Missouri state House passes Trump-backed congressional map

The Missouri state House approved a new congressional map Tuesday that would likely give Republicans another U.S. House seat, answering President Donald Trump’s call to help protect their party’s fragile majority in next year’s midterm elections.

The new map would shatter the Kansas City-based district held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D) to likely give Republicans a 7-1 grip on the state’s congressional delegation. The vote in Missouri comes weeks after Texas Republicans adopted a new map that is expected to deliver the GOP up to five more House seats next year.

The Missouri House approved the map and sent it to the state Senate, which is expected to sign off on it this month. From there, it would go to Gov. Mike Kehoe (R), who has urged lawmakers to adopt what he has dubbed a “Missouri first” map.

The push for a new map in Missouri is part of an unprecedented national battle spurred by Trump to carve up congressional districts five years after the last census. Ordinarily, states draw their districts just once a decade to ensure they have equal populations as determined by the most recent census. How lawmakers draw their lines can give one political party tremendous advantages over the other, and the latest approach to redistricting raises the prospect that partisans could fine-tune their districts after every election to maximize their power in their states.

The fight started in Texas, where Republicans established their new lines after Democrats stalled a vote on the map for two weeks by leaving the state. Democrats in California retaliated by scheduling a special election for this November asking voters to approve a map that would likely give Democrats five more seats in their state and wipe out the GOP gains in Texas.

Now, other states are considering new maps. Nationally, Republicans have more opportunities than Democrats to draw more districts in their favor, according to election experts.

Republicans hold a 219-212 majority in the U.S. House with four vacancies, and Trump sees preserving it as essential. If Democrats take over, they can block his legislative agenda and launch investigations of the administration.

In Missouri, Democrats and Republicans sparred over the map in recent days on the state House floor and in a committee hearing.

State Rep. Dirk Deaton, the Republican sponsoring the legislation, pitched the redrawn map as a way to keep more communities together within districts. He said during floor debate that he called the White House to confirm officials there were on board with the new map, but in a hearing last week emphasized that the governor, not the president, called the special session and spearheaded the drafting of the map.

“This meets every constitutional legal requirement, including comporting with the Voting Rights Act,” Deaton said during the hearing. “And it does not take away anybody’s ability to vote. This obviously changes no election law or how we vote or how elections are conducted other than the makeup of the congressional districts. And people are still entitled to vote for whoever they so choose.”

State Rep. Mark Sharp, the top Democrat on the committee, disputed Deaton’s characterizations of the proposal, noting it breaks up Kansas City and could push Cleaver into an “early retirement.”

“Democracy is taking a devastating blow, one it might not recover from,” Sharp said. “My city - Kansas City - hangs in the balance, right here, right now. I can’t tell you how angry I am.”

Democrats and their allies have few ways to fight the map because they are outnumbered in the legislature. The NAACP last week sued to prevent lawmakers from acting, arguing Kehoe doesn’t have the power to bring lawmakers into session to consider a new map. Other lawsuits could be on their way.

“If Republicans continue down this path, they will face not only an angry electorate but they will also see even more litigation,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

Alongside the map, Missouri Republicans are considering a measure that would make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot initiatives. Under the plan, ballot initiatives to amend the state constitution would have to be approved by a majority of voters in each of the state’s eight congressional districts instead of just a majority of voters statewide.

Republicans are backing the limits on citizen initiatives after voters in recent years approved measures to provide a right to abortion, legalize marijuana and expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

“When ultimately political parties cannot win with the merits of the issues, they resort to tilting the playing field, changing the rules of the system to entrench their power, and this is exactly what’s happening in Missouri,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the liberal Ballot Initiative Strategy Center.

The measure would also add a provision to the state constitution banning foreign donations for ballot initiatives. Voters would have to sign off on the donation ban and the changes to how initiatives are approved. Approval would require the current threshold of a majority of statewide votes, not those of each congressional district.