Missouri governor signs new congressional map into law

Michael Macagnone, CQ-Roll Call on Sep 28, 2025

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Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the state’s new congressional map into law Sunday, splitting up the Kansas City-area district currently held by one of the state’s two Democratic House members.

The Show-Me State joins a handful of states nationwide that have either drawn new maps or are in the process of redrawing congressional lines. Missouri currently has eight House districts, six of which are held by Republicans.

“Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government, and the Missouri First Map delivers just that,” Kehoe, a Republican, said in a news release announcing his intention to sign the bill.

Missouri’s new map carves up the Kansas City-area 5th District currently held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver II. It adds rural areas currently represented by Republican Reps. Bob Onder and Mark Alford to Cleaver’s district and shuffles other areas throughout the state.

Earlier this month the state’s House and Senate passed the new map in a special session called by Kehoe, joining Texas and California in a new wave of partisan-fueled redistricting started by President Donald Trump.

Ohio is also in the midst of another redistricting process, and Trump administration officials have pushed other Republican-controlled states to redraw their maps for political advantage.

Democrats have criticized the mid-decade redistricting push as a partisan power grab.

While the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature was able to pass the new map, it fell short of a threshold required to keep it from being vulnerable to a challenge by ballot initiative.

The advocacy organization People not Politicians Missouri has started a ballot initiative process to override the new map under the state’s constitution. The group has until December to collect signatures for the initiative.

Voters have also challenged the map in state court, arguing that it would violate the state constitution, which only allows redistricting once per decade.

Cleaver has said he is running for reelection and called the redrawn map “monumentally unpopular” during a news conference in Washington this month. In a social media post about a news story on the racial implications of the new map, the Democrat said Missourians “will not be silenced. We’ll continue to stand up and speak out.”

With tight recent elections for control of the House — decided by 10 or fewer seats in the past three cycles —redistricting will likely play a role in who wins the majority next year.