Gov. Kehoe will ‘let the courts decide’ on Missouri gerrymander rather than do his job

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced on May 27 that he will call a special legislative session to consider disaster relief, stadium funding and spending items (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

No, I do not want to go collect signatures.

My friend asks. I rack my brain for excuses. Walking up to strangers does not come naturally to me. My kids must have a soccer game or birthday party or something that conflicts.

They do not. I have no excuse. I go.

Once I get out there, I‘m glad I did. I meet lots of people just as angry as I am about the gerrymander of Kansas City and eager to reverse it. People thank me for being there.

I remain extremely resentful that I need to do it.

I’m collecting signatures to reverse the bill passed in the special session that redraws Missouri’s new maps to deprive Kansas City residents of their voting power, specifically, of their U.S. Representative of 20 years, Emanuel Cleaver.

If our legislators would embrace democracy, play by the rules and represent their constituents, I’d be hanging with my family instead of approaching strangers on the sidewalk with a clipboard.

Trump demanded that red states redistrict mid-decade to increase Republican chances of retaining control of the House. Trump constantly says how popular he is, but if he believed that, he wouldn’t need new maps.

Some Republican governors pushed back against Trump’s demands.

Not ours.

Gov. Mike Kehoe took his MAGA marching orders and called the legislature into a special session even though our legislature fought over and redrew our maps only two years ago. Kehoe did this even though Missouri is already extremely gerrymandered, with 40% of Missouri voters identifying as Democrats, but only two out of eight congressional seats represented by Democrats. The gerrymander is intended to make that one out of eight.

They also passed a bill in the special session to make it impossible for Missourians to use the initiative petition process.

It is astoundingly anti-democratic that the majority of Missouri legislators have dedicated themselves to thwarting the will of Missouri voters and getting around the Missouri constitution.

Sure, I’m grateful Missouri has the citizens’ initiative petition so that voters can enact policies with bipartisan support when the legislature refuses to. Yes, I’m grateful for the referendum process that allows voters to reject laws passed by the legislature.

But it’s a bad way to make law.

We wouldn’t need to use these burdensome, expensive processes if Missouri legislators didn’t treat Missouri voters like an enemy to be defeated.

It’s absurd that we have 40 pages of marijuana regulations in our state constitution. The legislature should have decriminalized marijuana via statute, enacting a policy favored by a majority of Missourians, but leaving legislators with flexibility to amend it as needed. Instead, advocates for policy changes increasingly feel they have to do everything by constitutional amendment because our legislature will immediately overturn any statute enacted by voters.

The paid sick leave ballot initiative, approved by 57% of Missouri voters after advocates gathered thousands of signatures to get it on the ballot, was only a statute. So the legislature trashed that, no problem.

Even a constitutional amendment isn’t enough. As soon as Missourians decriminalized abortion via Amendment 3, the legislature immediately sought to reverse it. They halted all the legislature’s business at the end of session to put a deliberately misleading measure to re-ban abortion on the 2026 ballot (The amendment to re-ban abortion will also be called Amendment 3, for ultimate voter confusion).

This is not how democracy is supposed to work. Our representatives should represent us. All of us. Even those of us who are Democrats or independents or Republicans who support abortion decriminalization or paid sick leave. Voters are supposed to pick their representatives rather than politicians picking their voters.

But Missouri Republicans are all in on Trump’s goal of dominating the opposition by whatever means necessary — including unconstitutional means. They are rejecting the fundamental premise of our democratic system that representatives of different populations must negotiate what the laws should be that govern all of us.

I saw Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin on a panel last year. She favorably contrasted the work that women in the legislature were able to do across the aisle to the extremism of some of her fellow Republicans.

O’Laughlin has since gone all in for extremism. She abandoned any interest she once claimed to have in working for all Missourians when she shepherded the special session bills to deprive Kansas City area Missourians of their representation and gut all Missourians’ constitutional right to the initiative petition.

O’Laughlin, who presides over a Republican supermajority, made a claim about her other colleagues in an attempt to defend the gerrymander that is both laughable and shockingly disingenuous: “The map and the initiative petition reform measures will strike a huge blow to progressives and their efforts to turn Missouri into California.”

Again, Missouri voters are 40% Democrats, with 25% representation in Congress. O’Laughlin’s allegation that anyone is trying to turn Missouri into California puts her at the goofiness level of the Missouri Freedom Caucus members she once criticized. But somehow she now has no problem lying about her colleagues across the aisle in defense of an unconstitutional bill intended to get Democratic representation down to 12.5%. On Trump’s orders.

Gov. Kehoe readily abandoned his constitutional obligations when Trump said jump. The Missouri constitution says that redistricting happens every 10 years, after the federal census. Kehoe says, “We’ll let the courts decide that.”

Here’s the thing: Running a state is not supposed to be a game of “what can I get away with?”

Kehoe swore an oath to uphold the constitution of Missouri. He shouldn’t be signing a mid-decade map openly designed to disenfranchise targeted Missourians. The job of the governor is to work in the interest of Missourians, not to light Missouri tax dollars afire with a special session and the inevitable lawsuits that will follow, to demonstrate fealty to Donald Trump.

The gerrymander is unconstitutional and I don’t expect it can survive court review. However, because I believe there are few things in life more important than living in a functioning democracy, I won’t be taking any chances.

This is not right. I’ll be dragging myself and my clipboard back out.

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.