Eyeing gerrymandered map, national Democrats seek to recruit Missouri candidates
National party leaders are actively recruiting popular Missouri Democrats whom they believe could compete to win new gerrymandered congressional districts.
The controversial map, approved 21 to 11 by the Missouri Senate Friday, will splinter progressive-leaning Kansas City into three Republican-friendly districts with the stated goal of ousting longtime 5th District Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
Cleaver, 80, told The Star last week that he plans to run for a twelfth term regardless of the outcome of the gerrymandering effort, which is being spearheaded by President Donald Trump to safeguard the slim GOP majority in the U.S. House.
U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has placed several calls to prominent Missouri Democrats in recent days, asking them to consider running for Congress in the new districts.
One of those calls was to former Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, who resigned his General Assembly seat last June to become executive director of the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority.
In a phone interview, Rizzo confirmed that he spoke with the senior Democratic leader about a potential run in the proposed new 6th District. That redrawn district, currently represented by U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, would siphon off voters in the Kansas City area’s Northland, including Clay and Platte counties, and stretch across northern Missouri.
Rizzo said any potential run is “in its infancy stages” and stressed that he hopes the new map will be blocked by Missouri courts if it passes.
“The fact of the matter is, they gerrymandered districts with a map from Washington D.C. that could, in a good Democratic year, result in (Republicans) losing two seats,” Rizzo said. “Because the Republican brand is faltering and the Republican brand isn’t looking out for the middle class and the Republican brand is giving tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and focusing on lining their pockets and not helping working people.”
Another former Senate Minority Leader, Jolie Justus of Kansas City, was also contacted by DelBene, she confirmed. Justus, also a former Kansas City Council member who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2019, would be part of the new 4th District.
But Justus, now chief legal officer for University Health in Kansas City, said national Democrats will have to find someone else to challenge U.S. Rep. Mark Alford in the redrawn 4th District, which would place voters in Kansas City’s urban areas in the same district as voters in Missouri’s southern Ozarks region.
“I love my job and I would not consider running for Congress under any map,” Justus said Friday. “I found my mission and my purpose here.”
