Missouri Senate refuses to negotiate over congressional map, sends it back to House
The Missouri Senate refused Wednesday to meet with House members to redraw a new congressional map, leaving approval of the new boundaries once again in limbo.
House members on Tuesday had overwhelmingly decided to press pause on the map approved by the Senate last week. They wanted to send it to a conference committee, where House and Senate negotiators would develop a final proposal.
The Senate’s unanimous vote to reject negotiations and stand firm on its own boundaries moves the map back to the House. Members of both parties in that chamber had expressed misgivings about different parts of the proposed lines and the haphazard way in which the Senate approved them.
Missouri’s congressional map, drawn based on population shifts recorded by the 2020 Census, sparked weeks of infighting between GOP leaders and a faction of hard-right members. The Senate eventually passed a compromise proposal that would preserve the current partisan mix of six Republican and two Democratic members of Congress. The breakthrough came after the faction abandoned an effort to oust Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver — and add an additional Republican member — by gerrymandering his Kansas City-area district.
The map’s move back to the House comes as the possibility of court intervention looms. At least two lawsuits have been filed — one by a group of voters and another by a St. Louis-area congressional candidate — asking state court judges to take action after legislative inaction.
The candidate filing deadline also came and went this week without the congressional map, leaving candidates and constituents without clear boundaries.
Prior to the Senate’s decision, Gov. Mike Parson on Wednesday said he was “disappointed” in the delay.
“I think it should’ve got done,” he told reporters. “I think it’s unfortunate for people filing for office, for people who live in all these districts to not know what district you’re in. I would’ve liked to have seen it done ... All the political spin put on it, at some point you’ve got to do your job, and I think they should’ve done their job.”
Parson said he hopes the state can approve the map “before we send it to the courts.”
The map approved by the Senate consolidates the 5th District — held by Cleaver — into the Kansas City area and eliminates its rural communities, which currently stretch into central Missouri.
It also significantly redraws the St. Louis-area 2nd District, held by Republican U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner. Instead of the blob that it is today, its new claw-like shape stretches from the St. Louis metro into southern Missouri, in hopes of making it more Republican.
And it places Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman Air Force Base in the same district.
