Texas Redistricting Battle Ends.. GOP to gain 6-7 Seats

This isn't the only lawsuit filed to prevent this:



Mexican-American rights group files redistricting suit
By Kelley Shannon

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

AUSTIN — The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has jumped into the court fight over the newly enacted Republican congressional redistricting map.

MALDEF filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Victoria on behalf of the American GI Forum of Texas, a group devoted to securing equal rights for Hispanics. The lawsuit contends the new redistricting plan does not create another Hispanic district.

"The newly-enacted congressional redistricting plan for Texas does not accurately reflect Latino voting strength in the year 2003," said Nina Perales, MALDEF regional counsel and lead attorney in the court case.

Although the Republican plan "purports to create an additional Latino majority district in South Texas, in fact it eliminates one district and adds another, with no net increase in electoral opportunity," Perales said.

If Texas is going to redistrict, Perales said, the result should be an increase in the number of Hispanic districts, particularly in South Texas and Dallas.

At least two other legal challenges have been filed since the Legislature gave final approval Sunday to the new congressional districts.

Democrats are asking a federal court in Tyler to stop the state from implementing the new plan for the 2004 election cycle. That court challenge — a motion filed in a previous redistricting lawsuit — alleges that using the new map would be disruptive because it moves more than 8.1 million Texans into new districts and that there are strong arguments that the map violates federal law.

Also, a group of Democrats has asked U.S. District Judge John T. Ward in Marshall to issue a temporary restraining order to prohibit changing the districts. Rusk City Councilman Walter Session, one of the plaintiffs, said he believes black representation would be lost under the Legislature's new plan.

Republicans wanted a new congressional map to reflect the state's conservative voting trends and to give the GOP the edge in the state's congressional delegation. Democrats, who control the state's congressional delegation 17-15, wanted to keep existing districts.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who called three special sessions to get redistricting accomplished, signed the redistricting bill into law Monday. It takes effect after 90 days.

 

I thought this was worth reading again for those who missed it:


By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - An e-mail written by an aide to Texas Rep. Joe Barton ridiculed Democrats and gloated over the Republicans' expected victory in a battle over congressional redistricting.



Barton's legislative counsel, Joby Fortson, sent the e-mail from his personal computer, Barton's office said Friday. It was forwarded to Democrats in the state Capitol in Austin and in Washington and to members of the news media.


Texas lawmakers read the e-mail aloud in the state House and Senate during debate on the congressional redistricting map Friday.


"As much as we despise her, she cannot be drawn out ... the Queen lives!!!!" Fortson wrote about Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, whose Houston district remains Democratic.


He mocked Reps. Martin Frost and Lloyd Doggett, repeating "ha, ha, ha" numerous times.


He even took a poke at fellow Republican Rep. Ron Paul, saying winning his redrawn district could be "a lot trickier than thought given Paul's unusual behavior." Paul's votes often reflect his libertarian views on government.


Barton spokeswoman Samantha Jordan said the e-mail "certainly in no way is reflective" of the congressman's thinking. She said Barton was "very disappointed to see what could be perceived as derogatory comments" on his Texas colleagues.


Jordan said Barton has not decided whether to take any disciplinary action.


An office receptionist said Fortson was out of the office Friday. He did not respond to requests for comment sent to his work and personal e-mail addresses.


Democrats said the e-mail demonstrates the mean-spiritedness of the Texas redistricting saga.


"Republican staffers may find minority voter disenfranchisement a funny topic, but I can guarantee that the courts don't," said Greg Speed, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman.


Nkenge Harmon, Jackson Lee's spokeswoman said the e-mail sums up Democrat' views on the Republican redistricting efforts.


"We've been saying all along Republicans aren't redistricting for any reason, but a power grab," Harmon said. "It's ugly, not for the good of Texas and for (House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay and other Republicans."


The redistricting fight gained national attention when Democratic lawmakers boycotted the Texas Legislature in effort to thwart Republicans. House Democrats spent about four days in Oklahoma and Senate Democrats stayed more than six weeks in Albuquerque, N.M.


Texas Republicans have redrawn the state's congressional map to give the party up to seven more seats. They say the current, drawn by a federal court in 2001, does not reflect voting trends. Democrats call it a power grab.

