An internal review of the new map, conducted last month by the Missouri Office of Administration, shows that the 5th District will see an 8.5% increase in white residents and a 9.1% decrease in minority residents, the largest demographic change of any district in the new map.
Some Kansas City residents have long framed the map as a brazen attempt to split up Kansas City’s minority voters. But the review, obtained by The Star, provides the most detailed information about how it carves minority voters out of the 5th District, currently represented by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat.
“That’s a dilution of the voting strength of African Americans in that district,” said Graham, who is Black and will now live in the 4th District. “And that’s just wrong.”
Missouri lawmakers approved the map over the summer under pressure from President Donald Trump, who urged Republican states to redraw their districts mid-decade ahead of the 2026 election. The goal was to force Cleaver out of office and allow a Republican to pick up his seat.
The map has already faced fierce pushback from some Kansas City residents, who point to the fact that lawmakers used Troost Avenue, a historic symbol of segregation in Kansas City, as the dividing line between the 4th and 5th Districts.
When asked whether Kehoe was concerned about how the map carved minority voters out of the 5th District, the governor’s spokesperson said the map “meets the Constitutional requirements of population equality and contiguousness.”
In response to criticism about the map’s use of Troost Avenue as a dividing line, spokesperson Gabby Picard emphasized that the street was also used as a dividing line between two Missouri Senate districts in Kansas City. State Senate districts are drawn by an independent commission, not lawmakers.
One Republican state senator went a step further in an interview with The Star and said the focus of Missouri’s redistricting plan was partisan, not racial.
“We’re not going to do this to disenfranchise Blacks,” said Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a Lee’s Summit Republican. “We are doing it to defeat Democrats who, as far as I know, are not a protected class.”
Voting Rights
Wanda Shafer was overwhelmed with grief over the weekend when she returned to Kansas City after a week-long bus trip.
It was a civil rights tour organized by a local church — a pilgrimage across the southern U.S. that highlighted the importance of voting rights and the historic struggles of Black Americans.
Contacted by The Star on Tuesday, Shafer, who is Black, was still processing her emotional experiences in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. She spoke of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Emmett Till, Selma and the National Civil Rights Museum.
Back at home in Kansas City, Shafer drew parallels between the fight over civil rights and Missouri’s redistricting battle.
“It’s the same demon,” said Shafer, who lives in the Troostwood neighborhood about two blocks away from Troost Avenue. “Just a new manifestation of that same evil and hunger and thirst for power and fear of losing that power.”
Unlike Graham, Shafer’s home will not be carved into a new congressional district under the new map. But she will soon share the same congressperson as people living hours away in central Missouri and she views the map as an example of racial gerrymandering.
“You’re not killing me,” said Shafer. “You’re not hanging me from a tree, but you’re killing my vote. You’re making it not count.”
Carving up Kansas City
Missouri’s review of the map was based on racial and partisanship data from the 2020 presidential election. That data, reviewed by The Star, shows that the new 5th District will have a 4.8% decrease in Black residents, 2.7% decrease in Hispanic residents, 1.3% decrease in Asian residents and a 2.4% decrease in residents who identify as “other” or more than one race.
In total, the 5th District will have lost more than 70,000 minority residents under the new map. The district’s minority resident population will fall from 324,132 to 253,964, according to Missouri’s data.
No other district in the state is poised to have such a sharp decrease in the percentage of minority residents and an increase in white residents. It’s unclear, exactly, which districts those Kansas City-area voters will be split into, but the 6th District will see a 4.5% increase in minority residents.
Missouri’s new GOP-dominant congressional districts
Missouri Republican lawmakers approved a gerrymandered congressional map that carves up Kansas City. The move came under pressure from President Donald Trump.
The new map faces a series of court challenges from organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri and the Missouri chapter of the NAACP. At the same time, a group called People Not Politicians launched a signature-gathering campaign to try to force a statewide vote that would strike down the map.
Many individuals and groups have sharply criticized lawmakers for splitting the Kansas City area into three Republican-leaning districts, with some framing the move as racially motivated. But most of the legal challenges largely center on arguments that lawmakers do not have the power to redistrict mid-decade.
Republican lawmakers focused most of their attention on gerrymandering Kansas City, as opposed to the state’s other blue-leaning hub in St. Louis. That was mainly due to the belief that splitting up Kansas City was less likely to run into a civil rights challenge.
The 1st District in St. Louis is likely protected from “discriminatory” changes by the federal Voting Rights Act because it is a majority-minority district in which a racial minority group constitutes a majority of the voting-age population.
The landmark Civil Rights era law prohibits “voting practices that result in citizens being denied equal access to the political process on account of race.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Black voters make up the majority of voters who identify as one race in the 1st District, which could make it difficult for a gerrymandering attempt to withstand a legal challenge. Meanwhile, white voters make up a majority of one-race voters in the 5th District.
The debate over racial gerrymandering also comes as the future of the Voting Rights Act could be in peril. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to weaken a section of the law that created majority-minority districts, a momentous decision that could plunge the nation into a broader redistricting frenzy.
Cierpiot, the Republican state senator, said on Tuesday that he supported getting rid of the federal law.
“I don’t think the Voting Rights Act is needed anymore, because there’s Blacks elected all across the country,” said Cierpiot, who claimed that Democrats have historically disenfranchised Black voters. “I think it should be left to the states to do this. And I think the Voting Rights Act served its purpose, but I think those days are long gone.”
Rep. Michael Johnson, a Kansas City Democrat who chairs the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus, said that Cierpiot’s claim about Democrats and Black voters followed a trend by Republicans and Trump to try to shift blame for certain policies onto Democrats.
“It’s the lamest form of reverse psychology that I’ve ever seen,” Johnson said. For Graham, who is now tangled up in a nationwide redistricting fight led by Trump, the fact that minority voters are being carved out of his district only confirmed what he knew to be true about the effects of Missouri’s new map.
“It’s just plain wrong,” he said. “That’s the only thing I can say.”
Read the original at: https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article312675537.html