Joel Brennan was taking a break from his shift at a Sheboygan County Dairy Breakfast on a sunny Saturday morning in June. Outside the sprawling barn where he’d  been handing out sausages to hungry customers, he met up with Rosemary Verheyen.

A Wisconsin native who moved back to the state after spending most of her career in California, Verheyen, 66, had looked up Brennan’s campaign for governor on Facebook — part of a personal project to meet all the candidates before casting her ballot.

She sent Brennan a direct message asking for a chance to meet him in person. She got a reply the same day and learned about his upcoming dairy breakfast gig.

Verheyen and Brennan talked for 10 or 15 minutes. Brennan asked her about the younger generation in her extended family and what concerns were on her mind. The talk turned to housing, and Verheyen explained she owns a mobile home but has to rent the lot where she keeps it.

“My rent goes up by more than my Social Security does every year,” she said. In California, she explained, state law caps how much rental mobile home lots can increase their rental costs annually — but not in Wisconsin.

At the end of their conversation, she took a selfie with Brennan.

“You should keep after me when I get elected,” he told her with a smile. “I will!” Verheyen replied cheerfully.

Recalling their conversation a few weeks later, Verheyen told the Examiner that Brennan had impressed her right away. “He looked me right in the eye when he said ‘hello,’” she said. “So that right there made me feel like, oh, my gosh, he actually can see me. Because if I can’t be seen, how can I be helped, right?”

An outlier in the race

Joel Brennan is counting on moments — and impressions — like that one as he pursues the Democratic Party nomination in the 2026 election for governor. Among the five remaining hopefuls in the field, he’s something of an outlier — the only one who is not either a current or former elected official.

Brennan, 56, served as Department of Administration secretary for the first three years of Gov. Tony Evers’ eight-year tenure, then left to become executive director of the Greater Milwaukee Committee. He’s currently taking an unpaid leave from the civic group made up of business and nonprofit leaders.

As an Evers cabinet member Brennan was very much in the background. That’s a political disadvantage when it comes to name recognition, a baseline asset for anyone running for office.

“That’s my biggest challenge, simply that I am not well known enough,” Brennan says. To overcome that, he adds, “It’s shoe leather and trying to organize around the state.”

Although he entered the race in early December, months after most of the other Democratic hopefuls, a campaign finance report filed in mid-January showed that he had already raised more than $500,000. He decided to spend money on early advertising to introduce himself to the public.

“I got in the race late, but I was able to get general parity with the rest of the field, who had three months to raise money, and I had just a couple weeks,” Brennan says. “That is a demonstration, I think, of some of the support that I had, and the network that I’ve got around the state, and I’m leaning into that.”

When he tells people he meets at campaign events and meet-and-greet sessions why he’s running and “the path that I want to lay forward for Wisconsin,” Brennan says, he gets a positive reception. “I think that truly undecided minds — I win more of them than I don’t.”

Policy laundry list

Brennan’s  policy positions  overlap those of most of his rivals. His campaign website issues section has at least as many provisions and goes into at least as much detail as any of the others. It includes break-out sections on healthcare, housing and  democracy, as well as proposals addressing property taxes, education, the environment and other topics.

The website includes general assurances about “How we pay for it,” pointing out that some of his proposals will save taxpayers money, advocating for closing tax loopholes, requiring community benefit agreements for data centers and assessing the sources of pollution for the cost of cleanup.  

Although they may differ on some details, he and the four other Democrats in the race have all called for restoring public employees’ collective bargaining rights, repealing other laws passed during former Gov. Scott Walker’s two terms that weakened labor unions, and passing budgets that increase funding for public schools and reduce school districts’ dependence on property taxes.

Brennan endorses a paid medical and family leave program funded through employer and employee contributions, a free school lunch program, and measures reducing childcare costs for families while bolstering childcare providers’ resources.

He has publicly criticized the Trump administration on tariffs, healthcare cuts, other federal program cuts and abuses by federal immigration officers. Yet Brennan’s approach is less pugilistic than that of some of the other Democrats. “Joel doesn’t wake up looking for a fight,” his website states. “There’s a difference between fighting and getting something done. Joel intends to do both.”

