WASHINGTON — Emanuel Cleaver isn’t a stranger to a standard reelection run. Someone with his level of time spent in office might even call it a speed-walk. He’s been elected 11 times to the U.S. House of Representatives and two times as mayor of Kansas City — the first African American to hold that post. Before that, he served 12 years on the City Council in Kansas City.
But this year, the veteran politician, who will turn 82 the week before Election Day, isn’t facing a standard reelection: All of those past races have been in Cleaver’s Kansas City backyard. This time, he’s facing the prospect of having to stump for votes from Kansas City to Columbia.
That’s because Cleaver was target No. 1 in this year’s mid-decade redistricting effort by the Missouri General Assembly, part of a national battle between the Democratic and Republican parties to gain political advantage in November’s midterm elections. In Missouri, where Republicans hold the levers of power, they are hoping to replace one of the two Democrats who currently represent the state in Washington with another Republican…