Everyone has an opinion about the current redistricting orders sent from Washington a few weeks ago.
I have a modern-day bold take myself: I can see both sides.
There are a couple facts about the whole deal that I really don’t think a fair Missourian can dispute.
President Donald Trump is wildly popular in this state. He won the state in three landslides, and as he told the republican senate caucus, if he could run for a fourth he would win again…in a landslide.
I understand that a swath of Missourians hate Trump. If you live on The Plaza, or the Central West End you live your entire life and literally never see anyone who doesn’t hate Trump. However, I have news for you. You’re the minority, and a fairly small minority at that.
I have another unfortunate fact for you. The suburban people that laugh at your Trump jokes, and might even like a few of your anti-Trump Facebook posts…they voted for Trump too. It’s just math.
You can wear your pussy hat, and stand on overpasses calling Trump Hitler, and tweet from your protests, but the simple undeniable fact is that 3 times in the last 9 years Missourians have voted, and the results were that Missourians love Donald Trump.
Another hard to quarrel with fact is that Governor Kehoe was in an undeniably awful spot. Personally, I believe he is one of the best men to ever hold the office of Governor of Missouri . He actually cares about accomplishing things for the state, and that is what people can hold over his head.
To be perfectly candid, I honestly don’t believe he was really fired up to do this. I covered last year’s gubernatorial race pretty closely, and I never once heard Mike Kehoe talk about a 7-1 map. Not at one bus tour stop, not at one speech, not even in casual conversation. Not once.
Now do I believe him when he says he ultimately supports this? Sure. There is a very logical reason for Republicans to draw screwy maps like this: It’s perfectly reasonable for the Republicans to draw gerrymandered corrupt maps because the Democrats have drawn far far more gerrymandered and corrupt maps.
If you think this map is somehow gerrymandered, but you don’t think the Illinois map is wildly and incredibly more gerrymandered, then I simply do not see you as a serious person.
However, what is Governor Kehoe supposed to do when an overwhelmingly popular President of the United States calls and asks for something that is in his power to do?
Every single politician I’ve ever covered placed in the same situation would do the exact same thing Governor Kehoe did. Republican or Democrat, urban or rural, all of them would do this. Every. Single. One.
Another one of those pesky facts is that losing Congressman Cleaver will hurt Missouri. To be honest nothing Congress votes on really matters. They don’t really do anything that impacts anyone except spend money the money they take from you.
Missourians are taxed beyond belief and if you’re in Congress and your first and only job isn’t to get that money returned to Missouri you should wear a ski mask to work because your salary is robbing your folks.
Like I said, if this was a plan to end the district of former Congresswoman Cori Bush it wouldn’t have any impact. I’m not sure her goal was to ever accomplish anything for the state, and to be fair she succeeded in accomplishing nothing for the state.
However, there will be an impact to everyday Missourians for losing Congressman Cleaver. There will be a Democrat president again, maybe in three years, maybe seven, but it will come.
When it does, it really matters to have a respected serious Democrat to call the White House on behalf of Missouri. Congressman Graves can’t do the work for the entire state on his own, especially in a Democratic administration.
The truth is the bureaucrats in Washington have the same disdain for Missourians that the Republicans in Washington do. They are liberal beyond woke and they want to spend every dime of Missourians tax dollars in Boston, and New York, and San Francisco.
They would never ever spend a nickel in Barry County, or New Madrid, or St. Clair County.
That’s why I was so proud to have Congressman Onder in central Missouri. He went there and right away started fighting for Missouri. He would kick the door in of the offices of the bureaucracy and grab one of those Starbucks drinking, Prius driving, purple haired freaks in the bureaucracy by the neck and choke them with his bare hands until they agreed to return some of those tax dollars to Pike County.
That is the only real job of a member of Congress, and that job just got a lot harder without Congressman Cleaver. But this map wasn’t drawn caring about anyone in Pike County, it was done to kiss ass to folks on the Potomac.
Now should Governor Kehoe have said that his staff drew the map? Well if Mike Kehoe says his staff drew the map then I believe him. He has never lied to me, hell I’ve never heard of him lying to anyone, and to be in politics this long that is quite an achievement. However, I do think it’s prolly more technically accurate than common sense accurate.
Like most folks, I believe that this concept was sent down from Washington, and this map was at least primarily drawn in Washington. Hell it was Trump who announced that Missouri was doing this in the first place.
I’ll give you a couple reasons I suspect this wasn’t drawn in Missouri. First the Senate actually purchased a mapping program, and had some folks trained on it. That training happened the afternoon before the map was released…
More obviously, they split Kansas City along Troost. Governor Kehoe knows the cultural significance of Troost, I simply don’t find it believable that Mike Kehoe or Adam Gresham, or Drew Dampf, or Bill Anderson or anyone on the second floor was so uneducated about Missouri to choose to split Kansas City along Troost.
However, people in Washington D.C. do not give a damn about Troost, or Taney County, or Tuscumbia, or anyone in Missouri; we are simply people they view as functionaries they are candidly embarrassed of.
I really think the Republicans should have just leveled with people of the state and said of course this idea was from President Trump, this map was drawn by President Trump, and yes our constituents want us to do every single thing President Trump instructs us to do, AS IS.
Because in all honesty, that is what they want.
I believe in the end it came down to a simple calculation. While I do think Governor Kehoe understands the importance of Congressman Cleaver to the state, there are a lot of really great things Governor Kehoe wants to do for the people of Missouri. Not political things, but real things to improve the lives of the people of this state.
Every one of those things gets much harder to do if President Trump is tweeting at him all day.
I could be wrong, which I usually am, but I believe Governor Kehoe did this thing so he could do all those other things.
Check back tomorrow for Part 2: The Senate Gave Up.
Scott Faughn is the publisher of The Missouri Times, owner of the Clayton Times in Clayton; SEMO Times in Poplar Bluff; and host of the only statewide political television show, This Week in Missouri Politics.
