Welcome to the new Star Politics newsletter

Daniel Desrochers
·6 min read

Hello and welcome to the launch of The Kansas City Star’s revamped political newsletter. I’m Daniel Desrochers, the Star’s Washington, D.C. correspondent.

Each week, I’ll try to catch you up on the national, state and local political news in Kansas and Missouri. Sometimes that will mean original reporting, other times it’ll mean a step-back on something that’s been in the news. But it will always be an effort to help you better understand what the politicians are up to and how it affects you.

So here goes...

A tale of two maps

Every 10 years, members of the legislature in Kansas and Missouri get to redraw congressional (and legislative) boundaries to ensure that the population in each district is as close to the same as possible. This is in accordance with one of the foundational principles of American democracy — one person, one vote.

And every 10 years, the politicians who draw the maps attempt to manipulate district lines for their political benefit.

The new maps proposed in Kansas and Missouri show the different ways that elected officials can go about drawing them to their party’s advantage — either by packing or splitting the districts.

In Kansas, the newly proposed map splits up the sole Democratic district in the state. It takes away a chunk of Democratic voters in northern Wyandotte County and adds a bunch of Republican voters south of Johnson County from Miami, Franklin and Anderson Counties, making the Third Congressional District less diverse in the process.

While the district still likely leans Democratic, it makes it more competitive for Republicans in a year when the political momentum might be in their favor.

The new map also redraws the First and Second Congressional districts. The second picks up the Democrats from Wyandotte County but sheds Democrats in Lawrence, keeping both seats safely Republican instead of making them more competitive.

In Missouri, the opposite happened.

Instead of splitting the state’s two Democratic districts to create a 7-1 map like some Republican members hoped, the GOP kept the makeup at 6-2 and packed big pockets of St. Louis and Kansas City Democrats into their own districts.

If they had gone with a 7-1 map, Republicans ran the risk of making several districts more competitive over time, because they would be adding more Democratic voters to districts controlled by Republicans. The new map keeps every current member of Missouri’s Congressional delegation relatively safe – the site FiveThirtyEight says none of the eight districts would have a partisan lean within 5 percentage points, which is where it stands currently.

For background, here’s Jonathan Shorman’s deep dive into the Kansas redistricting process and an article about the debate on how to redraw Missouri’s districts from back in October.

More from Missouri:

The Missouri House of Representatives approved a new Congressional map but didn’t include an emergency clause. If the bill passes without one, that means the map wouldn’t go into effect until after the August 2 primary, creating confusion.

Here are headlines from across the state:

And across Kansas:

The Kansas legislature introduced their proposed Congressional districts. It splits up the Kansas City, Kansas, suburbs. Here are a few must-read stories:

The latest from Kansas City:

In Kansas City....

Have a news tip? Send it along to ddesrochers@mcclatchydc.com.

Odds and ends

Morongate

Eager to capitalize on the attention from last week’s spat with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall’s campaign is selling $29 t-shirts that say “Moron” underneath a picture of Fauci. We won’t have a clear picture of how much Marshall was able to raise after Fauci’s insult until his April campaign finance report.

Marshall also went on former President Donald Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast on Tuesday and accused Fauci of being part of “the Deep State,” which he said “he’s learning so much about” and continued his crusade against gain of function research.

Where’s Batman?

An emergency alert went out Tuesday evening warning that there was a purple and green Dodge was on the loose in non-existent Gotham, Missouri. The Missouri State Highway Patrol said it was a mistake (clearly was intended for Batman).

A salamander?

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes took issue with the Republican proposed Congressional map Tuesday, saying she felt like the new Second District looked like a salamander. It’s likely a historical reference to the original gerrymander of a Boston district signed by then Governor Elbridge Gerry, which was criticized for looking like a salamander (gerrymander comes from a combination of Gerry and salamander). Still, I don’t see it.

The Long Way

Former Missouri Rep. Lacy Clay, a Democrat, donated $1,000 to Missouri Rep. Billy Long’s U.S. Senate campaign, according to the reports he has to file as a lobbyist. Long also put out an ad this week talking about how he was one of the first to support former President Donald Trump and falsely claimed Biden stole the 2020 Presidential election.

Happy Friday

Here’s an article about Biden’s first year in office (he hit the one year mark Thursday). This week, I learned about the “perfect Manhattan” (which is not just a well-made Manhattan). Here’s a song for the road.

Enjoy your weekend.

Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent
Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent

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