When Republicans Took Texas Statehouse Mapmaking Took the Forefront
By Mike Asmus
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Something on the order of history was made in the 2002 elections for Texas State Senators & Representatives. Republicans maintained a majority lead in the state Senate and now for the 1st time since Reconstruction held the state House as well. With the keys to the car now in hand it was time to take the wheel & make some more history.
One of the first orders of business for Texas house and senate leaders for the legislative session starting in January of 2003 was redrawing the boundary lines of State Legislative and Congressional Districts.
Redistricting is relegated to the 50 states and typically follows the decennial taking of the national census. As populations grow and shift district lines are changed to assure that a vote cast in District X carries as much representational weight as a vote cast in District Y.
Republicans felt the map produced in 2001 was flawed in particular asserting the congressional boundaries did not paint an accurate picture of the states DNA for political party affiliation. And as theres no specific limitation that the legislature only make maps once in a decade Texas lawmakers began work on the second of what ultimately would be three maps based on 2000 census numbers.
The mapmaking of 2001 was one of stalemate followed by checkmate.
The Democratic-led House created its version; the Senate (taken by Republicans in 2000) made its version. Differences among and between the
two chambers parties and maps could not be ironed out putting the matter to higher powers.
The states
Legislative Redistricting Board settles state district boundaries. Unresolved congressional boundary disputes are settled in federal court.
The panel of judges reviewing the Texas congressional maps of 2001 enacted a redistricting plan largely in line with the political orientation set by the plan of 1991 when Democrats were firmly in control of the statehouse and the governors mansion.
To give a picture of that orientation Democrats in 1992 took 21 congressional seats; Republicans nine. (Texas gained two U.S. House seats from the 2000 census and is predicted to gain three to four more this time around.)
With Republicans gaining ground all through the 1990s the Texas GOP of 2001 felt the federally-decreed district map was more in a state of disorientation and the 2002 elections allowed the newly empowered party to change the game. This time it would be Texans doing the enacting not Washington ... for the most part.
The redistricting round of 2003 with Republicans now leading the Texas Senate and House featured interesting procedural or to be more accurate non-procedural tactics by Democrats. Now no longer holding either
chamber various members of the newly depowered minority took to the road when key redistricting votes were held.
In May of 2003 more than 50 Democratic house members sought refuge in Oklahoma from the constitutional task of casting votes.
Whatever sense of victory the wandering minority party held in causing the regular session to end without a redistricting vote quickly vanished with Republican Governor Rick Perrys calling of a special session to have the peoples business voted upon. Not to be outdone in the upper legislative chamber nearly a dozen Democratic state senators then sojourned to New Mexico thereby again stalling special session proceedings. (Mr. Perry ultimately had to call three special sessions.)
Perhaps under various pressures perhaps recognizing futility when it shows up at the door perhaps thinking hed left the stove on state Senator John Whitmire came in from the cold or desert as it was to Austin. Mr. Whitmires triumphant return to the state capitol (likely welcomed by members of both parties if only privately by one) established a working quorum in the upper chamber allowing the 2003 plan already ratified by the House following the Oklahoma field trip to now clear the Senate as well.
Surely smarting a bit and perhaps road-weary from expeditionary travels to other states Democrats in October of 2003 challenged the Republican-crafted map under tenets of the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 which imposes special requirements on states and other jurisdictions with a known or interpreted history of electoral discrimination.
A federal panel upheld the 2003 redistricting map clearing the way for the 2004 elections which as designed proved GOP-friendly. The federal panels decision was subsequently appealed sending the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Issued in June of 2006 the High Courts 7-2 ruling roundly rejected Democrats claims that the 2003 redistricting was an unconstitutional act of statewide gerrymandering and upheld the states right to redistrict in frequencies beyond once a decade. The Court however did find fault with the redrawing of one of the maps 32 congressional districts the 23rd.
While Texas lawmakers had made considerable efforts to ensure minorities were fairly considered in the representational equation the prevailing Justices behind the narrow 5-4 companion ruling asserted that the majority-
minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act had been violated.
Perhaps the jumbo shrimp of legis-speak a majority-minority district is one in which the bulk of the residents are racial and/or ethnic minorities. (A district containing less than 50 percent non-Hispanic whites is another way to define a majority-minority district.)
The voting act requires that when an established majority-minority district is changed to where the racial or ethnic minority is no longer the voting majority a replacement district must then be drawn elsewhere.
- The redrawing of the 23rd District reduced the voting age Latino population from a 55 majority to 46.
- Texas mapmakers argued that the newly-drawn 25th District fulfilled the majority-minority district replacement requirements.
But while the 25ths demographics were fulfilled the High Court ruled the 25th stretched in 2003 from Austin south to the border did not satisfy the compactness requirements of redistricting. In order to comply with the Court the bounds of the 23rd 25th and three other districts were again altered making for Texas third and final legislative district map for the first decade of the 21st century.
As touched on earlier the well-publicized well-travelled and well-tested redistricting map of 2003 was instrumental in another not-since-Reconstruction first:
- Republicans won a majority of Texas Congressional Districts following the 2004 elections in a decisive 21-11 tally.
This gain validating in the minds of many the efforts expended to re redistrict was a chief goal of an intertwined and intricate plan.
A plan that involved building a state-level legislative majority to sustain and expand the contracting membership of a federal-bodied majority. And so it is the historic Texas statehouse elections of 2002 were a prime focus of attention for a certain Texas congressman long before they were held.
While conservatives were gaining ground in Texas and other states leading up to and during the start of the new century the federal GOP delegation was shrinking.
Where Republicans were 230 members strong after taking the U.S. House in 1994 the 2000 elections had pared the number down to 221. It wasnt much
of a stretch surmised the congressman from Sugar Land to see the 435-member House swinging back to Democrats in short order.
The slide needed to be reversed or at the very least checked. Holding at the time the U.S. House leadership title of majority whip Tom Delay had deservedly earned a shorter handle.
The Hammer was in full swing by the start of 2001 and results and repercussions would be felt for many years to come ...
A former mayor & State Senate Communications Director Mike Asmus managed the 2010 congressional campaign of Donna Campbell who remains in the hunt for 2012.
