Coalition of Republicans and Democrats keeps ‘6-2’ congressional map alive in Missouri

With three conservative GOP hard-liners withholding support, a coalition of Republicans and two Kansas City Democrats — Sens. Barbara Washington and Greg Razer — provided the necessary votes to propel the proposal toward the Senate floor for debate.

The plan advanced on a 9-5 vote, with St. Louis-area Democratic Sens. Brian Williams and Steven Roberts voting with the conservative Republicans against the map.

Without Razer and Washington’s support, the map, which narrowly won approval in the House last week with only Republican support, would have failed on a 7-7 tie vote.

The affirmative vote keeps the “6-2” map alive even though Democrats have pushed for a “5-3” map that gives the party three seats.

“I think Missouri has a 60-40 electoral split, so I think a fair map would have three Democrats and five Republicans,” Williams said at the hearing.

After the hearing, Sen. Greg Razer, D-Kansas City, told the Post-Dispatch he voted to advance the bill to the entire Senate, but didn’t commit to supporting the plan once it hit the Senate floor.

“We’ve got to get it out of committee and get this to the floor,” Razer said, adding “we’ll see” when asked if he would vote for the plan on the floor.

The “6-2” map shores up Cleaver’s district for the Democrats, making it more compact than under the current congressional boundaries.

Hard-liners have proposed cracking up Kansas City voters into surrounding congressional districts in an effort to send one more Republican to Congress.

“I’m definitely not a ‘yes’ on a gerrymandered 7-1” map “that puts my district God-knows-where,” Razer said.

Asked if this was the best deal Kansas City voters can get, Razer said the map “keeps Kansas City together.”

He said “I don’t know what would happen” when asked if he thought a 7-1 map would gain momentum if Democrats killed the 6-2 plan.

No one testified in support of the legislation during a Senate Redistricting Committee hearing on Tuesday.

A vote on the proposal that cleared the House last week, House Bill 2117, as well as a second vote on an identical bill introduced in the Senate, took place only after hours of debate and testimony.

No one testified in favor of the legislation, but a line of Republican Party activists urged the GOP to vote down the plan, which hard-liners said could result in a Democrat winning Republican Rep. Ann Wagner’s district this decade, in addition to ceding Cleaver’s seat to Democrats.

“This political redistricting process is a political process,” said Noreen McCann, who said she was a volunteer with the Missouri Phyllis Schafly Eagles, who testified against the 6-2 plan. “It’s a power you have.

“Picking the district maps so they reflect the majority views of the state is an important power,” McCann said. She said Democrats in other states had been using “bare-knuckle politics to pass maps that take away Republican representation.

“We see the Democrat Party becoming increasingly radical, no longer representing the average Democrat voter in Missouri,” she said. 

“Those of us at home, the voters reading the news, cannot comprehend how after going door-to-door and working so hard for our Republican majorities, we are seeing you hand us a 6-2 map, which is predicted — accurately I believe — to be a 5-3 map in short order,” McCann said. 

“We are on the brink of war with a nuclear power, with targeted nuclear weapons,” McCann said. “We need to send as many level-headed, common-sense Americans to Congress, and that means a 7-1 map.”

“I’m worried because, you know, that pushback and the bare-knuckle mentality is the same mentality that we saw when folks stormed the Capitol, when they didn’t get their way” in the 2020 election, Williams said. “There’s nothing level-headed about that.”

This story will be updated.