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Dear Sen. Onder,

Normally this is the time of year when I would write a column mocking much of the legislation proposed by you and the other members of your so-called “conservative caucus.� I use quotes around the phrase because there’s not really anything conservative about legislation that takes civil rights away from transgender children or their families, or leads to book banning or other forms of censorship, or seeks to divide the state based on race, or makes it harder for poor people to access life-saving health care.

But that’s not why I’m writing you today. I’m actually writing to thank you. For the first three months of the legislative session, you’ve accomplished two things that are very important, and I wanted to make sure Missourians give you due credit. First, you’ve brought unprecedented transparency to the redistricting process.

Until this year, redistricting — or gerrymandering, if you will — has been the province of political nerds like me. Every decade, we write about the process of creating maps of new legislative or congressional districts. I have long been an advocate of reforming the process like many states are doing, by taking the work of drawing legislative maps out of the hands of incumbent politicians and their allies, and putting it, instead, in the hands of nonpartisan commissions or mapping experts.

This is what Missouri voters agreed to do for state legislative districts in 2018 when they approved the Clean Missouri initiative. But Republicans such as yourself (and some Democratic incumbents, if truth be told), didn’t like losing that power. So they lied to voters, told them the initiative was nothing but a political power grab by Democrats, even though it had wide, bipartisan support, and put a new referendum on the ballot in 2020 that rescinded the redistricting reform.

The truth about redistricting is that lawmakers of both parties have long talked in public about creating compact and contiguous maps that keep communities of interest together, while, behind the scenes, working to draw maps that protect incumbents, or create opportunities for insiders in the next election.

This year, Sen. Onder, you changed that. You stood on the Senate floor with your caucus colleagues and told the truth: You wanted a 7-1 map, or even an 8-0 one, tilted entirely toward protecting Republicans. It was pure, unbridled partisanship, explaining to your voters, and all Missouri voters, that the redistricting process was about protecting power. That’s how you end up with a 2nd Congressional District — where I live — that takes in most of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, a sliver of St. Charles County, Franklin County, Washington County, St. Francois County, and even northern Iron County. To drive from one end to the other, you have to cut through the new 8th Congressional District in Jefferson County, which will now be represented by the same person who represents the Branson area about 250 miles away in southwest Missouri. It’s ridiculous, of course, but if that’s what it takes to secure Republican votes, then so be it.

I appreciate your honesty. Frankly, I think it will help pass another pro-Democracy ballot initiative that will likely end up before voters in November. Right now, a group of bipartisan supporters, some of the same folks who backed Clean Missouri, are gathering signatures on a petition that, if approved, would allow open primaries in which voters would advance the top four candidates to a general election, regardless of party.

This is a solution to the gerrymandered districts that tend to encourage only the most extreme candidates to survive primary challenges. Lots of independent voters — people like me, who don’t belong to a political party — are left out of the process. But with the Better Elections proposal, if it were to pass, we could vote in the primary for our favorite candidate, and then in the general election, rank the four finalists in order of preference. This will increase involvement in the democratic process.

Similarly, your work in the Senate likely put wind behind the sails of those trying to pass Proposition R in the city of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, where voters in April will be asked to take the power of redistricting away from aldermen and put it with an independent commission. Heck, you might even like that one, as it would be elected Democratic insiders who lose power.

Before I forget, I want to remember to thank you for the second good thing you did. By spending the bulk of the legislative session having an intraparty food fight, you made it significantly less likely that bad legislation becomes law this year. That is a good thing, and actually worthy of the moniker “conservative.�

Some years ago, a conservative Republican in Missouri proposed the idea that for every new law passed, an old one should be rescinded. I’ve always liked that idea. This year, most of the dangerous things proposed by members of your caucus, like the Sen. Eric Burlison bill that some are calling the “make murder legal� bill, have very little chance of passing. There just isn’t enough time.

So, again, thank you for that. You’ve done a service to Missourians.

{p style=�text-align: left;�}Sincerely,

{p style=�text-align: left;�}Tony Messenger