After Missouri voted against secession in 1861, the pro-Confederate governor led state guardsmen into a losing battle against Union soldiers before he fled to Arkansas and claimed to be the state’s governor in exile. Though Missouri moved on without him, when that man died, his former lieutenant governor claimed he, too, was governing from out of state. As constitutionally preposterous as his claim was, until a recent capitol renovation in Jefferson City, his portrait was included among Missouri’s real governors.
I used to find those competing claims of power and authority an interesting historical tidbit in my home state. But we’re in the middle of a new constitutional crisis in the Show Me State. For weeks now, we’ve struggled to make sense of a series of contradictory state and federal court rulings and bewildering actions by public officials over the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts for November’s midterm elections. Depending on the day — or even the hour — which map we will use on Nov. 3 has changed. My house has repeatedly bounced back and forth between districts.
What’s behind this constitutional crisis? The state’s Republican leaders want to gerrymander a Black United Methodist minister out of office.
What’s behind this constitutional crisis? The state’s Republican leaders want to gerrymander a Black United Methodist minister out of office.
When the gerrymandering war erupted last year at President Donald Trump’s urging, Missouri’s governor quickly ran into battle. Despite hours of testimony from Missourians opposed to the scheme (I testified against it, too) and almost no one else arguing for splitting the state’s largest city, Kansas City, into three districts, Republican lawmakers used their legislative supermajorities to approve the mid-decade redistricting.
Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe claimed changing from a map with six Republican representatives and two Democrats to a 7-1 Republican map would represent Missouri’s “common sense values, rooted in faith, family and freedom.” Similarly, Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin insisted Kehoe “wants to be sure Missouri’s representation matches Missouri’s Christian conservative majority.”
The irony is Republicans redrew the maps to effectively force out of office Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who is one of just three ordained ministers in the U.S. House. The state GOP’s proposed map would not make the delegation more Christian, but it would make it more Republican — and more white.
Missouri Republicans didn’t count on citizens using the constitutional referendum process to block the new map from going into effect for the midterms. In December, the group People Not Politicians submitted more than 305,000 signatures — nearly three times the needed number — to force a vote on the map. Under the Missouri Constitution, such a ballot referendum also pauses the legislative item in question from becoming law until after the people vote.
But that’s when the shenanigans really started.
Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, the state’s top election official, broke with tradition and the Constitution to block the referendum from being certified. He also delayed the process for months — even as multiple court rulings clarified the process and the impact. As a result, he forced the primary elections in August to improperly use the new district maps.
The justices of the state’s highest court — five of seven of whom were appointed by Republican governors — unanimously ruled Hoskins violated the Constitution, ordered the referendum on the ballot and ordered the use of the existing maps from the 2022 and 2024 elections since the new map “is not the law and has never been the law.”
In a single week, a federal judge ruled in favor of the gerrymandered map, the U.S. Supreme Court twice ruled to keep it from going into effect and the state Supreme Court found Hoskins in contempt for trying to implement the new map.
In a single week, a federal judge ruled in favor of the gerrymandered map, the U.S. Supreme Court twice ruled to keep it from going into effect and the state Supreme Court found Hoskins in contempt for trying to implement the new map. Those justices ignored the GOP state lawmakers threatening to impeach the justices if they ruled against the secretary of state.
Even now the issue appears to remain open in federal court and could, theoretically, head to the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time this month.
Missouri Republicans are doing what some of their counterparts in other states have done since the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling this year: target Black lawmakers and the voting strength of Black communities. Hoskins’ civic anarchy follows his campaign promise of “defending election integrity.” Because the only outcome of Hoskins’ advocacy is Black people losing power, the images he’s posted of himself wielding a red baseball bat make me think of the late Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox who used a red-painted axe handle to menace Black people trying to integrate his restaurant.
We must not be confused by GOP lawmakers claiming the state’s supreme court justices are violating the Constitution and disenfranchising voters. Such rhetoric is like an arsonist complaining about a fire they set.
If the GOP’s new map is allowed, Rep. Cleaver will be on my ballot, and based on the composition of the district, he will likely lose. If the gerrymandering scheme stays blocked, I’ll be voting in a different district while Rep. Cleaver will likely easily defeat his opponent: a white state senator who, in the exchanges we’ve had, has been fond of spouting Christian nationalist talking points. I imagine Rep. Cleaver’s opponent is eager to sit for his portrait as a U.S. representative, but if the will of Missourians who backed a ballot referendum prevails, he won’t soon get that chance.
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