Governor Mike Kehoe still hasn’t confirmed whether he’ll call a special session to change the state’s congressional map, but Republican lawmakers who’ve spoken to the governor say it’s likely.
State lawmakers and officials gathered in Sedalia Thursday morning for the annual Governor’s Ham Breakfast. Planned remarks from the podium focused on celebrating the State Fair and Missouri agriculture. But, as it has in previous years, politics dominated breakfast-table conversations.
The issue at hand was the effort being pushed by President Donald Trump to change the congressional map of Missouri to increase the Republican delegation by one seat, therefore decreasing the number of Democratic-held seats to just one.
Similar efforts in Texas are underway, sparking counter-efforts by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in California.
Kehoe has stopped short of confirming that he’ll call the Missouri legislature into a special session to redraw Missouri’s congressional map.
“You got to make sure on any time you call a special session, or even a regular piece of legislation during the normal process, you want to make sure that what you're doing is in the right direction and that you have as many people on board as possible,” Kehoe told reporters at the breakfast. “And I'm not saying we are at that point or not at that point, but it's a process.”
However, Republicans who have spoken to Kehoe about the issue say they think he will call lawmakers back to Jefferson City.
The Kansas City Star reported that Kehoe discussed redistricting with multiple top Republicans in an early August meeting. Alex Riley (R-Springfield), the majority leader of the State House of Representatives, was in that meeting and said he thinks it’s “pretty likely” Kehoe will call a special session.
“I'm supportive of it,” he said. “Right now, Missouri is a solidly Republican state. When you look around the rest of the country, you've seen Democrat states, for very long periods of time, draw their lines in such a way that they have no Republican representation or very minimal.”
Missouri Speaker of the House Jon Patterson (R-Lee’s Summit) was also in the meeting, but declined to comment.
The recent push to redistrict was ignited by U.S. Rep. Bob Onder from Missouri. He told Punchbowl News that the White House wants Missouri to redraw the map and send more Republicans to the House of Representatives.
As a state senator, Onder was supportive of a 2022 effort to draw Missouri’s congressional map in such a way to give Republicans seven seats, instead of the six they currently control.
“I wasn't successful in that effort in 2022 but it looks like we will very likely be doing that shortly,” Onder said, before adding that he’d spoken to Kehoe about the issue recently and thinks he will be calling a special session.
Onder represents the 3rd Congressional District of Missouri, which nearly entirely encircles the state’s 1st and 2nd Districts.
Lt. Gov. David Wasinger, who also supports redistricting, criticized the shape of the current congressional map and blamed state lawmakers for not creating one more favorable to Republicans in 2022.
“If you look at the map that's currently drawn in Congressman Bob Onder’s district ... it looks like a Pac-Man — you know, the old video game, Pac-Man,” he said. “It looks like a Pac-Man with its mouth open.”
The Beacon reported this week that the Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave Missouri’s current congressional map an “A” grade for partisan fairness but “C”s in both competitiveness and geographic features.
While he has not confirmed whether he’d call a special session, Kehoe did say that he shares Trump’s vision for a Republican-led House of Representatives following the midterms.
“My personal preference is just keep Speaker (Mike) Johnson in control in D.C.,” he said. "His values align much better with Missourians than Congressman (Hakeem) Jeffries (D-NY) does, and I think that would be the goal.”