Emphasizing experience, competence

For all his policy specifics, Brennan rests the case for his candidacy on a three-decade-plus history of executive jobs in government and nonprofits — both for the experience he has gained and the connections he has forged.

“I grew up in a large family, and relationships were absolutely central to that, and they’ve been central to every part of my career,” Brennan says.

Brennan was born in the Milwaukee suburbs, the second youngest of 11 children. He grew up there and in the city and graduated from Marquette University, where he majored in English literature and political science. Brennan interned for a Massachusetts member of Congress one summer, and served on the staff of U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett before working in public affairs at Miller Brewing Co. and then at the Greater Milwaukee Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Brennan has also been a behind-the-scenes political insider. He managed two Barrett campaigns — for governor in 2002 (Barrett lost the primary) and mayor in 2004. After Barrett won that race, Brennan worked in the Milwaukee redevelopment authority during Barrett’s first three years as mayor.

Before joining the Evers administration, Brennan was CEO at Discovery World, a Milwaukee museum and education center for science and technology.

In his campaign trips around Wisconsin, Brennan has earned “some credibility because of the company I keep,” he says. “Those people who have been supportive and been part of my career — I’ve got to demonstrate to them that I can do the job, and they want to kick the tires on me, but those are opportunities that I’ve gotten because of some of the relationships that I’ve developed and I’ve cultivated over the course of my career, in the course of my life.”

When Barrett ran for governor in 2010 against Scott Walker, then the Milwaukee County executive, Brennan was drafted to play Walker in debate rehearsals. He repeated that role with Barrett in the 2012 recall election and again for Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate who challenged Walker for reelection in 2014.

The Democrats nominated Evers to run against Walker, seeking a third term, in 2018, and Brennan was asked if he’d do a repeat performance as the Republican governor.

“I said, ‘Great, I’ll be happy to do it again, but we’ve lost the last three times I’ve done this,’” he recalls. Despite his demurrals, “they wanted me to do it again,” he says. “My job was to toughen him up for the debate prep with Scott.” When Evers won the election, he says, “I was thrilled.”

Brennan says he didn’t actively seek a job in the new administration, but he had several connections with the Evers transition team and was soon tapped to lead DOA.

“Really the job is to help the governor run the executive branch,” Brennan says. The Department of Administration helps the governor’s office put together the state budget proposal, serves as the human resources department for the state’s 35,000 employees and manages Wisconsin’s real estate — the Capitol, the executive residence in Maple Bluff and the state’s office buildings. It’s also the face of state government in its interactions with local municipalities and negotiates compacts with the tribes located in Wisconsin.

Making appeals to the undecided

After the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, the department was responsible for managing more than $4 billion in federal relief funds, first in the 2020 CARES Act in the last year of the Trump administration and then in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act that President Joe Biden signed about two months after taking office.

Brennan has been emphasizing those experiences when he meets voters.

“I can tell you that most every room that I go into, if there are undecided people in them, or if there are people who don’t know who I am, they walk away thinking, One, ‘Here’s somebody who’s got a history of accomplishment, and who, over the course of two decades, has almost exclusively executive experience, more executive experience than anybody else in the race,’” Brennan says.

“‘Two, he’s demonstrated that he can do the job, he knows state government, he knows the context around Madison, he’s got passion,’” he continues. “I think everybody who sees me walks away with that, and you know, more often than not, I believe I’m walking away with more of those people for me than for somebody else.”

Translating those small-group connections into a message that will reach a lot of voters is a challenge, he acknowledges. “I can’t do that in groups of 25 and 50 forever,” Brennan says. “I’ve got to find a way to speak to a larger audience.”

Brennan has looked for other ways to garner attention.

An early campaign ad featuring his teenage children pokes fun at him for telling “Dad jokes.” 

Brennan was one of a handful of politicians who volunteered to serve at the Sheboygan County Dairy Breakfast. (The presumptive Republican nominee, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, did as well — handing out slices of ham at a table right behind Brennan.)

Recently, as his Democratic  rivals began issuing  negative statements about each other, Brennan’s campaign released a 99-page opposition research report on himself. Perhaps its harshest bullet points were public statements that criticized his opposition as Greater Milwaukee Committee CEO to a Milwaukee Public School referendum that narrowly passed in 2024.

