Calls opposing gerrymandering KC are No. 1 ‘hot topic’ flooding MO governor, records show
As Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe publicly weighed President Donald Trump’s effort to gerrymander the congressional district that encompasses Kansas City, messages condemning the move rolled into the Republican governor’s office.
“Please do not let the President dictate how Missouri voters are represented in Congress by redistricting,” wrote one woman from the Ozarks region. “I already feel that I have no representation living where I do. Please don’t make it worse.”
“How can you or anyone suggest mid decade reshuffle expressly for political reasons?” a man from the St. Louis suburbs wrote. “There is nothing justifying such a move.”
An internal staff report from Kehoe’s office listed opposition to the redistricting attempt as the No. 1 “hot topic” among Missouri residents who contacted the Republican governor late last month. The Star obtained a copy of the report through a public records request.
The report from Kehoe’s constituent services office covered messages, letters and phone calls to the office in the last week of July. It came as momentum appears to be building for a special session that would force Missouri into a national redistricting push amid a similar effort in Texas.
“Constituents oppose redistricting of congressional districts outside the normal schedule,” the first hot topic listed on the report said. The report did not include any comments supportive of the redistricting push.
The effort comes as Trump’s political team has put pressure on lawmakers to redraw their states’ U.S. House maps so Republicans can keep control of Congress. The likely plan in Missouri would involve carving up U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Democratic-leaning 5th District, which includes Kansas City’s urban core and its nearby suburbs.
The move would be extraordinary. Congressional districts are typically only redrawn once every decade based on population changes released from the U.S. Census Bureau and Missouri last redistricted its map in 2022.
Cleaver and other Kansas City Democrats have sharply criticized the effort, saying it would be met with a strong legal challenge. Opponents view the plan as a brazen and undemocratic power grab that could violate the state Constitution.
“We will not allow the voices of Kansas City to be silenced or our communities to be carved up for political gain,” state Rep. Michael Johnson, a Kansas City Democrat, said at a news conference hosted by the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus on Friday. “The 5th District is more than the lines of a map. It is our home.”
Special session looming?
Despite the pushback, Kehoe has expressed interest in Trump’s effort. The Republican governor gathered the state’s top legislative leaders to discuss the idea at a private meeting earlier this month, according to emails obtained by The Star.
The records also show that Kehoe recently scheduled a phone call to discuss redistricting with Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, another Republican governor who has weighed redrawing his state’s map.
Missouri lawmakers are not currently in their annual legislative session. Therefore, Kehoe would have to call lawmakers back to Jefferson City in a special session if he wants them to redraw the map before the 2026 election.
In response to questions about the internal report, a Kehoe spokesperson said the constituent services office receives thousands of calls, emails and written communications every week. The weekly report provides Kehoe and his staff with a summary of those messages, said spokesperson Gabby Picard.
“The quotes you are referring to in the report were selected to help summarize some of the communication received by constituent services,” Picard said. “For any given topic, the messages received by the Governor’s Office are typically skewed in one direction as constituents who are in support of a topic don’t typically reach out to the office to express their opinion.”
In addition to the report, Kehoe receives information from constituents in other ways, including when he travels the state and attends meetings and events, Picard said.
“Governor Kehoe believes that Missourians want to be represented in Washington, D.C. by elected officials with common-sense, Missouri values,” Picard said. “At this time, a decision on a special session has not yet been made. The Governor will continue to consider options that provide congressional districts that best represent Missourians.”
The idea floating around Missouri GOP circles would center on drawing a map that could allow Republicans to pick up seven of the state’s eight congressional districts.
Republicans currently control six districts, and Democrats hold the 5th District in Kansas City and the 1st District in St. Louis, under the maps state lawmakers approved three years ago.
It’s unclear how exactly Republicans would split up the districts, including how many districts would be changed. However, U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican who has spoken with Trump’s political team, suggested in an interview that voters in the Kansas City area could be split into three GOP-leaning districts.
The proposed plan would be an example of partisan gerrymandering, a phrase used to describe the practice of redrawing electoral district boundaries to favor one party over another.
While the mid-decade effort would be exceptionally rare in Missouri, it wouldn’t be the first time Republicans have tried to gerrymander Kansas City. There are several reasons why all eyes are on Kansas City, as opposed to St. Louis, ranging from political maneuvering to civil rights and legal concerns.
Some Republicans argue that Cleaver’s district, despite swarms of Democratic voters, would be easier to carve into Republican districts than the 1st District in St. Louis. Some also feel St. Louis is most likely protected from “discriminatory” changes by the federal Voting Rights Act because it is a majority-minority district in which a racial minority group constitutes a majority of the voting-age population.
During the 2022 redistricting cycle, some Republican lawmakers fought for a so-called 7-1 map that would have eliminated Cleaver’s district. However, that effort failed after lawmakers reached a compromise that maintained the current 6-2 map.
At that time, some Republicans feared that carving up Cleaver’s Kansas City district could backfire under what’s called a “dummymander” and lead to Democrats winning other competitive districts.
As top Missouri lawmakers await a decision from Kehoe, Kansas City voters could soon play a major role in a national fight over redistricting.
And the messages sent to the Republican governor’s office show that residents across the state, including outside the Kansas City area, are taking notice.
“To gerrymander as proposed makes me seriously worry that (policies) I support are legitimately not supported in Jeff City,” the man from the St. Louis suburbs wrote, “but that our state is controlled by a fringe minority who cannot govern fairly.”
This story was originally published August 13, 2025 at 5:36 AM.