 

Here is another excellent article about this travesty:





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 14, 2003
Texas Democrats Look at New Map and Point Out Victims
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Correction Appended

HOUSTON, Oct. 13 — It looks like a Cubist worm, wriggling down nearly 300 miles from Austin to the Mexican border.

In fact, it is the new 25th Congressional District as redrawn by Republican mapmakers and passed by Texas lawmakers as part of their redistricting plan for the 2004 elections.

With members of Congress and political interest groups taking their first close look at the lines that have bedeviled the Texas Senate and House of Representatives since spring, outrage was answered by derision as the long dispute moved into a new phase, this one likely to be resolved only by the courts.

Gov. Rick Perry announced late Monday that he had signed the bill, which received final passage in the Texas Senate on Sunday night along largely partisan lines, 17 to 14.

Political scientists and other analysts on Monday identified 8 of the 17 Texas Democrats in Congress whose seats seem at risk under the remapping. Another district created around Midland, in West Texas, seemed clearly earmarked for the Republicans, who hope to pick up as many as seven seats next year. This would raise the number of Texas Republicans in the House to as many as 22 from the current 15.

Several of the Democrats at risk — including two congressmen with nearly 50 years of experience between them — reacted angrily on Monday, saying the map was an effort to concentrate African-American and Hispanic voters in certain districts and paint Democrats as the party of minority voters, costing them white support.

"They've gotten on the fighting side of this Swede," said Representative Charles W. Stenholm, a conservative Democrat who has represented the Abilene region of West Texas since 1978. "If they want to play this game, we'll take them on."

A spokesman for Representative Tom Craddick, the speaker of the Texas House who led the redistricting drive, defended the map as presenting new black and Hispanic "opportunity districts." But the spokesman, Bob Richter, said he saw nothing wrong with trying to portray the Democrats as a party of minorities.

"In a way it may be true," Mr. Richter said. "Look at the makeup of the Texas House: 62 Democrats and only 19 Anglos, no Anglo women. I guess it's one of the things that seem to be borne out by the voters."

It was, he said, "a fact" and "not something we tried to orchestrate."

Mr. Richter said some of the new districts extending down from Austin were "admittedly weird-looking." But he said: "You can't pack Hispanic voters into a 100 percent district. You have to reach up into the more Anglicized countries for white voters."

Mr. Stenholm now finds himself in the same district as a freshman Republican colleague, Randy Neugebauer of Lubbock, elected this year to fill a vacancy. The two could face off next year.

Another House member since 1978, Representative Martin Frost, who represents parts of Dallas and says he is the only Jewish congressman in the history of Texas, found his district largely dismembered, its African-American voters reallocated to the district of Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a black woman.

Mr. Frost said the changes were harmful enough to minority voters to require rejection by the Justice Department or the courts. A Republican tactic against the Democrats, he said, is to eliminate all white officials of consequence, so white voters will not identify with the Democratic party.

"They made the decision to shoot the moon," Mr. Frost said of the Republicans. "They may wind up with zero."

Another Democratic congressman, Representative Lloyd Doggett of Austin, elected in 1994, called the new map outrageous and blamed Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, who spent three days in Austin last week shuttling between Senate and House Republicans to curb bickering and forge the consensus that ended in agreement last weekend.

"Tom DeLay wants a one-party state, or a me-too nation," Mr. Doggett said.

No one answered the phone in Mr. DeLay's Washington office on Monday, the Columbus Day holiday, and a voice mail message said his mailbox was full.

Under the redistricting plan, Mr. Doggett's Austin district would be split into a long north-south strip from the capital to the Mexican border, a second segment running from Austin to San Antonio and a third stretching some 150 miles east to Houston. That, he said, could make Austin the largest city in the country without hometown representation.

The issue, he said, is "bigger than me; there are other things I can do." But, he said, "Why Midland can get a district and you tear apart the Lone Star capital city is something only Tom DeLay can explain."