“My life has pretty much been an open book — and here are 99 pages of data that demonstrate it,” Brennan said in a written statement accompanying the oppo research report. “I might even be the only gubernatorial candidate in the country willing to take this step — but more should. And voters would be better off if we did.”

The report didn’t refer to an April Urban Milwaukee column by Editor Bruce Murphy, which cited an anonymous source who said Brennan’s campaign had been pitched to donors as a safe “white centrist.” Brennan flatly denies the characterization.

“I am somebody who has demonstrated throughout my career that I’m about trying to give opportunity to everybody, and there’s nothing I have to do to respond to that, except to say I never said that,” Brennan says. “I don’t control what somebody says outside about me, and it’s offensive to me that anybody else would do that, and if they had the guts, they’d identify who they are.”

When Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the Democratic primary and joined former candidate Missy Hughes in endorsing Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Brennan expressed his admiration for Crowley but reaffirmed his commitment to stay in the race.

“David Crowley made the campaign for Governor – and the eventual Democratic nominee – stronger and better through his work. I am honored to still be able to call myself a constituent and friend,” Brennan wrote on Facebook.

In answer to a question from the Examiner, his campaign manager replied, “We respect David Crowley and wish him well. Joel is focused on making his case to Wisconsin voters between now and August 11.”

A new environment?

Brennan says he admires his old boss, Evers, for integrity, “his commitment to kids” — and for the role the governor played in drawing new legislative maps.

When Evers took office, “he didn’t have many conversations with legislative leaders in the first two years,” Brennan says.

He doesn’t blame the governor for that. The art of maintaining personal relationships among lawmakers, including across party lines, “has been lost in Wisconsin,” Brennan says, “and I lay that at the feet, to be honest, of Scott Walker and the Republicans in 2010, where they took over, they gerrymandered things so that they could protect their majority, and they legislated in a way that was about vengeance.”

Referring to the new, more politically balanced voting maps Evers signed into law, Brennan told Verheyen during their chat at the dairy breakfast, “This is a very different environment. That’s Tony Evers’ great gift to us.”

Unlike some of his rivals who seem to be counting on a Democratic sweep in legislative races this year in order to accomplish their goals, Brennan emphasizes his ability to work across the aisle.

He says he believes that  Democrats could win both houses of the state Legislature this year. “But even without that — or even with that — there will be only a one- or two-seat majority,” he says. “So it’s going to require a level of cooperation and conversation that just didn’t exist in the early years of the Evers administration.”

He argues that he can best navigate the change in temperature that he believes will be essential in the next term, whether Democrats achieve trifecta control  or the November election produces divided government.

“All I can tell you is, on my phone right now there are probably 10 Republican legislators whose cell phone numbers I have,” he says. Meanwhile, the current crop of Democratic lawmakers includes many first-term members who took office after he left state government. That can make it possible to shed some old baggage, he suggests.

“I’m going to be accessible to the Republicans, but also, absolutely, to those Democrats,” Brennan says. “In the course of the way we’re going to have to govern over the next eight years, I want to make sure that people have a personal relationship with me. And I think that also enables us to not make this the kind of blood sport that we oftentimes see.”

Brennan contends he can “stand up passionately around the issues that I care about and the progressive Wisconsin values that are absolutely ingrained in me” yet still be able to work cooperatively with Republicans.

“But if this election is just about how do we get back at the other side, how do we rub somebody’s nose in it? How are we just about vengeance? How are we just about grievance? Then I don’t think that’s worthy of who we are as Wisconsinites, and that’s not who I’ve been over the course of my career,” Brennan says.

“I am absolutely going to defend democracy, I’m going to defend people’s rights, I’m going to make sure we’re promoting our Wisconsin values, but at the end of the day, I think people need to know … they want to see that we’re in a position to get something done,” he says. “We’re poised to be able to do that in Wisconsin, and I think I’ve got the personality, the temperament, the background and the vision to do that.”

Editor’s note: The Examiner is running periodic profiles of the contenders in the Aug. 11, 2026 gubernatorial primary as well as the candidates in the general election Nov. 3. 

The Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday urged American corporations to condemn efforts to dilute Black voting strength, as Southern states eliminate congressional districts where most residents are Black.

The CBC’s attempt to mobilize the business community comes as Black representation in Congress potentially faces its most severe threat since the end of Reconstruction following the Civil War. But some business leaders have taken a friendlier tone with President Donald Trump, who backs the gerrymandering.

A U.S. Supreme Court decision in April, in a case called Louisiana v. Callais, sharply weakened the federal Voting Rights Act, which had blocked states from breaking apart majority-minority districts. It limited the use of race in redistricting, prompting several Southern states to advance new maps targeting these districts, which are mostly held by Black Democrats.

“These actions are not routine political exercises,” the letter reads. “They are coordinated efforts to silence Black voices at the ballot box and strip communities of representation in American democracy.”

The message is addressed to more than 200 corporations and business groups that signed on to a 2021 letter in support of voting rights, as well as an unnamed number of other corporate leaders. Among the signatories were Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, Nike, PepsiCo, Starbucks, Target, Tesla and Unilever USA. 

That letter called on Congress to update the Voting Rights Act, including changes that would restore the federal government’s ability to review changes to election and voting laws in states and local governments with a history of discrimination, a practice called preclearance that the Supreme Court effectively halted in 2013.

On Tuesday, the CBC said those companies should issue individual or joint public statements opposing efforts to dilute Black voting strength and dismantle protections in the Voting Rights Act.

The lawmakers also want companies to report on corporate political spending and relationships connected to attacks on voting rights and “discriminatory redistricting schemes.” Companies should accept an invitation to participate in a national gathering alongside civil rights leaders and advocates to discuss voting rights and Black political power, the lawmakers wrote.

The letter asks businesses to respond by June 9.

“Five years ago, corporations across America publicly affirmed that democracy, racial equity, and voting rights matter. Today, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, those commitments are being tested in real time,” Rep. Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat who chairs the CBC, said in a statement. 

“Corporations that have profited from Black consumers, relied on Black workers, and benefited from Black communities cannot remain silent while Black political representation is dismantled in plain sight,” Clarke said. “Silence in this moment is not neutrality — it is complicity.”

Corporate leaders warm to Trump

But political attitudes in parts of corporate America, especially among tech firms, have shifted since 2021.

When businesses signed the July 2021 letter, they were acting after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, and the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. Six years later, some titans of American business have taken a more conciliatory approach to Trump and the Make America Great Again movement.

Elon Musk, who leads Tesla, spearheaded the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, initiative in 2025 that resulted in the firings and layoffs of thousands of federal workers. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has spoken positively about the president. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, called Trump “more mature” in his second term.

Trump has also led a push against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In March, the president signed an executive order targeting DEI practices by federal contractors. The directive followed another anti-DEI order in January 2025 that encouraged the private sector to “end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais, some Republicans have portrayed eliminating majority-minority districts as a constitutional imperative. The current districts should be tossed because they were drawn with their racial makeup in mind, they say.

“I don’t think race should be used to help a person because of his race, and I don’t think race should be used to harm a person because of his or her race,” Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiania Republican, said at a Senate hearing on racial gerrymandering last week.

Rapid remaps

Since the release of the Callais decision on April 29, Florida and Tennessee have changed their maps and Louisiana is expected to follow soon. South Carolina lawmakers tried but failed to advance a new map and Alabama has taken steps to implement a 2023 gerrymander after the Supreme Court lifted a lower court order that had blocked it.

A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday issued a new order halting the Alabama map, which would likely force out one of the state’s two Black Democratic members of Congress if enacted. The judges found that the map was racially discriminatory, even in light of Callais. 

Alabama has appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

“I applaud the three-judge panel for upholding the rule of law and reaffirming that racial discrimination has no place in our redistricting process,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat who also signed Tuesday’s CBC letter, said in a statement.

“While we know that this legal battle is far from over, today’s ruling sends a clear message: Black voters in Alabama cannot and will not be silenced.”

JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Control of the U.S. House may run through a courtroom in Missouri.

