State Sen. Elaine Freeman Gannon said she heard enough.
Gannon (R-De Soto), who represents the 3rd District in the Missouri Senate, said she had endured day after day of the legislative body’s inactivity on a bill that will redistrict the state’s eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The original bill, which started in a Missouri House committee chaired by state Rep. Dan Shaul (R-Imperial), called for six congressional districts that likely would be won by Republicans in the November election and two that would be considered “safe” Democratic districts.
The map was approved by the House and passed out of a Senate committee before it was taken up by the full Senate, where it has stalled.
The Conservative Caucus, a group of hard-line senators who are pushing to redraw the Democratically-held seat in the Kansas City area into a district that Republicans likely would win, have been holding up debate, starting a filibuster to prevent the so-called “6-2” map from advancing.
The session ended shortly after midnight on Feb. 9.
“After we left for the night, I laid on my couch and thought about what was going on,” Gannon said. “I decided it was time to speak up.”
The next morning, she headed to her office in Jefferson City and told her chief of staff to round up as many of her fellow women senators as possible to come to her office.
“Most were able to make it, but it was a last-minute thing,” she said. “But everybody knew about it and everybody was on board.”
The group of 11 women senators, both Republicans and Democrats, have worked on legislation before and collaborated on a children’s book, “You Can Too!” that recounts the story of the 36 women who have served in the Missouri Senate.
Collectively, they’re known as “The Eleven,” which is the largest number of women in the 34-seat Senate in history.
“I knew that we had to present a unified force,” she said, “and let our fellow senators know how we felt about what was going on.”
Gannon said her plan was to speak before the Conservative Caucus took control.
“When I got to the floor, I knew I had to be the first one to speak, but Sen. (Bob) Onder (R-Lake St. Louis and a Conservative Caucus member) beat me to it, and he filibustered for two and a half hours. He cleared off the Senate floor, because everybody went back to their offices to try to get something done,” she said.
Gannon said when she returned, “Onder decided it was time to sign off, and I literally jumped on it.”
She said she started talking about how frustrated she and the other members of “The Eleven” were that time was being wasted by not advancing a redistricting map and that infighting among Republicans, and partisan lines drawn between Republicans and Democrats, were preventing the chamber from getting anything done.
Gannon said at first, she was reluctant to retain command of the microphone.
“But then I thought to myself, ‘I’ve wasted so much time listening to the Conservative Caucus. At least I wasn’t reading from a book (during the filibuster, other members recited lyrics to pop songs to waste time). I got relaxed and knew I was ready to do this.”
She spoke long enough that her fellow senators began filing back into the room.
“I don’t know how, but people started coming back into the chamber,” Gannon said. “No one knew what was going to happen except for the other members of the women’s caucus.”
Gannon eventually yielded the floor to other members of “The Eleven.”
She said Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder (R-Sikeston) spoke eloquently about accusations by some fellow senators that Republicans who don’t back a “7-1” map aren’t “real Republicans.”
“We’ve been called RINOs, or ‘Republicans in Name Only,” Gannon said. “That’s only one of the names we’ve been called, and some of them haven’t been nice, and they’ve been very personal. We don’t need things to get personal.”
The Senate adjourned that night without any advancement and even met in a special session on Saturday, as the filibuster continued.
Still, Gannon said, she hopes progress could be made this week.
“This has been ridiculous,” she said. “Committees have been working on this map for months. The Senate has been working on it all during January and into February.
“I’ve told other senators that if they went home to their districts and knocked on 100 doors and asked people what they wanted their Senate to do in Jefferson City, they’d hear about health care, education, child care. I’m not so sure you’d find even 10 people who would say a redistricting map is important. So let’s get this done.”
Gannon said the response to “The Eleven’s” action was immediate.
“When all was said and done, we blew up Twitter,” she said. “We got so much positive response. People were saying it was time someone tried to restore decorum to the Senate, instead of allowing someone to read from a book for two hours. We heard from the governor, who was totally supportive of us. The other (non-Conservative Caucus) members were with us.
“I respect the other women senators, no matter what side of the aisle we sit on,” Gannon said. “I respect the members of the Conservative Caucus, and all the other senators. But we have to restore some order and decorum.”
Gannon said she hopes the Senate can reach a consensus on a new map.
“I don’t know where this will go, but if we can’t agree on this issue, it will go to the courts, and if it does, it may not be in the best interest of the Conservative Caucus,” she said. “We need to work this out among ourselves. If speaking up gets that going, I’ll be happy. But it wasn’t just me. It was all of us. There’s strength in numbers.”