Texas Chainsaw Gerrymander
BARNES, FRED
Texas Chainsaw Gerrymander It's the Republicans' turn to cut and paste the state map for political advantage. BY FRED BARNES Austin, Texas TEXAS DEMOCRATS are very good at gerrymandering. For...
...It's not that the process is cynical or unsavory...
...You fight...
...Midland county, the oil capital of east Texas and hometown of President Bush, was split among three districts...
...We're at 11:59 and 30 seconds before midnight," a Republican says, without an agreement, and the special session ends in mid-October...
...A three-judge panel produced new district lines for the 2002 election that gave Texas's two new seats to Republicans but otherwise left the old map drawn by Democrats largely intact...
...And they haven't decided how boldly to target incumbent Democrats, particularly Frost...
...And Perry, who says he's "not a mapmak-er," has not forced a compromise...
...Democrats didn't target incumbent Republican congressmen for defeat in 1991...
...But five seats can be gained in Texas for free—unless Republicans screw things up...
...The U.S...
...But rejiggering district lines for partisan gain is an American political tradition...
...Democratic lawyers assured him the case against Republicans was going well, but Republicans won...
...They favor a more cautious approach that spares Frost and leaves the influence districts unaltered...
...He's a relatively conservative Democrat who voted to impeach President Clinton...
...If successful, a lawsuit could upset the entire Republican redistrict-ing effort...
...But Stenholm may not be gone...
...But there are eight white Democrats in the House—Frost, Stenholm, Chet Edwards, Jim Turner, Max Sandlin, Nick Lampson, Lloyd Doggett, Chris Bell—whom Republicans are eager to defeat...
...The lesson here is that reapportionment promises a lot, but nothing is guaranteed...
...Going into exile, Whitmire says, was "bad politics and bad PR...
...Craddick is unmoved...
...In 2001, Democrats gambled they'd be better off blocking redistricting and leaving the matter to federal judges...
...Republicans won 56 percent of the total vote in all House races in Texas last year, but only 15 of 32 individual seats (44 percent...
...But Texas House members, Majority Leader Tom DeLay, party activists, and even Republican governor Rick Perry want to go after Frost anyway...
...The result: Democrats won 17 of 32 seats in 2002...
...ed influential Democratic congressmen such as Martin Frost and charles stenholm and intend to drive them from office by substantially altering their districts...
...Democrats insisted the court's ruling was the final word on redistricting, barring Republicans from enacting a new plan...
...They guessed right...
...But Whitmire, chosen by Texas Monthly as one of the top ten legislators in Austin, was wary...
...They claim he's critical to maintaining federal support for Texas agriculture...
...And they began working anew on reapportionment of House seats when the legislature gathered in January...
...True, it produces politics in its rawest, most partisan, and self-interested form...
...This is the state of the Alamo," says Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News...
...At the same time, Stenholm, the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, has many Republican backers in the farm community...
...Governor Perry, unfavorable polls, and Democratic state senator John Whitmire of Houston...
...House Speaker Tom Craddick of Midland is willing to let reapportionment die unless a new Midland congressional district to his liking is drawn...
...And Republicans say they have devised a way around the legal pitfalls...
...The other significant factor is that gerrymandering often doesn't work as expected...
...I'm more interested in Waco," which is Democrat Chet Edwards's district...
...This plan would make it impossible to target Democratic representative Lloyd Doggett of Austin, a noisy liberal...
...The removal of Frost might gain a sixth new Republican seat, but legislators believe the attempt would look greedy...
...Now Republicans—having won all 27 statewide offices and gained control of both houses of the legislature in 2002—are bent on undoing the Democratic handiwork, and then some...
...In 1991 Democrats packed as many Republican voters as possible into a few misshapen districts...
...They've subdued the Democrats: Another walkout is unlikely...
...In Texas, the uncertainty of gerrymandering is exemplified by Sten-holm...
...Once the polls turned negative and a judge ruled Republicans were entitled to draw a new redistricting map, Whitmire acted...
...There are three obstacles to passing a redistrict-ing bill, and after working on reapportionment for nine months, Republicans have overcome only one...
...They concentrated on winning three new seats created by population growth...
...But Republicans have targetFred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Then there's the Frost issue...
...What every Republican redis-tricting proposal has in common is an effort to defeat Stenholm...
...He's insisted on this for months, but Lt...
...Republicans would be hard pressed to fashion a more Republican district for Stenholm...
...You don't run...
...Instead, they would target east Texas Democrats Turner, San-dlin, and Lampson, along with Edwards in the central part of the state and Stenholm in west Texas...
...Texans overwhelmingly frowned on the tactic of leaving the state (by 2-to-1 in polls) and the Democrats came home in September...
...Changing these "influence districts" would require Justice Department approval and undoubtedly prompt a legal challenge by Democrats...
