TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal is floating a new congressional redistricting plan that would split the Kansas City area between two districts and put part of it in a district with rural western Kansas communities 400 miles away.
The proposal from O’Neal was among several for redrawing the state’s four congressional districts unveiled this week during a meeting of the House Redistricting Committee.
O’Neal’s plan would put most of Wyandotte County in the 1st District of western and central Kansas.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, has been predicting for months that O’Neal would push to move Wyandotte County into the 1st Congressional District, to dissipate the potential influence of one of the few Democratic-leaning areas of the state.
