by Pa Rock
Missouri Voter
Missouri's excuse for a governor, Republican Mike Kehoe, has been instructed by Donald Trump to get the state's congressional maps redrawn prior to the 2026 midterm elections with the objective being to gain one more congressional seat for the Republican Party. Kehoe, of course, folded like a cheap card table and announced yesterday that a special session of the state legislature will commence next Wednesday with two items on its agenda, and one of those is a "Missouri First" congressional map gerrymandered to insure that the state will lose its Democratic congressman from the Kansas City area.
Missouri currently has nine seats in the House of Representatives. Six of those are held by white men, all Repulbicans, from largely rural areas of the state, and one other rural area is held by a white woman who is also a Republican. The other two seats, one in uban St. Louis and the other in urban Kansas City, are held by black men who are Democrats. The Trump team in the White House believes one of those seats, the one in the Kansas City area, could be sliced and diced in such a way as to eliminate the Democrat there, and they have instructed Kehoe to get 'er done!
The current Democratic representative from the Kansas City area is Emanuel Cleaver, an 80-year-old United Methodist Minister who served as the first black Mayor of Kansas City for eight years during the 1990's. Cleaver is currently serving his tenth term in Congress.
The Trump-Kehoe plan is to split the urban black vote in the 5th District (Cleaver's) in such a way as to render the remaining black voters a minority. That will require moving some of Cleaver's voters into neighboring Republican districts and bringing Republican voters into Cleaver's. Apparently Trump's map people in the White House could not figure out a way to do that in Wesley Bell's 1st District in central St. Louis - yet.
Missouri's Republican legislature, a panoply of of good ol' white boys with a few good ol' white girls, will dutifully bend a knee to Donald Trump, do his will, and then piously return to their rural homes knowing that they have done their part to make the state more like themselves, as God intended.
Democracy suffers while Jim Crow surges.
But Kehoe is planning on doing more with his special legislative session that just white-washing the state's congressional delegation. He also wants to make sure that progressive measures never again pass through statewide initiative and referendum process. Missouri has passed several statewide measures over the past few years that many conservatives do not like - including reinstating a woman's right to have an abortion in the state, legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes, and a state-wide sports-betting bill. Once petitions are passed and enough signatures gathered to put a measure on the ballot, it becomes law or even a part of the state constitution with a majority vote of the state. The less populated counties would often vote en masse against progressive measures, but they passed anyway through large majorities from the Kansas City and St. Louis urban areas along with the educated populace of Boone County where the University of Missouri is located.
Now Kehoe wants ot institute a "double majority" system where not only would the state have to approve statewide measures by majority vote, but so would each of the eight congressional districts - thus ensuring that in the future no progressive measures would ever make into the state statutes or the state constitution via the public initiative process.
The special legislative session which will begin next week in Jefferson City is about limiting the powers of Missouri voters, and decimating the powers and representation of black voters living in the state's urban areas. It's a nasty confluence of power-stealing and racism.
I'm old enough to remember when Missouri was run by Missourians. Shame on Donald Trump for trying to step in and run our state, and shame on Mike Kehoe for letting him do it!
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