Missouri Republicans Join Gerrymander Fight, Taking Aim at Deep-Blue Kansas City District

Missouri Republicans will join the redistricting wars in the coming weeks in a bid to flip a deep-blue seat, President Trump announced on Thursday. The state lawmakers at Jefferson City are almost sure to target the Kansas City-based fifth district, which Vice President Kamala Harris won by 23 points last year. Mr. Trump has been pushing Republican governors and state legislators to get in on the redistricting fight since Governor Gavin Newsom announced his own plans to gerrymander California. That followed Governor Greg Abbott’s move to strip Democrats of five seats in the Texas congressional delegation. Other Democratic and Republican governors have mused about redrawing their maps mid-decade, which could redraw the battlefield for the House in next year’s midterms. “The Great State of Missouri is now IN. I’m not surprised,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Thursday. The vice chairwoman of the state Republican committee, Jennifer Bukowsky, confirmed to the Missouri Independent that a map has already been drafted and is making its way around GOP circles. “It is a great State with fabulous people. I won it, all 3 times, in a landslide. We’re going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!” Mr. Trump wrote in his Truth Social message.Governor Mike Kehoe told reporters on Tuesday, according to the Independent, that his aspiration is to keep Speaker Johnson in his position after the midterm elections.“Our goal, if we move forward — and there’s no decision to move forward — is to make sure Missouri’s values are reflected in Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Kehoe said. “I’ve said many times that I think our current speaker does a very good job of matching the values of Missourians.”The likely path for the Missouri GOP to add one seat in the House would be to “crack up” the deeply blue fifth district, which is based around Kansas City. Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, a former chairman of the Black Caucus, has represented the district in the House for more than 20 years. He previously served as mayor of Kansas City. “Someone over at the White House is seemingly committed to fomenting what I call national nastiness as a way of establishing a one-party rule in our country,” Mr. Cleaver said in an interview with St. Louis Public Radio last month. “I think it is very dangerous.”The process of cracking a deep-blue district includes drawing lines in such a way that a major metro area, which is condensed into one district, is split among two or three red-leaning districts. Republicans in Tennessee did the same in 2022, when the city of Nashville was broken up and incorporated into three other districts, netting the GOP an extra House seat after the city had been represented by Democrats for decades.If Missouri does more forward, and the Trump administration succeeds in pressuring Indiana Republicans to do the same, then pressure from the Democratic base could force blue state governors to retaliate. But they have fewer seats that could be readily flipped. Maryland and Oregon could hypothetically kick off their own redistricting processes, though each state has only one Republican representative in the House. Illinois could also redraw its maps mid-decade, though Governor JB Pritzker already instituted a gerrymander in 2022 that left Republicans with only three of the state’s 17 congressional districts.If Mr. Pritzker does redraw the maps again, he may only be able to pick up only one seat for his party.

Missouri Republicans Join Gerrymander Fight, Taking Aim at Deep-Blue Kansas City District

Missouri Republicans Join Gerrymander Fight, Taking Aim at Deep-Blue Kansas City District

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