Voters in both parties describe Missouri redistricting as disenfranchising
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II arrived at a Kansas City banquet hall this week for a standard campaign stop, a nonprofit dinner that would normally pass without notice. Before the 81-year-old Democrat could speak, the room erupted in a standing ovation. He had just learned the U.S. Supreme Court had, for the second time, rejected Republican efforts to redistrict him out of office.
At his midtown Kansas City campaign office — set in a former television-and-tech repair shop — a weary Cleaver told The Wall Street Journal that the litigation is wearing voters down. “Just chaos, chaos,” he said. “Some people may have thought that would work in their best interest. I don’t think it does. People can get worn down with bags and bags of chaos they’re asked to carry every day.”
The redistricting fight began last year, when the Republican-led Missouri legislature redrew the state’s congressional boundaries mid-decade at President Trump’s urging. The new map split metropolitan Kansas City into thirds and gave Republicans an advantage in seven of the state’s eight House districts. Cleaver’s district, long centered on much of Kansas City and its suburbs, was redrawn to include a swath of rural Missouri, complicating his re-election path.
A grassroots petition drive and legal challenges halted the plan. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled the state must hold a public referendum before changing district lines, and Republican appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court have now failed twice. The original 2022 congressional maps are set to appear on the November ballot, though Republicans continue to pursue legal strategies to change that.
Cleaver’s Republican opponent, state Sen. Rick Brattin, a 46-year-old Trump-endorsed Marine veteran, postponed a planned Saturday grand opening of his campaign headquarters after the court decisions. On Friday morning, his Independence, Mo., campaign office sat locked with the blinds drawn. In a Facebook post, Brattin said he was disappointed by the ruling and hoped further legal efforts “will provide certainty about the upcoming general election.”
In and around Kansas City, voters in both parties told the Journal the past year had been upsetting. Reginald Townsend, 55, a financial analyst, viewed the redistricting push as “a clear attempt to disenfranchise your voice” and said the court decisions gave “some hope for our institutions. The rule of law won the day.”
Some Republican supporters of Brattin said they felt disenfranchised by the courts, too. Many voted in Republican primaries earlier this year based on the legislature-backed map; with the 2022 map back in place, they ended up voting in a district where they no longer live. Justin Tyson, 46, who owns a car lot, said the legislature-backed map “kind of balanced it out” a longstanding Democratic advantage in the metro area. With the 2022 map back in place, he predicted Brattin’s path to victory had closed as he volunteered setting up for a fair outside the Grain Valley Community Center. “He’s not going to win,” Tyson said. “I’m sorry to say it because I’d love to see him win.”
Not all Republicans backed the redistricting push. Bonnie Sue Cooper, 92, a former state representative and former Kansas City councilwoman, said she opposed it despite having voted for Trump. “It was horrible to do that to the people in his district,” she said of Cleaver. “It’s not so much it’s doing it to the congressman, but what that does to the people in his district.”
The legal fight has triggered friction inside Missouri’s election machinery. Denny Hoskins, the Republican secretary of state, faced contempt proceedings from the state Supreme Court before agreeing to direct election workers to use the 2022 map. Gov. Mike Kehoe and other Republicans said they continue to back the new maps and are watching a last-minute appeal to the federal Eighth Circuit.
The appellate panel has set a rapid briefing schedule and an emergency hearing for Thursday. A ruling in favor of the GOP effort would likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the legal back-and-forth has left election workers bracing for last-minute changes.
More than 20 election administrators across Missouri told the Journal they are racing to prepare ballots as absentee voting approaches. The window for printing physical ballots is shrinking; absentee voting is scheduled to begin Sept. 22. One county official in the changing zone canceled an eye operation and bought new, expensive ballot-printing equipment, while others are calculating staff overtime budgets for any contingency.
“We are taking it one day at a time,” said Jessica Cole, county clerk in southwestern McDonald County. “But this has been the craziest election cycle I have experienced.”
To simplify the process, election officials are keeping candidates on the ballot in the same-numbered district they originally ran in, even where the underlying lines have shifted.
Back at the banquet, Cleaver — a Methodist pastor known to many here as “the Rev” — made no mention of the legal drama. As he finished his remarks, he shifted from the need for housing to fiery comments about his faith in the United States. “When you look at what this country has gone through and made it, and is still the most powerful country on this planet,” he said. “The whole world looks to us, and the U.S. is going to make it through this.”