Kehoe calls legislators back to the Capitol to redraw congressional map

By Jason Hancock

Governor Mike Kehoe speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, at Schneider Electric in Columbia. Schneider expects to create around 200 new jobs as a result of the investment.

Missouri lawmakers return to the Capitol on Wednesday to gerrymander the state’s congressional map in the hopes of creating a new Republican seat.

They will also debate putting a constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot that would make it harder for voters to change the Missouri Constitution through the initiative petition process.

Both proposals were included in the special legislative session agenda crafted by Gov. Mike Kehoe and announced on Friday. The move has been expected for weeks, with Missouri Republicans facing pressure from President Donald Trump to redraw U.S. House districts so the GOP can win more seats in next year’s midterm elections.

“This is about clarity for voters and ownership of our future, and I hope the legislature will work together to pass our Missouri First Map and critically needed IP reform,” Kehoe said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Missouri has eight congressional districts, and Democrats hold two. The legislature is expected to split the 5th District, which is mainly in Kansas City, by adding Republican voters in sufficient numbers to take it away from incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

The map can be seen on the governor’s state website at Missouri FIRST Map | Governor Mike Kehoe. Boone County continues to be split in half under the proposal.

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That would give Republicans 90% of Missouri’s seats in the U.S. House.

Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, D-St. Louis County, said the president’s motivation for the gerrymandering push is fear of voters seeing files related to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.

“If Democrats retake the House, they will release the Epstein files, and this scares the hell out of President Trump,” Beck said. “That’s why the president has ordered Missouri to rubber-stamp a rigged map drawn in Washington, D.C., because he knows Missouri Republicans would rather protect pedophiles than say ‘no’ to Donald Trump.”

A proposal to draw a 7-1 map was rejected by Republican lawmakers three years ago out of concern that it could water down safe GOP seats and potentially make them winnable for Democrats.

House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, D-Kansas City, called Kehoe a “puppet” of the president for agreeing to redraw the state’s congressional map early for the first time in six decades. And she pointed specifically at the idea that the plan could backfire and open the door to more Democratic seats.

“House Democrats believe congressional redistricting is a once-per-decade task that has already been completed in accordance with the state constitution,” Aune said. “But if Republicans insist on giving Democrats the opportunity to win more congressional seats by weakening safe GOP districts in their quest for a mythical 7-1 map, then so be it.”

As for changes to the initiative petition process, Republicans are pushing a plan that would require a statewide majority and a majority vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts in order to approve a constitutional amendment.

Currently, a simple majority is all that is required.

Under that “concurrent majority” standard, analysis by The Independent last year found that as few as 23% of voters could defeat a statewide ballot measure.

The gerrymandering and initiative petition push will begin in the Missouri House next week, with the expectation that bills will be sent to the Missouri Senate for it to consider them during the legislature’s annual veto session on Sept. 10.

Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers. The bills are unlikely to face any stumbling blocks in the House, but Senate Democrats are expected to use the filibuster and other procedural maneuvers to gum up legislative business as much as possible.

This was first published by the Missouri Independent, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering state government, politics and policy, and is reprinted with permission.