KANSAS CITY, Mo. — U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, the Kansas City Democrat whose seat was the main target of a Republican redistricting push, won a 12th term in Congress on Tuesday.
With 99% of precincts counted, Cleaver held 69.5% of the vote in Missouri’s 5th Congressional District. Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin trailed with 28.1%, and Libertarian Randall Langkraehr picked up about 2%.
Cleaver marked the win with supporters at the Crown Center Sheraton downtown, where he told the crowd the country was back and said he looks forward to working with incoming Democrats in Washington.
The race was run on the 2022 congressional map, which keeps every part of the city below the Missouri River inside one district. Republican lawmakers had pushed through a 2025 map that would have divided the city among three districts and paired its Democratic neighborhoods with more conservative areas reaching into central Missouri. Under that plan, the 5th District would have run nearly 200 miles east from Troost Avenue.
After a court fight that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, a petition drive forced the redrawn map onto the ballot as Proposition A, and the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in September that the general election would use the old lines. Missouri voters rejected Proposition A on Tuesday, leaving the 2022 districts in place.
Brattin, a Cass County resident, has held a Missouri Senate seat since 2021 for a district made up of Cass, Johnson and Bates counties, none of which fall inside the 5th District on the 2022 map. He had won the August primary over five other Republicans with an endorsement from President Donald Trump.
Cleaver first won his House seat in 2004. He served as Kansas City’s first Black mayor from 1991 to 1999 and chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 2011 to 2013.
Section: More Kansas City MO politics news
Filed under: Kansas City MO Politics News
