Kehoe’s decision to call the session comes as no surprise. President Trump has pressured GOP lawmakers from around the country — including Missouri — to redraw their state’s congressional maps in the hopes of maintaining a Republican majority in the house after the midterms. While the current map skews 6-2 in favor of the republicans, the proposed “Missouri First” map would try to make that a 7-1 skew by breaking up Emmanuel Cleaver’s district in the KC Metro — a gerrymandering technique known as "cracking."
Missouri Republicans actually considered a similar map back in 2022 during standard post-census redistricting. While members of the conservative caucus fought hard for a 7-1 map, other lawmakers had concerns. It would have created a lot of bad blood in what was already a very hostile legislature, for one, but it also had the potential to be held up in court; that would have been especially problematic because the districts were already going to be coming in late. There was also the potential for a backfire, that voters from Cleaver’s district could get riled up and flip their new districts, turning a 7-1 map into a 5-3 map. So, most of the party went with the safer 6-2 map — including, for example, Springfield’s own Alex Riley.
KSMU tried to contact Representative Riley for an interview along with Senator Hough, but neither got back to us in time for broadcast. KSMU was able to reach Representative Darin Chappell who said that while he’d be open to an interview, he had very little to offer at the time — everything’s going to be in committee until at least next week, and he’s not a part of any of those. In fact, according to reporting from the Missouri Independent on Wednesday, the session began with only around 20 lawmakers prevent — less than a quorum.
KSMU was, however, able to sit down with Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller. In addition to his day-to-day duties, he’s also the top election official in the county. Schoeller drew some parallels between the last redistricting effort and this one — in 2022, the process was delayed by a lawsuit over the census itself, which meant that the new map was passed six weeks before administering the August election, causing all sorts of administrative headaches.
Representative Cleaver has clearly stated his intention to bring this week’s proposed map to court, which will pose a similar issue for election officials.
As Schoeller explained, "When you go in and make those changes, you literally go to every street — and addresses within those street ranges — and you have to physically adjust each one of them, street by street. That can take a significant amount of time to be able to do that."
The longer the legal process takes, the more of a headache — and crucially, chance of error — for election officials, especially ones in counties like Boone: with a high population, it’s currently split between congressional districts one way, but in the new map would be split a whole other way.
"Hopefully," Schoeller said, "the courts would understand the challenges that are had for local election administrators and be able to, allow that decision to go through the courts quickly"
In sum, local Republicans are convening to vote on a redistricting plan that the party thought was a bad idea just three years ago. If that plan passes, it will almost certainly get held up in a legal battle. And the longer that legal battle goes, the more difficult it’s going to be to effectively administer the election that the new plan is supposed to clinch for Republicans. There’s also the question of how proposed changes to the ballot initiative process will shake out over the course of this session, and the question of how Democrats will respond to this.