Topeka ? 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 plans to redraw the state’s four congressional districts that were unveiled this week during a meeting of the House Redistricting Committee. O’Neal, a Hutchinson Republican, appointed himself as the committee’s chairman.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, has been predicting for months that O’Neal would try to move Wyandotte County, which includes Kansas City, Kan., in with rural western and central Kansas counties of the 1st District to dissipate the potential influence of the one of the few Democratic-leaning areas of the state.