Bob Stein, a professor of political science and dean of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University, said that other Democratic representatives who seemed to be targets of the redistricting map included Representatives Nick Lampson of the Beaumont-Galveston area; Jim Turner of East Texas; Chet Edwards of the Waco area; and Gene Green and Chris Bell, both of Houston. The two Houston congressmen, Mr. Stein said, stood a good change of winning re-election.

He said the district changes amounted to a Republican strategy to put a black and Hispanic face on the Democratic Party.

"I hesitate to say there's a racial motive," Mr. Stein said. But if minorities are packed into districts, he said, they will elect African-Americans and drain off votes from other candidates.

Of course, Mr. Stein said, Texas Democrats, when they were in the majority, were hardly averse to their own racial manipulation. Why else, he asked, were so many white Democrats representing blacks?

Congressmen who are remapped out of their home districts may still run from outside the district, since there is no residency requirement.

The redistricting plan still has some major hurdles to overcome. Under Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department has 60 days to rule on whether the plan represents a statewide dilution of minority voting strength.

The redistricting plan in place since 2001 was ordered by a federal judicial panel after lawmakers failed to agree on a map after the 2000 census. Democrats have said they will appeal the new districts to Judge Patrick E. Higgenbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, if necessary, beyond that.

The time is tight. To apply to the 2004 elections, the plan must be approved before the Jan 21 candidate filing deadline. The primary date has already been pushed back a week, to March 9.

"It's like football," Mr. Stein said. "You can cut the final seconds into tenths or hundreds of seconds, but finally you're going to run out of time."


Correction: Oct. 15, 2003, Wednesday

An article yesterday about new Congressional district lines in Texas misstated the shift of African-American voters who are now in the Dallas area district of Representative Martin Frost, a Democrat. They would be dispersed in largely white and Republican districts, not reassigned to the district of Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Democrat.

 

And here is a link to the map, for those who haven't seen the changes:


http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/10/13/national/texa_graph.gif

 

Thanks deckard, I never saw how pathetic this was, look that austin-mcallen district!



I hope this crap backfires. I have a feeling that the unspoken yet crucial role that race played in all of this, if only by proxy via party voting patterns, may give it constitutional problems as well.

 

A New York Times editorial, for those who aren't registered to check it out:



October 14, 2003
Three Days of the Hammer

Say this for Tom DeLay, the House Republican majority leader: he does not operate by stealth in epitomizing politics as a blood sport. Mr. DeLay spent three days back in Austin last week, shuttling prominently through the Statehouse as the broker in the plan to remap the Texas Congressional districts and thus fatten his edge of power in Washington. "I'm a Texan trying to get things done," Mr. DeLay said, hardly apologizing as his will was enacted by G.O.P. state lawmakers.

After a five-month struggle that had resistant Democratic lawmakers fleeing the state, Mr. DeLay achieved a masterpiece of partisan gerrymandering: a map drawn up to net him as many as seven new Republican seats in Congress next year at the expense of incumbent Democrats. To have his way, Mr. DeLay, aptly nicknamed The Hammer in the Capitol, pioneered a new sort of out-of-season redistricting, which voters must hope does not prove contagious in statehouses across the land.

Mr. DeLay had his loyalists scrap the current court-ordered, two-year-old map, based on the 2000 census, and hurry an egregiously pro-Republican map into place without waiting for the next census. And the congressman personally walked the Statehouse to nail down the final deal. Texas wasn't just gerrymandered; it was Hammermandered.

State Democrats, who were no slouches at gerrymandering when they held the majority, are preparing court challenges to the remapping as an abuse of minority voting rights. Black and Hispanic voters are complaining of being electorally ghettoized into fewer districts. They have a strong case to make, and we hope the Bush administration's Justice Department can consider it fairly. If not, the redistricting plan's zigzags, and nips and tucks, chart a partisan willfulness that should come to haunt Mr. DeLay in the next elections.



I just realized that the map link I posted is from the New York Times and wanted to mention that when you register, which just takes a few minutes, you can check off that you don't want anything sent to you via e-mail and they don't. They also don't give any information out to anyone else. An FYI for those who don't like to register for sites (except for this one! )

 

I will state this again. This new map will provide FAIR representation for the great state of Texas that is majority Republican. This is a victory for the PEOPLE of this great state, and a defeat for cowards who illegally flee to Oklahoma and New Mexico for political gain.