...No matter what we do, he may still win...
...He wants Lubbock in a separate district so it can't dominate Midland in Republican or congressional politics...
...Whitmire asked a MoveOn.org representative...
...It was when Republicans went ahead nonetheless that Democratic legislators began their migrations out of state...
...The problem is time...
...It was endorsed by the Republican congressional delegation and one of his statehouse allies...
...Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that redistricting plans should accommodate districts "where minority voters may not be able to elect a candidate of their choice but can play a substantial, if not decisive, role in the process...
...Joe Barton, which crawled through the outskirts of Fort Worth like a weed, was one of the least compact in American political history...
...Mac Thornberry's district, but Thornberry didn't like the shape of the reconfigured district...
...Democrats in the legislature made a histrionic effort to prevent a vote on redistricting by fleeing the state this summer, first to oklahoma, then to New Mexico...
...The prospect of major Republican gains makes Texas more important than the other 49 states combined in the 2004 House elections...
...Perry refused to yield, calling three special legislative sessions to keep the pressure on absent Democrats...
...Adds Perry: "I'm not worried about Texas being shorted...
...First elected in 1978, he's survived serious Republican challenges before...
...When Charlie Stenholm is gone, Texas will still be Texas and we'll be fine...
...Craddick rejected it...
...Republican chances of picking up as many as five seats outside of Texas are slim...
...Frost lives in such a district in Dallas, as does Democratic congressman Bell in Houston...
...Yet Stenholm got 59 percent in 2000 and scraped by with 51 percent in 2002 despite a Republican landslide in the state...
...The district of Republican Rep...
...A Republican strategist in Texas noted that the National Republican Campaign Committee will spend $50 to $60 million on House races in 2004 and produce little...
...MoveOn.org, the left-wing group, promised to publicize the story of Texas Democrats nationally...
...Which ones might be ousted depends on the redistricting map Republicans adopt...
...If another session is called, filing deadlines and the March 7 primary will have to be pushed back...
...Many Republican legislators here regard the get-Frost plan as dangerous overreaching...
...House of Representatives by manipulating district lines to minimize seats the growing Republican party could win...
...But they haven't found a way around the bitter disagreement over a new district centered on Midland...
...one Hispanic seat is held by Republican Henry Bonilla, another by white Democrat Gene Green...
...So their tack is to give him as much new territory as possible where voters don't know him...
...It didn't in Georgia last year, where two freshly minted Democratic districts were won by Republicans...
...And Frost, a smart and effective Democratic leader in Washington, would be stashed in a Republican-leaning district...
...He was shown a proposed map last week with a new Midland district...
...Exiled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Whitmire and the other Democratic state senators had become heroes to Democrats across the country...
...Stenholm's current district is rated by political analyst Charles Cook as one of the most reliably Republican in the country...
...There just aren't enough competitive seats to target...
...This drew highly favorable media attention, with the national press instantly falling for the notion that Texas Democrats were embattled defenders of representative government...
...A potential pickup of five seats is fine with Republican legislators...
...Just a few months ago, Democratic opposition in the statehouse seemed insurmountable...
...David Dewhurst and state senate Republicans have balked...
...They might...
...Republicans can't touch the seven Hispanic and two black districts, which are protected by the Voting Rights Act...
...hatever Republicans do, there's still another difficulty with gerrymandering to be considered...
...Perry stared them down," says Jim Ellis, director of DeLay's political action committee, ARMPAC...
...But, as a Republican operative declared, "one Frost is worth five Doggetts...
...What about Waco...
...Both sides do it with a vengeance...
...If they succeed in reapportionment, they expect to capture 20 or 21 seats (more than 60 percent...
...They'd replace Democratic gerrymandering with Republican gerrymandering and go one step further...
...Last week the legislators lost the argument and the get-Frost plan was adopted...
...Stenholm's foes respond that Texas is well protected by DeLay and Bonilla, the chairman of the House agricultural appropriations subcommittee...
...What brought them back...
...Republicans were frustrated and furious...
...Whitmire's defection left Republicans to deal with their own problems, in particular the question of a new Midland district and the Frost issue...
...one plan would have put him in Republican Rep...
...So Whit-mire returned to Texas, providing a quorum in the state senate and thus allowing a vote on redistricting...
...Sten-holm is popular," a Republican operative concedes...
...In fact, Democrats were merely seeking to preserve the old Democratic gerrymander...
...President Bush won 72 percent of the district's vote in 2000...
...I'm a very good Democrat, but we just didn't have an exit plan...
...By creating a new black district in Houston and a new Hispanic district in south Texas, Republicans believe any loss of influence by minority voters would be more than offset...
...For decades, they shamelessly suppressed Republican prospects in the U.s...
Vol. 9 • October 2003 • No. 5