In a red brick courthouse across the street from the state Capitol, the seven black-robed judges of the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday morning weighed the fate of a Republican gerrymander aimed at ousting U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a 11-term Democrat from Kansas City.

In the afternoon, they upheld the map.

Its opponents “failed to show the 2025 Map clearly and undoubtedly violates the requirements” of the state constitution, the court ruled hours after holding oral arguments.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s late April decision sharply curtailing the use of race in redistricting, much of the legal fight over gerrymandering is moving to state courts. The decision, Louisiana vs. Callais, gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which limited states’ ability to divide districts where a majority of residents belong to a racial minority group.

Southern Republican states have rushed forward new maps over the past two weeks that take advantage of the landmark opinion, adding to a handful of others, including Missouri, that already drew new lines in recent months at President Donald Trump’s behest before the midterms elections this November. Another wave of gerrymanders across the rest of the country will likely follow next year ahead of the 2028 election.

State supreme courts may have the final word on some of the maps. Even if the maps don’t involve issues decided in Callais, like the challenge in Missouri, many states have constitutional or statutory provisions that curb gerrymandering and limit last-minute changes to elections — providing gerrymandering opponents with grounds to challenge new district boundaries.

With federal redistricting lawsuits increasingly difficult, state laws offer gerrymandering opponents another path. 

Thirty states have some form of a constitutional requirement for free elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And at least 10 state supreme courts have found that state courts can decide cases involving allegations of partisan gerrymandering, according to a 2024 review by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. 

“I think state courts are primarily going to be the place where future fights around these maps are playing out in a post-Callais landscape,” said Alicia Bannon, director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Legal challenges abound

The elevated importance of state courts was on full display Friday, when the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated an election in which voters narrowly approved a Democratic map. The decision leaves a new map in California as the party’s only successful response so far to the GOP redistricting onslaught. Democrats have made a longshot request to the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Virginia ruling.

Lawsuits have already been filed in state courts over new maps in Florida and Louisiana. Alabama’s new map could also face a legal challenge in state court, even after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the gerrymander to take effect. 

At stake in these courtroom fights is which party will control the U.S. House over the next two years, earning the power to advance or thwart legislation. While Democrats remain generally favored to retake the chamber in the November midterm elections, Republicans will likely emerge from the gerrymandering war with at least a handful of seats secured.

Suddenly, every state supreme court decision — including over a single seat in Missouri — takes on greater significance.

Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, which is helping challenge the Missouri map, told reporters on Monday that the state’s high court had a “spotlight on” it.

“Is the court going to do what it has done in the past in a nonpartisan way that is faithful to their own precedent,” she asked ahead of the decision. “Or are they going to roll over?”

Missouri case

The Republican-controlled Missouri General Assembly in September approved a map intended to leave the state with just one Democrat in Congress, in the St. Louis area. Kansas City was divided among three districts, splitting apart its Democratic-leaning and racially diverse core. 

The Missouri Supreme Court considered three challenges to the map. Two similar lawsuits argue that some of the congressional districts don’t follow the state constitution’s requirements that districts be as compact as possible.

A third lawsuit argues that the map shouldn’t be in effect for the 2026 election because opponents in December submitted more than 305,000 signatures seeking to force a statewide referendum vote on the lines. In the past, state officials have paused the implementation of measures subject to a referendum until a vote is held, but in this instance they say the new lines are active.

During Tuesday’s oral arguments, the judges sat almost entirely stone-faced as they listened. Only one judge asked a single question during arguments that stretched for more than an hour, offering no sense of how the court would rule.

“There is no such thing as a perfect map or a perfect district,” Missouri Principal Deputy Solicitor General Kathleen Hunker said.

Jonathan Hawley, an attorney representing Missouri voters who argue the referendum means the map isn’t in effect, said his case will decide whether the people of Missouri “still have a meaningful referendum.”

“The referendum right is the people’s veto,” Hawley said.

The Missouri Supreme Court hours later ruled against both challenges to the maps — allowing the new lines to be used this year.

“Had the drafters intended a referendum petition filing to automatically suspend any act of the General Assembly at issue in the referendum petition, they would have so stated,” the court’s opinion says.

