Missouri Secretary of State wants legislature to increase Republican seats in Congressional map
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wants the state legislature to adopt a new Congressional map with an additional Republican district, which could mean drawing Rep. Emanuel Cleaver out of his seat.
“The biggest question there is whether Missouri will stay a 6-2 state, with six Republican districts and two Democrat districts, or whether they will go 7-1,” Ashcroft said at a Jefferson City Rotary Breakfast Club event on Wednesday, according to the Jefferson City News Tribune. “If we were 7-1, I think that would probably do a better job of actually representing who the people of Missouri are in Washington, D.C.”
The redrawing of the Congressional map, which is going forward on a delayed schedule after the late reporting of 2020 Census results, will be one of the Republican-controlled General Assembly’s top priorities in the legislative session that begins January.
Nationally, the results of each state’s redistricting process could determine control of the U.S. House, where Democrats currently hold a narrow majority.
Democrats have been concerned about a scenario in which portions of Kansas City would be shifted out of Cleaver’s 5th District to make it more competitive for a Republican candidate. Cleaver, who was Kansas City’s first Black mayor, has represented the 5th since 2005.
Population changes will probably necessitate a redrawing of Missouri’s other Democratic district — Rep. Cori Bush’s — by expansion into the white St. Louis suburbs. But the Black population in the majority-minority 1st District is likely protected from dilution by the federal Voting Rights Act.
Lawmakers overseeing redistricting have demurred on the possibility so far. Some Republicans have warned that the addition of Democratic Kansas City-area voters into other Congressional districts would make them less favorable for the GOP over the next decade.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREThe Bigger Picture
Congressional and state legislative district lines are redrawn every ten years based on the latest Census. The 435 seats in the U.S. House are apportioned so that districts in each state are of roughly equal population. While some states will gain or lose seats, Missouri will retain its eight congressional districts, currently held by six Republicans and two Democrats.
The party in power generally controls how district lines are redrawn . In Missouri that means Republican Gov. Mike Parson and the GOP supermajority in the General Assembly. The process invariably includes at least an attempt by the party in charge to “gerrymander,”or redraw maps to its political advantage.
In 2022, the GOP could redraw the 5th Congressional District, a “safe” Democratic seat held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver since 2005. The 5th takes in all of Kansas City south of the Missouri River, a corner of Clay County and a chunk of rural western Missouri. Republicans could decide to make the 5th less of a sure bet for Cleaver by shifting some urban voters into other more rural districts. The opposite could happen in St. Louis, where the GOP might pack more more suburban Democrats into Rep. Cori Bush’s deep-blue St. Louis district, possibly giving the adjacent Republican, Rep. Ann Wagner, an easier race than she had in 2020.
State legislative lines will be drawn by two bipartisan commissions, one for the House, one for the Senate, appointed by Parson. Maps need 70% approval to be adopted. Congressional districts will be drawn by the Legislature, subject to Parson’s veto.
Solutions
Many states are working to make redistricting more fair and transparent Twenty-one now have some form of non-partisan or bi-partisan commissions. California uses an independent commission of citizen volunteers to draw legislative and Congressional lines.
Missouri appeared to be on the way to change in 2018, when voters approved the Clean Missouri ballot initiative. Under Clean Missouri, a non-partisan state demographer would have craft legislative maps, to be reviewed by a citizens commission. Two years later, voters approved a Republican-drafted amendment on the statewide ballot to rollback the changes.
Ashcroft is the state’s chief election official but he does not play a direct role in redistricting. The map ultimately approved by lawmakers will require the governor’s signature like any other bill. But on Wednesday he used the example of his own election to justify increasing Republicans’ hold on Missouri House seats, the News Tribune reported.
“Just looking at my own position, I won statewide by 25 percentage points, which makes me say that it seems to me Missouri is a pretty Republican state,” he said.
Ashcroft won his 2020 election with 60% of the vote, compared with 36% for the Democratic challenger, Yinka Faleti. By contrast, seven out of eight Congressional seats would mean Republicans represent about 87% of Missouri’s population in Congress.
“The secretary supports the 7-1 map because he believes it would better represent the current voting population of the state,” Ashcroft’s spokesman JoDonn Chaney said Friday. “Based on voting data from his recent reelection and from other races, Secretary Ashcroft believes that Missourians, over the last few decades, have made a definitive shift to traditional, conservative values aligning themselves more with Republican ideology.”
The secretary of state is making a renewed push for a package of more restrictive changes to voter ID and initiative-petition laws ahead of the next legislative session. Those proposals were heavily backed by Missouri House Republicans this year but fell victim to infighting in the state Senate.
In September, he called for the General Assembly to bar local elections officials from “curing,” or helping voters correct mistakes on ballots, which could prevent votes from being counted.
Among the most prominent proposals is legislation to raise the thresholds of signatures and votes required for Missourians to directly pass changes to the state constitution, bypassing the legislature. Republican lawmakers have taken aim at the initiative process after a recent slew of Democrat-backed legislation passed by ballot measure, including minimum wage hikes and the expansion of Medicaid.
“The idea of a hyper-direct democracy concerns me,” Ashcroft said. “And it’s not because I don’t believe that the people should be involved. It’s because I believe that our rights come from God.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 12:04 PM.