Texas Republicans release proposal for new districts

A woman walks in the heavily Latino section of Oak Cliff in Dallas, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. Texas this week will begin redrawing congressional lines, and Latino advocates and officeholders say it's time to correct past wrongs. The state's explosive population growth over the past decade, half of which comes from Latinos, has earned it two new congressional seats. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
A woman walks in the heavily Latino section of Oak Cliff in Dallas, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. Texas this week will begin redrawing congressional lines, and Latino advocates and officeholders say it's time to correct past wrongs. The state's explosive population growth over the past decade, half of which comes from Latinos, has earned it two new congressional seats. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

DALLAS - Republicans have proposed new congressional boundaries that provide protection for North Texas incumbents, but doesn't give the fast-growing Dallas/Fort Worth area one of two new seats earmarked for the Lone Star State.

Despite the remarkable population growth powered by minority residents in the Dallas/Fort Worth region, Republican lawmakers opted to slate the new districts for the Austin and Houston areas. The Austin-area seat would be favorable to a Democratic candidate, while the new Houston-area district is overwhelmingly Republican. Neither new seat would be in a minority opportunity district, even though the vast majority of the population growth in Texas was propelled by Hispanic residents.

Leaders of Hispanic advocacy groups have already blasted the maps as discriminatory and vow legal challenges, if the Texas Legislature approves the plan.

"Ninety-five percent of the growth for Texas is Hispanic, but there's no additional Hispanic districts in this proposal," said Domingo Garcia, the national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Garcia said LULAC's preliminary evaluation is that out of 38 congressional districts, Hispanic voters would have the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice in seven of them, which would be down from the eight Latino opportunity districts currently in place for Texas' 36 congressional districts.

The Dallas lawyer and former state representative said both of the new districts should have been drawn to empower Latino voters-one in South Texas and the other in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

"Clearly there's overt racial discrimination and gerrymandering by the Republican majority," Garcia said of the new redistricting proposal. "They are cracking and packing districts to benefit incumbents and maintain a robust Republican, white majority.

Garcia predicted that the map as drawn would not survive a court battle.

"We've mounted legal challenges to every redistricting map since 1970 and prevailed," Garcia said. "We'll do it again because we're seeing the same pattern of intentional discrimination against the disenfranchised."

Based on population and vote share, Garcia and many analysts say Democrats - under fair maps - should have the opportunity to win 18 seats. The proposed boundaries would give the party a shot at up to 14 seats, according to the analytical website called Dave's Redistricting.

Right now Republicans enjoy a 23-13 advantage in Congress. Under the proposed maps, they would have a 24-14 majority in the delegation. Congressional District 15 in South Texas would be the state's lone swing district. That area, represented by Vicente Gonzalez, has become favorable to Republican candidates.

The new boundaries would protect the Republican majority in the Texas delegation to Congress by bolstering urban/suburban districts with Republican voters, where the GOP is experiencing diminished clout.

In North Texas, for instance, several Republican districts that were considered battlegrounds have been fortified for GOP incumbents. In 2020 Republican incumbent Beth Van Duyne beat Democrat Candace Valenzuela in a district President Joe Biden won over Donald Trump by a 52% to 47% margin. Under the new redistricting proposal, Van Duyne would now be in a district that Trump, the former president, won 55% to 43%.

Republican Van Taylor, who represents Collin County's District 3, is now in an area that Trump won 57% to 44%. That district, with its fast-growing minority population, had been trending in the direction of Democrats.

"For North Texas, it would be shocking if a single seat is even competitive in 2022, let alone switches hands," said David de la Fuente, a senior political analyst in the Social Policy and Politics Program at the left-center group Third Way. "This looks like it's going to stay three Democrats and everything else is Republican."

Incumbent Democrats in North Texas are also protected under the new proposal. In 2018 Colin Allred wrestled the northern and eastern Dallas County District 32 away Republican Pete Sessions and followed-up that victory in 2020 with a win over Van Duyne. But that battleground area has been changed to a district that Biden won by a whopping 66% to 33%. Biden got 75% of the vote in Congressional District 33, a seat now held by Democratic incumbent Marc Veasey. As proposed, Black voters anchored in Tarrant County would still control the district that has a large Hispanic population.

As in the current map, the proposed map would carve Dallas County among six districts, represented by three Democrats and three Republicans. The new map packs non-Anglo Dallas County voters into the districts represented by three Black lawmakers, Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, Allred and Veasey.

Allred's district is just 36% Anglo. Johnson's is 18%. Veasey's is 13%.

"As a concept, this is a status quo map," said Matt Angle, director of the Democratic research group called the Lone Star Project. "It's terribly drawn. It looks like it's drawn by somebody who hasn't been to Texas. The question: Is this is serious map or just a decoy at this point."

Despite the map's protection of North Texas incumbents, two GOP-held districts in North Texas could be toss-ups within a few years. Congressional District 6, held by freshman Rep. Jake Ellzey, would become minority-majority under the new map, with non-Anglos comprising 52.6% of the voting age population. And the 5th District, held by Rep. Lance Gooden of Terrell, is on the cusp. That district takes in a quarter-million Black and Hispanic residents of Dallas County but dilutes them with rural white voters from counties to the east, leaving a 52.5% Anglo majority.

Meanwhile, some North Texas leaders will likely cry foul over not getting one of the two new congressional seats.

Angle said the map "disrespects Latino voters" by giving one of the new congressional seats to white Democrats in the Austin area and one to white Republicans in the Houston area.

De le Fuente said the proposal ignores population trends.

"More people have moved to DFW than anywhere else in Texas or in the country," de la Fuente said. "If you look at the population growth in DFW over the last decade, it was essentially the same as how many people live in a congressional district in this country, so DFW should have gotten a new seat."

De le Fuente said politics got in the way of drawing fair maps.

"The reason DFW didn't gain a new seat that was rightfully the area's was Republicans put partisan interest over people DFW," he said.

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