 

Sam! How did you do that?? I tried to cut and paste it, as I have from other sites previously, and it wouldn't work. What's the secret? Thanks.

 

Can someone from the left please explain your opposition to redistricting... not this plan specifically, just the idea in general?

Do you disagree with that, based on recent elections, the state of Texas is more conservative than liberal? If that is true, do you think the districts should reflect that fact?

These are honest questions, and not bait for a flame war.

I am a conservative, and think that redistricting to represent current political balance is a good idea, but I'm not certain that now is the proper time to do so, nor whether this specific map is the ideal one for Texas. While I think it is well within the Republican's rights to redistrict at this time, so soon after getting a majority may not be the best timing of the topic.

 

You might try reading this thread and a thread that is very long a couple of pages back that goes into this at length.

Five of the "anglo" Democrats who are targeted by this "plan" are very conservative Democrats who are in Republican dominated districts. Their constituents like them. They have seniority, some for decades, in important committees. In short, they are conservatives who happen to be Democrats who frequently vote Republican on many issues.

Look at the map kindly posted by SamFisher and see what it does to East Texas, a conservative region served by these conservative Democrats. All but one district will be attached to suburban Dallas or Houston, when before they served the people of that area... communities of interest. Those people are livid that this is happening to them. Their rural interests have been thrown out for DeLay's power grab.

The "hearings" across the state, the few that were allowed by the state Republican Leadership, were overwhelmingly against redistricting until the next census. Every white Democrat is targeted by this map for defeat. It is a deliberate attempt by the GOP to put a minority face on the Texas Democratic Party, while at the same time diluting minority representation.

Do you "get it" now? By the way, I am a moderate Democrat... not someone "of the left"... who is liberal on social issues and conservative on things like defense. Just so you'll know.

 

Well, thanks for the condescending rebuttal that you fired off before reading my entire post. I specifically asked for opinions regarding redistricting in general, and not this exact plan or map. Do you "get it" now?

 

Do you disagree with that, based on recent elections, the state of Texas is more conservative than liberal? If that is true, do you think the districts should reflect that fact?


Can any conservatives explain why they want to take representation away from their own people? 5 Republican-majority districts are voting in Democratic congressman in the current situation. Basically, this is Tom Delay saying that Republicans aren't voting the way we want them to, so we're going to negate their will through redistricting.

The districts in place already represent the proper conservative-liberal representation. Either Republicans haven't been able to field decent candidates, or the Democratic candidates are damn good, because Republicans are the ones voting in Democrats right now.

 

I get you. Have a nice BBS career.

 

Great posts Deckard & Major, that pretty much sums it up. Still waiting for a proper response from the hard-right crew.

I'd like to know what it is that the people of West Austin have in common with those living on the border near Rio Grande City? How on earth could/should one official represent such divergent interests?

I for one would love to take the power to draw congressional districts out of the hands of the state legislature, seems the court-drawn districts currently in place worked just fine.

 

Uhh, I don't know, I just did it the regular way. Maybe us New Yorkers get special linking privileges?

 

Oh, you know what though? It's possible that since you and I have both gone to the site, we are both seeing the cached copy and not the red x, I've had that happen to me before sometimes.

 

I know this is an attempt at an insult, but I have no idea what it means.

 

I guess so. I'm bewildered. Obviously, I can move articles around without a problem, but doing images is a problem. Maybe I don't have the latest something or other.

Thanks again for showing the map. A lot of folks here haven't seen it. That helped a lot.

 

I apologize if I am treating you like a total internet newbie, but are you trying to copy the image like you were copying text? If so, don't do that, just right click the image, click properties, copy the URL and paste it in between the img markers.

Took me several months figure that one out

 

I guess, for now, it means I'm not going to pay a lot of attention to your posts since you don't bother reading mine. I'm really not into a big "insulting" thing. You wanted opinions on redistricting... well, it's impossible to give them, at least for me, without some context... which I went to some trouble to provide. You replied with a response not worth responding to, as far as I'm concerned. And that's not an insult, it's just an opinion... one from your resident BBS replicant. If you want some thread about redistricting in general, why don't you start one? Just a suggestion.