December 13, 2006 Democrat Wins G.O.P. Seat in Texas Runoff By RALPH BLUMENTHAL HOUSTON, Dec. 12 — Another longtime Republican House seat has fallen to the Democrats. In the last Congressional election of 2006, former Representative Ciro D. Rodriguez, 60, unseated the seven-term Republican incumbent, Henry Bonilla, 52, in a hard-fought runoff in the redrawn 23rd Congressional District in southwest Texas. With 244 of 267 precincts reporting, Mr. Rodriguez had 55 percent of the votes to Mr. Bonilla’s 45 percent. Mr. Rodriguez’s victory increases the Democrats’ commanding House majority, giving them 233 seats to the Republicans’ 202, including independents who align with the Democratic caucus, according to a New York Times analysis of the voting results. Republicans had a 232 to 203 majority in the outgoing Congress. The sparsely populated district, the largest in Texas, covering about a fifth of the state’s total square-mileage, was redrawn by federal judges after the Supreme Court found that the 2003 Republican-engineered redistricting, otherwise Constitutional, had diluted Hispanic voting strength to help Mr. Bonilla. The new district raised the Hispanic voting-age population to 61 percent from 51 percent, to the evident benefit of Mr. Rodriguez, a three-term congressman from the neighboring 28th Congressional District who lost the 2004 and 2006 Democratic primaries to Henry Cuellar, now the representative there. The race in the new 23rd District had been heated in recent weeks, with former President Bill Clinton coming in to campaign for Mr. Rodriguez, and President Bush’s nephew George P. Bush, son of Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, campaigning for Mr. Bonilla. In the Nov. 7 open primary, Mr. Bonilla failed to avoid a runoff by capturing less than 49 percent of the vote, while Mr. Rodriguez, fending off other Democrats, came in second with less than 20 percent. Mr. Bonilla had portrayed the contest as the opening gun of the presidential election year races. “We look at this as the first election of the next cycle,” he told The Associated Press. Mr. Rodriguez had said that on Election Day, five weeks ago, Americans voted for change. He had predicted that in Tuesday’s runoff, people were “going to vote one more time for change.” nyt
interesting article. Dec. 14, 2006, 3:01PM Texas' Democrats in House mostly minorities By SUZANNE GAMBOA Associated Press WASHINGTON — Back in the majority, Texas' Democrats in the House are mostly minorities. The 13 Democrats include six Hispanics and three African Americans. Two of the African Americans are women. Republicans still dominate the delegation, thanks to a redrawing of district boundaries in 2003 that boosted election chances for GOP candidates. But the composition of the Democrats is more reflective of the state population, which officially became a majority minority state in 2005 when minorities made up about 50.2 percent of the population. Texas equals California in the number of Hispanics in its delegation. No other state has more. Texas also is on par with New York with three African American members, behind California and Georgia, with four each. The number of minorities in the delegation won't change for the 110th Congress that begins in January. But Rep. Ciro Rodriguez's defeat of Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla, both Mexican-Americans, leaves the Texas Republicans without a single minority. One of the state's Republicans in the House is a woman. All of the minorities in the delegation are elected from majority-minority districts created under the Voting Rights Act. "What we really need to have to get to political maturity for Latinos, we need Democrats and Republicans competing for our votes and we'll just keep moving our political progress forward when Republicans come and campaign in majority minority districts," said Nina Perales, southwest regional counsel for Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "We don't want to be abandoned by any party. We want both parties to ask for our votes," Perales said. MALDEF maintains that Texas should have a seventh majority-minority district, but lost that argument in the courts. "That struggle will continue after the 2010 Census when you'll see more Latino districts," she said. The longest serving Democrat in the delegation is Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, who will enter his 13th term when the 110th Congress begins. chron
