Redrawn Jackson County districts upend election campaigns for some candidates
Geoff Gerling was one of the first Democrats last fall to announce he was running for a seat on the Jackson County legislature.
But now, due to a delayed and, as some contend, bungled attempt to draw new district maps, Gerling isn’t sure whether he might represent the 1st or 4th districts, should he prevail in the August primary and go on to win in November’s general election.
He hasn’t moved anywhere. The district boundary lines have, and only in the last couple of weeks, creating much confusion.
So instead of running, as he intended, to replace retiring 4th District legislator Dan Tarwater, Gerling now finds himself suddenly a resident of the new 1st district, a skinny bit of Kansas City real estate that hugs the state line and stretches all the way from Blue Ridge Boulevard on the south to the Missouri River on the north, then takes a right turn to encompass only part of the old northeast area.
It sort of resembles a cane or upside down L, whereas the other five districts are somewhat square or rectangular, said Tarwater, who is stepping aside at the end of his seventh, four-year term this year to run for the Kansas City Council.
“When I saw it I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. It looks like they forgot to draw the first district,’“ Tarwater said. “Like they drew all the other districts and then said, ‘oh, then let’s put this one here.’”
Two other candidates have also been thrown into districts different from the ones they had hoped to represent due to a late change in district boundaries.
Out of all of them, Gerling may be the most upset. He plans to sue and doubts he’ll be the only plaintiff. Plenty of other local politicos are sore about the changes and how they came about.
“This is a disservice to the voters. And that’s not just lip service at all,” Gerling told The Star. “This entire process was done hastily; at some points, it was done incorrectly, which means it could be invalidated.”
No one’s alleging that any back-room funny business went on when the new maps were drawn, but that doesn’t mean everything was done properly, either, Gerling and others say.
“I know there are a lot of questions,” said Christina McDonough Hunt, who was the only Republican to have filed for the 4th District and now, like Gerling, finds herself running in the new 1st District. “Different lawyers are saying different things.”
New lines drawn
Think of it as congressional reapportionment writ small.
Just as U.S. House and state legislative districts are redrawn every 10 years, so do boundaries shift on the local level to reflect changes in population for the purpose of electing city council members, county commissioners and school board members.
Jackson County’s governing body is the county legislature, which has nine members.
Six represent distinct geographic areas whose populations are relatively equal. Three legislators are elected at large.
Normally, districts are redrawn in the summer or fall before the next election. A committee appointed by the county executive gets the Census numbers early enough to produce new maps several months before candidates begin filing for office.
But this time it was a matter of four days between when the maps were finished and filing began. Due to a delay in the federal government getting the numbers out and the death last fall of a key local player in the process, Jackson County Executive Frank White said he was unable to announce his picks for the county reapportionment committee until December.
That was long after other local governments were finished drawing their lines.
The three Democrats and three Republicans held a series of Zoom meetings, but did not finish their work until Feb. 18, the Friday before the window for filing for the 2022 election opened at 8 a.m. that next Tuesday. And the maps available to the public were far from detailed. Exact boundaries couldn’t be discerned until after that first week of filing.
Because the maps had been approved so late, the county legal department ruled that Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 22, that the old maps approved in 2011 would remain in effect until the next county legislative election four years from now.
“There was not time to get them in place prior to this year’s filing, which opened today,” deputy county counselor Jay Hayden told legislators, “so these maps will be effective for the ‘26 general election and primary election, actually.”
Six days later, Hayden and his boss, county counselor Bryan Covinsky, reversed themselves. The new maps would apply, after all, the decision made after the reapportionment committee had written a sternly worded letter saying the new maps were the only maps that could be used, according to the county charter.
“There should be no misunderstanding as to the applicability of these new maps,” wrote the co-chairs, Democrat Phil LeVota and Republican Ralph Munyan, and the four other other members.
Even though there was an issue about the actual starting date of the appointment of their committee, members said they had met all the deadlines and the county counselor had no authority to use the old maps in 2022.
“To not apply these maps,” the committee said, “is not only wrong but also mistakenly unconstitutional.”
Hispanic residents’ concerns
All of which explains why Gerling and two other candidates who officially filed for office on the last Tuesday in February have a choice to make. They can either run in their new districts, or they can withdraw.
Gerling is staying in. He was the only Democrat running in the 4th District, which made him a shoo-in, as no Republican has ever won that district.
Now unless he can get the court to intervene, he’ll be battling it out with at least three other Democrats for the 1st District seat now held by Scott Burnett, who is retiring. They are Justice Horn, Manuel “Manny” Abarca IV and Draque Murff.
The only Democrat now running in the 4th District so far is DaRon McGee. It wasn’t his choice. He was one of three who had filed to run for the 2nd District seat now held by Ron Finley, who like Tarwater, Burnett and Crystal Williams has chosen not to seek re-election.
But the boundary shift made McGee ineligible for the 2nd. That leaves Lorenzo Johnson and Mitchell W. Sudduth for now as the two Democrats competing to represent that inner-city district. McGee had no comment on the change.
McDonough Hunt, the Republican who filed to run in the 4th, hasn’t decided whether to continue her candidacy in the redrawn 1st District.
But one thing she does know. The new 1st District is not only oddly shaped, it includes vastly different neighborhoods whose residents’ concerns would seem to vary greatly. They include parts of Red Bridge on the south, Waldo, Brookside, the historically Hispanic West Side, downtown and all the way to the Indian Mound neighborhood and parts of the industrial East Bottoms.
“These are two different worlds, as far as constituencies are concerned,” she said.
Among the concerns about the new 1st District is that the new lines might dilute the influence of Hispanic voters. Hispanic neighborhoods in the old northeast had been part of the old 1st District along with the West Side. Now the two areas are in different districts. Those northeast neighborhoods south of Indian Mound have become part of the predominantly Black 2nd District, and the West Side is in the 1st.
“I think it’s a shame that it splits up the old northeast,” Burnett said.
LeVota disagrees that the new maps will have a negative influence on the political power of Kansas City’s Latinos. He noted that former city councilman Bobby Hernandez was on the reapportionment committee and approved of the new district lines. LeVota said the city’s Hispanic voters are being fairly represented.
“There are not enough voters for a Hispanic district,” he said.
Yet Carlos Gomez said he has been getting phone calls about the new maps at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City, of which he is president and CEO.
“The community is very concerned,” he said, but noted that the chamber has yet to take an official position.
No controversy erupted during the map-drawing process. But few paid attention. Committee members worked separately, then conferred privately via telephone a couple at a time. They also convened for regular Zoom meetings at which the maps were never discussed in detail or shared with the few observers who tuned in.
The vote was 6-0 in favor of the maps that were approved and both Republican and Democratic members praised themselves for working well together.
“I would have liked to have done it sooner,” was LeVota’s only complaint, he said Friday. “It was later than it should have been.”
According to county officials and political observers, the maps will likely preserve the 7-2 Democratic majority on the legislature.
The two Republican districts that make up most of eastern Jackson County,the 5th and 6th, appear to be even safer GOP seats than before. Absent a seismic shift in Jackson County political thinking, Democrats are likely to hold onto the three at-large seats and are favored to win the three in-district Kansas City seats and the one that includes Independence.
No Democrats or Republicans have newly filed or withdrawn since the new maps took effect, documents on the county website show.
This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