Florida’s GOP gerrymander

Only two Southern states, Florida and Kentucky, allow courts to decide partisan gerrymandering cases.

Kentucky, which has a Democratic governor, hasn’t taken up redistricting this year. But a Florida Supreme Court decision striking down a new map there would effectively offset Democrats’ loss at the Virginia Supreme Court.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a map passed by the state legislature during a special session on the same day as the Callais decision. The new congressional boundaries are designed to hand Republicans up to four additional seats.

Several voting rights groups have sued, alleging the map violates the Florida Constitution. A 2010 amendment approved by voters prohibits districts drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent.

“Instead of abiding by this law, the Legislature is defying the will of voters and backing a map that was crafted entirely with partisan intent,” Simone Leeper, senior legal counsel for redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. 

The Campaign Legal Center and the UCLA Voting Rights Project have sued jointly over the map.

DeSantis’s office told state lawmakers ahead of this year’s special session that the 2010 amendment requires the state legislature to account for race when drawing districts — and that the provisions regarding race can’t be severed from the rest of the amendment. In effect, DeSantis contends the whole amendment must be thrown out.

The Florida governor’s pitch, coupled with the Callais decision, persuaded GOP lawmakers.

“I have a ton of comfort because the Callais decision came out,” Florida state Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican, said. “I got to read it, and it perfectly summarizes exactly why we could, and should, change our 2022 maps.”

Map opponents’ chance of success at the Florida Supreme Court is unclear. The court as recently as 2015 blocked a congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, but it has moved to the right in the years since. Six of the seven current justices were appointed by DeSantis and the other was appointed by a different Republican governor.

“The composition of the Florida Supreme Court has changed dramatically since that earlier ruling,” Bannon, the Brennan Center expert, said. “So I think there are questions about will the court be as open to those arguments.”

Process challenges

In other Southern states, map opponents are turning to arguments beside partisan gerrymandering.

The Tennessee chapter of the NAACP has sued Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the state General Assembly to block a gerrymander passed last week from taking effect. The organization alleges Lee violated the state constitution in how he called a special session for a new map. 

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, has urged a court to dismiss Lee and the legislature from lawsuit because they don’t conduct elections.

Alabama Democrats and voting rights groups are weighing a legal challenge to a new map that would focus on a 2022 amendment to the state constitution. The amendment requires election law changes to be made at least six months before a general election — a deadline of May 3 this year. Alabama’s redistricting special session began the next day.

In Louisiana, state lawmakers have not yet passed a new map after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current lines as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the legislature had previously created a second majority-Black district. Lawmakers are expected to advance a map aimed at ousting one of the state’s two Democratic House members, who are both Black.

After the Callais decision, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s congressional primary elections although roughly 42,000 absentee ballots had already been cast. Lawsuits challenging the suspension have been filed in both federal and state court.

Too late to change?

In Missouri on Tuesday, lawyers for Republican state officials took the opposite approach, urging the state supreme court to keep the map in place for the 2026 election, even if the judges strike it down. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, told reporters afterward that preventing the state from using the map now would lead to confusion, even as 12 weeks remain before the primary election.

“It’ll be disarray for the people that have been going to town halls and listening to candidates,” Hoskins said. “It would be disarray for the candidates that are running and going out and meeting voters in their district. And it’d be disarray for the local election authorities and county clerks that have already started instituting” the new map.

Hoskins’ fears turned out to be unfounded, as the court upheld the map.

Cleaver, who is running for reelection, has said that his work ethic or commitment to voters won’t change regardless of his district boundaries. 

“If I have to serve the people who live just outside of Columbia and Jefferson City, then I’ll do that,” he said when he filed to run earlier this year.

Attorneys for the ACLU of Missouri, which supported challenges to the map, said it was unfair to Missouri residents for the state to create a problem and then argue it’s too late to change it. 

At a rally outside the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday, ACLU of Missouri Policy Director Tori Schafer expressed confidence the judges would side with map opponents — hours before they allowed the lines to move forward.

“But let me clear,” Schafer said, “democracy did not begin in a courtroom and it will not be saved in a courtroom.”

Florida Phoenix reporter Mitch Perry contributed to this report.