The Missouri House voted 101-47 this week to approve new Congressional districts that the Senate will now review.
The deadline for the Missouri General Assembly to approve the proposed map is Friday, May 13.
“I’m very happy with what we have so far,” said Rep. Dan Shaul (R-Imperial). “We understand there are some issues with it and some concerns people may have.”
The new districts, if approved by the Senate, are expected to result in six Republicans and two Democrats in the state’s U.S. House delegation, according to media reports.
“There's concern about Phelps County because it's split this time between the 3rd and the 8th Districts and there's a Webster county split,” Shaul told the St. Louis Record. “There are all kinds of thoughts on what people in that area want. There was still some squabbling on what Congressional District 2 (suburban St. Louis) looks like on the very finite portions of the map. Nothing major. I think we're in a good spot but I've thought that before, too.”
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, several state and federal lawsuits have been filed by Republicans and Democrats in an attempt to require the courts to issue a new Congressional map because the legislature had not voted on a new map before the March 29 deadline that Missourians had to declare their Congressional candidacy for the August primary.
“We've been working on it behind the scenes,” Shaul said. “It may appear as though there hasn't been anything going on with them but it’s all documented. The House sent the first map to the Senate in the middle of January. The Senate worked hard on it as well. This has been a strange year. The budget has taken a lot of time. The maps have taken time and typically it's backloaded on the session anyway. We're seeing movement now because it is our constitutional obligation. We have until Friday at 6 p.m. to get this done and I feel fairly confident that we'll get to a compromise that we can all live with.”
Shaul called the constitutional challenges "outside of the building.
“We're certainly aware of them," he said. "We are working as hard as we can to get this resolved so that the lawsuits are moot. I can't control those lawsuits. I can only control what we're doing internally to try to get to a map that's constitutional and one that will garner enough support in both the House and Senate and deliver it to the governor's desk for his signature.”