redistricting plan aimed toward successful 5 extra seats, although it nonetheless wants voter approval. Different states are also contemplating redistricting.
Every seat may very well be important, as a result of Democrats want to realize simply three to win management of the Home, which might enable them to test Trump’s agenda and perform oversight investigations. Trump is making an attempt to stave off a historic development through which a president’s get together usually loses seats in midterm elections.
Republicans at present maintain six of Missouri’s eight U.S. Home seats. The brand new map targets a seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver by shaving off parts of his Kansas Metropolis district and stretching the remainder of it into Republican-heavy rural areas. It reduces the variety of Black and minority residents in Cleaver’s district, which he has represented for twenty years after serving as Kansas Metropolis’s first Black mayor.
Cleaver has denounced the gerrymandering plan for utilizing Kansas Metropolis’s Troost Avenue — a road that has lengthy segregated Black and white residents — as one of many dividing strains for the brand new districts.
Kehoe has defended the brand new map as a method of boosting Missouri’s “conservative, commonsense values” within the nation’s capital, ignoring Trump’s unabashedly partisan justification for it.
“Missourians are extra alike than we’re completely different, and our values, throughout each side of the aisle, are nearer to one another than these of the congressional illustration of states like New York, California, and Illinois. We consider this map finest represents Missourians, and I admire the help and efforts of state legislators, our congressional delegation, and President Trump in getting this map to my desk,” Kehoe mentioned in a press release.
Kehoe signed the brand new regulation throughout an occasion that was closed to the general public.
Opponents are gathering petition signatures in search of to pressure a statewide referendum on the brand new map. They’ve till Dec. 11 to submit round 110,000 legitimate signatures, which might put the map on maintain till a public vote can happen someday subsequent 12 months.
In the meantime, opponents are also pursuing quite a lot of authorized challenges. A number of lawsuits by voters, together with a brand new one introduced Sunday by a Democratic-affiliated group, contend that mid-decade redistricting isn’t allowed underneath Missouri’s Structure.
“It was not prompted by the regulation or a court docket order; it was the results of Republican lawmakers in Missouri following partisan directives from politicians in Washington, D.C.,” mentioned Marina Jenkins, government director of the Nationwide Redistricting Basis, a nonprofit affiliate of the Nationwide Democratic Redistricting Committee.
A beforehand filed lawsuit by the NAACP contends that no “extraordinary event” existed for Kehoe to name lawmakers into session for redistricting.
A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union additionally asserts that the brand new Kansas Metropolis-area districts violate state constitutional necessities to be compact and include equal populations. It notes that the redistricting laws lists a “KC 811” voting precinct in each the 4th and fifth congressional districts, which it asserts is grounds to invalidate the brand new map.
However Kehoe’s workplace mentioned there isn’t any error. It mentioned different authorities companies had assigned the identical identify to 2 distinct voting places.
Lieb writes for the Related Press. AP author Juan A. Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.
