COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wants the state legislature to adopt a new Congressional map with an additional Republican district, which could mean drawing Rep. Emanuel Cleaver out of his seat.
"The biggest question there is whether Missouri will stay a 6-2 state, with six Republican districts and two Democrat districts, or whether they will go 7-1," Ashcroft said at a Jefferson City Rotary Breakfast Club event on Wednesday, according to the Jefferson City News Tribune. "If we were 7-1, I think that would probably do a better job of actually representing who the people of Missouri are in Washington, D.C."
The redrawing of the Congressional map, which is going forward on a delayed schedule after the late reporting of 2020 Census results, will be one of the Republican-controlled General Assembly's top priorities in the legislative session that begins January.
Nationally, the results of each state's redistricting process could determine control of the U.S. House, where Democrats currently hold a narrow majority.
Democrats have been concerned about a scenario in which portions of Kansas City would be shifted out of Cleaver's 5th District to make it more competitive for a Republican candidate. Cleaver, who was Kansas City's first Black mayor, has represented the 5th since 2005.
Population changes will probably necessitate a redrawing of Missouri's other Democratic district — Rep. Cori Bush's — by expansion into the white St. Louis suburbs. But the Black population in the majority-minority 1st District is likely protected from dilution by the federal Voting Rights Act.
Lawmakers overseeing redistricting have demurred on the possibility so far. Some Republicans have warned that the addition of Democratic Kansas City-area voters into other Congressional districts would make them less favorable for the GOP over the next decade.
Ashcroft is the state's chief election official but he does not play a direct role in redistricting. The map ultimately approved by lawmakers will require the governor's signature like any other bill. But on Wednesday he used the example of his own election to justify increasing Republicans' hold on Missouri House seats, the News Tribune reported.
"Just looking at my own position, I won statewide by 25 percentage points, which makes me say that it seems to me Missouri is a pretty Republican state," he said.
Ashcroft won his 2020 election with 60% of the vote, compared with 36% for the Democratic challenger, Yinka Faleti. By contrast, seven out of eight Congressional seats would mean Republicans represent about 87% of Missouri's population in Congress.
"The secretary supports the 7-1 map because he believes it would better represent the current voting population of the state," Ashcroft's spokesman JoDonn Chaney said Friday. "Based on voting data from his recent reelection and from other races, Secretary Ashcroft believes that Missourians, over the last few decades, have made a definitive shift to traditional, conservative values aligning themselves more with Republican ideology."
The secretary of state is making a renewed push for a package of more restrictive changes to voter ID and initiative-petition laws ahead of the next legislative session. Those proposals were heavily backed by Missouri House Republicans this year but fell victim to infighting in the state Senate.
In September, he called for the General Assembly to bar local elections officials from "curing," or helping voters correct mistakes on ballots, which could prevent votes from being counted.
Among the most prominent proposals is legislation to raise the thresholds of signatures and votes required for Missourians to directly pass changes to the state constitution, bypassing the legislature. Republican lawmakers have taken aim at the initiative process after a recent slew of Democrat-backed legislation passed by ballot measure, including minimum wage hikes and the expansion of Medicaid.
"The idea of a hyper-direct democracy concerns me," Ashcroft said. "And it's not because I don't believe that the people should be involved. It's because I believe that our rights come from God."
