Missouri General Assembly

We on the Heartland Labor Forum always invite all candidates in a race that we are covering and welcome them to participate.

Tonight, we're very pleased to have as our guest, Representative Keri Ingle, who currently represents District 35 and the Missouri General Assembly.

Representative Ingle was elected to her first term in November of 2018 and is running for Missouri Senate in District 8.

She earned a BA in criminal justice from the University of Central Oklahoma and a master's in social work from the University of Kansas.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you.

Uh, the next question is, what are the most important issues that you want to work on in the Missouri General Assembly? And in this one, we'll start with Sean.

Yeah, so, um, I would say my signature issue as a county legislator has been the property tax issues.

But I really do believe Missouri would benefit by having a, uh, person in the majority that has been able to navigate the issues in the way that I have and work with people on both sides of the aisle and really represent the district really well.

well.I am old enough to remember when the Eighth Senatorial District was not competitive from a partisan standpoint, and people like Matt Bartle, who was probably, like, the most conservative legislator in the Missouri General Assembly, won with 65% of the vote.

But that has obviously changed because Blue Springs and Lee's Summit have become much more Democratic in the Donald Trump era.

Do you have any concerns that you could do literally everything right in this campaign and run a flawless ground game and you could still lose if the national environment is disastrous for Republicans?

Yeah.

And for our listeners, um, former Representative Avery was in the Missouri General Assembly between, I think, 2005 and 2009.

I'm not sure if he resigned early to do the Board of Mediation.

Um, but I just gotta be really blunt, that was, like, a lifetime ago-

Here's how it starts.

In 2022, the Missouri Legislature enacted a redistricting map for elections to the US House.

In 2025, the Missouri Legislature enacted a new map.

But, big but here, under the Missouri Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court of Missouri, the Supreme Court of the United States says a new law such as the 2025 map does not take effect unless and until it's approved by the voters in a referendum in the next election, at least where here 300,000 people have signed the petition.

Therefore, on September 3rd, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the 2025 map is not the law, has never been the law, and will not take effect unless and until approved by the voters in the 2026 midterm election.

on application for stay, decided September 25, 2026.

Procurium In 2022, the Missouri Legislature enacted a redistricting map for elections to the United States House of Representatives.

In 2025, the Missouri Legislature enacted a new map, but under the Missouri Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court of Missouri, a new law such as the 2025 map does not take effect unless and until approved by voters in a referendum in the next election.

at least where, as here, the number of voter signatures on the petition suffices to trigger a referendum.

Therefore, on September 3, 2026, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the 2025 redistricting map is not the law and has never been the law in Missouri, and will not take effect unless and until approved by Missouri voters by referendum in the 2026 election.

Yeah.

Yeah, so back in 2025, not even this year, over a year ago now, Governor Mike Kehoe here in Missouri called a special session of the Missouri General Assembly for the express purpose of mid-decade redistricting.

That occurred in September of 2025.

And I think it's important to note that the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities sent a letter to the governor and legislators laying out some of the timeline concerns about congressional redistricting and when things would have to be decided and put into place so we wouldn't run into any election administration hurdles.

The saga continues, at least for today, regarding the 2025 congressional map and what boundaries, actually the 2026 congressional map, and what boundaries will be used in the November election.

The Eighth Circuit now has backed the Missouri General Assembly's 2025 redrawn map.

This overturns, at least for the time being, the Missouri Supreme Court's decision after the August primary to return to the 2022 map.

That decision... led to all kinds of issues regarding changing the ballot.