Why all eyes are on KC — not St. Louis — as Trump pushes to gerrymander Missouri
When U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison received a phone call from someone on President Donald Trump's political team late last month, the conversation centered on adding another GOP congressional seat in Missouri.
For Burlison, a Missouri Republican, the likely move would involve splitting up U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's 5th Congressional District, which covers nearly all of Kansas City and some of its suburbs in Jackson and Clay counties.
'I mean, it's just — it's obvious,' Burlison said in an interview with The Star.
All eyes appear to be on Kansas City — as opposed to the state's other blue-leaning hub in St. Louis — as Trump pressures Missouri lawmakers to gerrymander the state's U.S. House map so Republicans can pick up another congressional seat. There is constellation of reasons why, ranging from political maneuvering to civil rights and legal concerns.
Republicans currently control six districts and Democrats hold the 5th District in Kansas City and the 1st District in St. Louis, under maps lawmakers approved just three years ago. Congressional districts are typically only redrawn once every decade based on population changes released from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Better odds in KC?
While Kansas City appears to be the main target, any type of gerrymandering attempt in Missouri is likely to face fierce backlash and lawsuits. Cleaver said last week that the effort would spark a strong legal challenge.
Cleaver's district, which is more diverse and politically progressive than most of the rest of the state, has long been a target for Missouri Republicans. The longtime congressman, and Kansas City's first Black mayor, has held the office since 2005.
While the district has swarms of Democratic voters, Republicans feel that it's more competitive than the 1st District in St. Louis.
'It is easier to get to a red district by carving up Cleaver's district than it is the St. Louis district,' said Gregg Keller, a longtime Missouri GOP consultant. Splitting up the staunchly Democratic voters in St. Louis could end up hurting nearby Republican districts in eastern Missouri, he said.
Cleaver won his two most recent elections in 2024 and 2022 with 60.2% and 61% of the vote, respectively. Meanwhile, in St. Louis, Democratic U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell received nearly 76% of the vote in his most recent election last year.
Republicans supportive of the gerrymandering attempt hope that breaking up the voters of Kansas City, which has slimmer margins than St. Louis, would give Republicans a better chance to maintain control of the state's other congressional districts.
Risk of racial discrimination
Legal and racial issues at play also make Kansas City a more likely option for gerrymandering.
The 1st District in 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.
The landmark Civil Rights law prohibits 'voting practices that result in citizens being denied equal access to the political process on account of race.'
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Black voters make up the majority of voters who identify as one race in the 1st District, which could make it difficult for a gerrymandering attempt to withstand a legal challenge. Meanwhile, white voters make up a majority of one-race voters in the 5th District.
That signifier makes it unlikely Republicans would be able to split up or 'crack' the voters in St. Louis, said Chuck Hatfield, a Jefferson City-based attorney who has been involved in a wide range of Missouri state government issues.
Hatfield was referring to the practice of cracking, a type of gerrymandering that splits up groups of people to weaken their voting power.
Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a Lee's Summit Republican, echoed those concerns, saying that Republicans were likely focused on Kansas City over St. Louis due to the Voting Rights Act.
St. Louis is 'something we can't mess with, as far as cutting it up,' Cierpiot said.
Inside Missouri's push
The focus on Kansas City comes as speculation ramps up that Missouri could soon enter a national redistricting frenzy on the heels of a similar Trump-led effort in Texas. The plan being floated would involve state lawmakers redrawing a map that could give Republicans seven of the state's eight congressional districts.
The attempt would be remarkable and serve as an overt example of partisan gerrymandering in Missouri — not based on population changes but to strengthen the GOP's slim majority in Congress. Opponents view the move as a brazen and undemocratic abuse of power.
'President Trump sees the writing on the wall and wants to rig the rules before voters have their say,' Rep. Michael Johnson, a Kansas City Democrat, said in a statement on behalf of the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus. 'Lawmakers in Missouri shouldn't be complicit in that.'
'Redrawing the 5th District now is a blatant attempt to hold onto power,' Johnson added.
While already highly unusual, the move could also violate the Missouri Constitution.
Hatfield said he believes that the language of the state Constitution as well as a Missouri Supreme Court decision from 2012 prevent state lawmakers from redrawing the state's congressional maps mid-cycle — or before the release of new Census population data.
While the mid-cycle push is rare, it isn't the first time Missouri Republicans have tried to gerrymander Kansas City. 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 makeup. At that time, some Republicans feared that splitting Cleaver's Kansas City district could backfire under what's called a 'dummymander' and lead to Democrats winning other competitive districts.
Missouri lawmakers are not currently in their annual legislative session, so Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican who has expressed interest in the idea, would have to call lawmakers back to Jefferson City in a special session if he wants them to redraw the map.
As lawmakers of both parties await a decision from the Republican governor, Kansas City voters are poised to serve as key players — and potential victims — in a national fight over gerrymandering, voting rights and democracy.
'You have to manage the Cleaver district as job one,' said Keller, the GOP consultant. 'And once you've accomplished that, then that gives you the guidance you need to deal with the other congressional districts.'
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Our approach, which we call the 'Define-Combine Procedure,' splits the map drawing process into two simple stages. First, one party divides the state into twice the number of needed districts—for example, 20 sub-districts for a state that needs 10 congressional seats. Then, the second party pairs those sub-districts into the final 10 districts. The result is a fairer map than either party would have drawn on its own. Instead of mutually assured gerrymandering, this approach leads to mutually assured representation. Read More: Gerrymandering Isn't New—But Now We Have a Solution We used real-world census and election data from 2020 in each state to forecast the results of extreme partisan gerrymandering and the Define-Combine Procedure in every state. In Texas, Republicans could draw a map where they won 30 of 38 congressional seats. If Democrats could unilaterally gerrymander Texas, they could create a map with 28 Democratic and 10 Republican seats. Depending on party control of redistricting in Texas, a whopping 20 seats could change hands. When we used the Define-Combine Procedure, the resulting map would produce 19 Republicans seats and 17 Democratic seats, with the two remaining seats changing hands depending on which party defines and which combines. This result comes much closer to the 53% of the two-party vote that Republicans won in 2020. Scaling nationwide, we estimate that extreme gerrymandering could determine which party holds almost 200 seats, out of the 435 seats in the House. Processes like ours could reduce the advantage that a party can earn just from drawing a map, with outcomes that are less biased and closer to proportional. The trick here is to use the impulse to score more seats for your party as a tool for fairness instead. It's a partisan solution for a partisan problem. One party alone cannot protect voting rights and ensure fair representation. That's why, in 1965, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the Voting Rights Act—and why they continued to amend and renew it for the next 40 years. But, a series of Supreme Court decisions over the last 12 years have substantially weakened the Voting Rights Act and allowed states to engage in extreme partisan gerrymandering. Now, a case before the court next year is likely to further diminish its remaining provisions. Instead of settling for mutually assured gerrymandering, with less effective representation, reduced accountability, and uncompetitive elections, both parties should unite behind solutions that achieve fairer outcomes nationwide. Such an outcome seems unrealistic right now as tit-for-tat gerrymandering ramps up, but the moment when the dust settles and voters take stock of the damage done may well be the best opportunity to address the scourge of partisan gerrymandering. If we don't seize this opportunity, America will pay the price.
