Missouri lawmakers are kicking off a special session on redistricting Wednesday, the latest effort by Republicans to create friendlier congressional districts for their party ahead of next year's midterm elections.
Democrats, like others in GOP-led states pursuing new maps mid-decade, are loudly opposing the move. But there's little they can do to stop it.
Unlike in Texas, where Democrats were able to band together to grind the state House to a halt and delay redistricting attempts, Missouri Democrats lack the numbers needed to mount a similar quorum break. While two-thirds of the Texas Legislature must be in session to conduct business, Missouri’s quorum requirement is a simple majority of members. And Missouri Republicans have about a two-thirds majority in both legislative chambers.
That means that when the Missouri Legislature gavels in for the special session, when Republicans are aiming to carve up the Kansas City seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Democrats won't have any way to delay it.
"We can’t do what Texas did," Missouri state House Minority Leader Ashley Aune said in an interview. "I wish we could."
"There’s literally nothing procedurally, there’s nothing strategically that we can do as Democrats in the super minority to prevent these maps from passing," she said. "That said, we are making them uncomfortable every step of the way."
Doug Beck, the Democratic minority leader in the Missouri state Senate, also said his colleagues would protest and do what they can to delay passage, but they also will definitely be showing up at the state Capitol.
"It doesn’t really matter whether or not [we come]. They can have session without us if we’re not there. So we have to be there," Beck said in an interview. "We’re just gonna fight for the people; the people want us to fight, and whatever that looks like, we’re going to do it."
Democrats are confronting similar legislative realities in two other Republican-led states publicly weighing a mid-decade redistricting effort: Indiana and Florida.
Florida, where both houses of the Legislature are controlled by Republicans, has the same quorum requirement as Missouri — a majority of members. Indiana has a higher threshold of two-thirds, but Republicans clear that bar in both chambers.
Indiana state Rep. Matt Pierce, a Democrat from Bloomington, told NBC News that since Republicans have a supermajority in the state, they're able to establish a quorum on their own and even employ other methods, like suspending the rules on the floor, to pass their agenda more quickly. He added that if Republicans do call a special session, the question will be whether they try to "jam things through," or aim for a more drawn-out process, similar to the decennial redistricting process, out of fear of the political optics.
"They are definitely firmly in control for the procedural aspect of things. The question is: What do they think the public is willing to accept?" Pierce said. "They can come and jam through things very quickly, but I don't think that would be a good look for them."
"It's a situation similar to Texas, but we don't have the ability to call 'time out' by breaking quorum," he added.
Pierce said that without legislative tools at his party's disposal, "it's going to come down to public opinion," both during the legislative process and next year's midterms.
"The biggest Democratic problem in Indiana isn't that the Republicans are popular. It's that turnout is really low. ... If this turns out to make Democrats mad enough that they'll show up to vote, particularly in a midterm, if you've got the 10-15% of people who aren't bothering to vote at all and they get engaged and show up, that could really change the complexion of some of these districts," Pierce said.
"You'd just think if you're going to take a major metropolitan area and basically carve up those Democratic voters and push them into rural districts, you'd create some opportunity for Democrats,” he added.
National Democrats have worked to draw attention to Republicans' mid-decade redistricting pushes.
In a letter to his Democratic colleagues Tuesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., vowed that they “will not rubber stamp partisan Republican legislation” related to government funding," adding that “Trump and House Republicans have spent the last month trying to gerrymander congressional maps as part of their scheme to rig the midterm elections."
"House Democrats will continue to push back forcefully," Jeffries added.
And groups opposed to the new maps in Missouri said they were optimistic about fighting them in court after they're enacted.
Michael Wolf, a former Missouri Supreme Court chief justice who is part of a left-leaning group, People Not Politicians, that has vowed to challenge the new maps in court, said he believed there was a robust argument to be made that lawmakers are constitutionally prohibited from mid-decade redistricting.
"The question here is: Is the timing authorized by the [state] constitution, and I think it is not," Wolf said on a call with reporters.
