A House Republican in Missouri attacked a group of California voters this month in a post on X for trying to interfere in her state’s politics — but then quietly deleted her post after realizing these voters were not from California at all. Or at least, not the California she was thinking of.
The drama began with a post by the local paper, the California Democrat, which stated, “Concerned citizens gathered at California City Hall Railroad Park on 500 South Oak Street to stop gerrymandering in Missouri,” which detailed people signing a ballot petition to overturn the GOP legislature’s aggressive mid-decade redraw of congressional maps that would delete a Democratic district in Kansas City.
The story rubbed Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO) the wrong way.
“Missouri’s elections aren’t decided in California,” the suburban St. Louis congresswoman wrote. “The real threat isn’t our map but the Soros-funded network trying to manufacture outrage. Missourians will choose Missouri’s future.”
The problem: this article was not talking about voters in the state of California. It was talking about the town of California, Missouri, a community of just over 4,000 people in Moniteau County, in the center of the state.
Wagner deleted the post later — but not before reporters, including HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery, managed to take a screenshot of it.
Voting rights groups across the state are gathering signatures for a ballot referendum that would allow Missouri voters to directly decide whether the newly gerrymandered map is adopted, which would also suspend the use of the new map until the vote can be held. Republicans have done everything in their power to try to stop the referendum, from lawsuits to declaring certain signatures invalid, to even accusing a company collecting the signatures of human trafficking.
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