Good Gosh! I Could Have a Republican Congressman

About a dozen or so years ago, I heard on the news that Missouri state Rep. Jeremy Lafaver was busted during a traffic stop for possession of marijuana and a pipe to smoke it in. On hearing the report, I wondered who would have voted this clown into office. Turns out it was my neighbors. Lafaver was my rep! When he refused to step down, I was sure my neighbors would vote him out. Nope. He ran for election and won again.

So thoroughly Democratic is my Midtown district that I had stopped paying attention to local elections—this, despite the fact that I have managed the media in any number of local and state elections, more for Democrats than not.

My neighborhood had grown too predictable for me to care. No one I voted for ever won, never even came close. If I ever chose to run for office, I would have had to start at the statewide level to have any chance of winning. I could not have carried my block.

A House seat was definitely out of the question. Democrats have owned the 5th Congressional District for 77 years. For the past 20 years, the Rev. Emanuel Cleaver has held the seat like a birthright. For the last 10 or so of those years, every ambitious Democrat not named Jeremy Lafaver has been scrambling as cunningly as Rupert Murdoch’s kids to replace their aging patriarch.

And why not? With the nomination secured, a Democratic candidate would have expected to hold the seat for another 20 years without even breaking a sweat. Cleaver never did. He won his first congressional election by 13 points and his most recent by 24. Eight of those times, he beat the same candidate, Jacob Turk, who ran as reflexively as a lemming runs to the sea…and with comparable results.

Cleaver has already filed to run again, but the queue of would-be successors has grown considerably shorter. From the Democratic perspective, the seat has lost about 90 percent of its market value.

The reason for the market crash is no secret. The Missouri House and Senate passed a new redistricting plan, and Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the bill into law in September. The “Missouri First Map,” as it is called, leaves two of the state’s eight congressional districts intact and unseats no incumbent, but it clearly targets Missouri’s 5th District.

For the past several cycles, Republicans have controlled six of Missouri’s eight congressional seats, conceding the St. Louis and Kansas City areas to the Democrats. Now they want KC back.

Cleaver will be running in a district that has run away from him. No longer snug in his friendly urban cocoon, Cleaver will have to campaign in a gerrymandered district that stretches through Republican countryside east to Columbia.

Democrats have called the redistricting plan an illegal, unconstitutional “power grab.” Said House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, the new map “marks the worst threat to the integrity of our state government since pro-slavery lawmakers voted for Missouri to join the Confederacy in 1861.” 

Hyperbole only works for those who know their history. Aune neglected to say that those “pro-slavery lawmakers” were all Democrats. 

In 1861, when Missouri’s Democratic governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, failed to persuade the legislature to vote for secession, he formed a rump government that the Confederate Congress welcomed home like the Prodigal Son. In November 1861, the Confederacy admitted Jackson’s Missouri as the 12th state, a status that endured until Jackson and his government were driven into exile.   

Yes, the Missouri First Map represents something of a “power grab,” but nothing could be more American or more constitutional. The practice got its name in 1812 when Massachusetts governor—and future vice-president—Elbridge Gerry signed a bill to carve out a partisan district in the Boston area. 

With good reason, critics said the new district looked like a salamander. Some disgruntled wag fused “salamander” and “Gerry” to give us the colorful portmanteau word “gerrymander,” and we’ve been busy gerrymandering ever since.

The new 5th District looks less like a salamander than an aardvark with its little head resting in eastern Jackson County and its bulky body sprawling eastward. Other than for a slim, suspicious Kansas City slice along the State Line, the new 4th District unfolds shapelessly southeast. 

For all the outrage directed their way, Republicans are rank amateurs when it comes to the gerrymander racket. Democrats in New England, the birthplace of the gerrymander, have never abandoned the practice. Just look at the numbers. 

The six states in that region have a combined 21 congressional seats. In 2024, Republican candidate Donald Trump secured roughly 40 percent of the popular vote in New England, but as of now, New England’s 15 or so million people have zero Republican reps in Congress. This did not happen by accident.

 In Missouri, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris also netted 40 percent of the popular vote in 2024, but as of now, Missouri’s 6 million-plus people have two Democratic reps out of the eight in the House, with both Senate seats held by the GOP. So it cuts both ways.

Stubborn as their trademark jackass—a symbol the since-disowned President Andrew Jackson first adopted—the Democrats continue their fight to hold onto the seat. Activists will likely succeed in their petition drive to put the Missouri First Map on the ballot. It is unlikely, however, that they will succeed in time to change the line-up for the 2026 election. Four Republicans have already filed for Cleaver’s seat and have begun fundraising. 

Even if the Democrats succeed in getting the measure before the people, it will not be an easy sell to convince the voters in a state Trump won by 18 points that they would rather have six GOP reps in Congress than seven.

As for me, I could have my first Republican congressman ever, most likely former WSAF-TV anchor Mark Alford, the current congressman from Missouri’s 4th District. I didn’t move, but rumor has it I just got traded to Alford’s district for a draft pick to be named later.

PUBLISHED MARCH 2026