Missouri GOPers in ‘Full-Blown Tantrum’ Over Ballot Measure to Block GOP Gerrymander

People Not Politicians Missouri, the group behind a ballot measure that would let voters veto the GOP-controlled legislature’s new gerrymandered congressional map, is laughing off a federal lawsuit filed to block their efforts. 

“The whole thing’s outrageous,” said Chuck Hatfield, a lawyer for the group, on a press call Thursday. “We have state officials in a full blown tantrum about the right of the people to overrule these congressional districts, which the people are guaranteed in the Constitution.”

Missouri Republicans gave in to pressure from President Donald Trump to redraw the congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in September. The new map splits apart Black neighborhoods in Kansas City into two safe Republican districts to give the GOP a 7-1 advantage in the state’s U.S. House delegation. 

Voting advocates have filed lawsuits challenging the legality of the new maps and the process under which they were drawn. People Not Politicians Missouri has also pursued a different strategy, gathering more than 100,000 signatures to place a referendum on the ballot to block the gerrymander.

The Missouri constitution provides that “the people… reserve power to approve or reject by referendum any act of the general assembly.”

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) sued on behalf of the State of Missouri, its General Assembly, and Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) Wednesday, arguing that the referendum violates the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which “uniquely bestows on state legislatures the power to set the times, places, and manner of federal elections, including reapportionment authority.”

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a version of that argument, known as the Independent State Legislature Theory, in 2023.

As People Not Politicians Missouri Executive Director Richard von Glahn noted on the call, Missouri voters used the referenda process to reject a congressional redistricting a century ago. 

“In her lawsuit yesterday, the Attorney General wrote that quote, ‘no history in Missouri supports the Defendants’ efforts,’ for a referendum on a congressional map,” von Glahn said. “I would strongly encourage her to research what happened in 1922.”

The lawsuit wasn’t the first attempt by GOP officials in Missouri to erect roadblocks before the referendum. Hoskins and Hanaway previously rejected the petition on the grounds that it was filed prematurely, before the gerrymander had been signed into law. People Not Politicians sued in response, and that case remains ongoing — even though the underlying objection appeared to be resolved Wednesday, when Hoskins announced he had approved the referendum petition. 

Hoskins, however, also placed a new hurdle in its path by claiming any signatures gathered before his approval were invalid and constituted a “misdemeanor election offense.” 

“That is ridiculous,” Hatfield said. “I sent two emails and left two voicemails with the secretary of state’s deputy general counsel, saying, ‘tell me what statute would make it a crime, and I will advise my client accordingly.’ [I got] no response, because there is no such statute.”

In a press release announcing the lawsuit, Hanaway — who was appointed attorney general by Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) just one month before Kehoe signed the rushed gerrymander into law — described People Not Politicians Missouri as an “out-of-state dark money group” trying to “gain a partisan advantage in Congress.”

“It’s pretty rich that they bring up possible out of state money when it’s clear as a bell that this map was drawn in D.C.,” Hatfield responded on Thursday. “No Missourian drew this map. So, I find it just outrageous that now they’re complaining about whether Missourians are involved in this process.”

Court filings in People Not Politicians’ lawsuit suggest that the Gov. Kehoe’s office did not draft the new maps themselves. According to reports from the Missouri Independent, Adam Kincaid — the director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust and drafter of the Texas mid-decade gerrymander — Kincaid wrote a memo used by the lawmaker who sponsored Missouri’s new maps.

Asked by the Independent whether he had a role in drawing Missouri’s map. Kincaid declined to say.

“I am going to defer to the governor’s office and the AG’s office on that,” he said.

There are four other ongoing lawsuits challenging Missouri’s mid-decade gerrymander.