Texas Redistricting Trial Shows Anti-Latino GOP Policies

The fundamental reason we have a Census every 10 years is to determine how many seats each state will have in the United States House of Representatives. After the Census numbers are finalized then each state government is notified if they have gained, lost, or maintained seats in that august body. This year Texas was the big winner picking up four new congressional seats. This increase was attributed to the population growth Texas has enjoyed over the last ten years, 90% of was due to Latinos.

Latinos have higher birth rates, lower death rates and more immigration than any other social groups in Texas. As a result the Latino communities in the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso, Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth and San Antonio have grown dramatically over the last decade. Some observers, mostly Latinos, concluded that all of this growth rate would lead Texas congressional map drawers (we usually know them by their derogatory appellation “gerrymanderers”) to draw at least three of the new districts in the high Latino growth areas.

¡Bueno, no lo hicieron!

The guys, because the process is controlled by Republican state legislators, didn’t draw Latino majority districts. Instead they decided to get revenge on one of the only two white Democratic congressmen who has been giving them a hard time, Lloyd Doggett, by drawing him right out of his district and created one that would make him run against a Latino, Joaquín Castro. This political act was intended to not simply drive Doggett out of Congress, but to set the Latino community against white Democrats.

The other three districts were designed to elect white Republicans. Essentially, only one of the districts was designed so that Latinos could elect a candidate of their choice to office. The Republican gerrymanderers had been doing this for the last 40 years by stuffing large numbers of Latinos into traditionally Democratic districts, known as “packing.”

Another redistricting trick was to slice up traditional Latino communities and spreading the parts among a variety of both Democratic and Republican districts which guaranteed that Latinos would always remain a numerical minority in those districts, this is known as “cracking.” No wonder Latinos sued the State of Texas in federal district court. 

The trial just ended and was very interesting to observe because, although I’m a political science guy, I came away with a much better understanding of Texas politics over the last 40 years than I thought I would.

These are some of my conclusions:

• Democrats and Republicans had been using Latinos to keep themselves in congressional power and in control of both state chambers by packing and cracking for the past 40 years.
• In the 2001 through 2006 redistricting rounds, Latinos did not have a committed and passionate litigator with lots of resources who would argue their right to representation regardless of political partisanship (this part is super important).
• The Texas congressional redistricting trial is part of a larger national strategy that Republicans have to control all levels of government.
• That Republicans have been anti-Latino regardless of their rhetoric and regardless of the intentions of some reasonable, rational individual Republicans.

Over the next several weeks I will be discussing each of these conclusions in great detail. The reason I have been quiet until now is that I was a witness in this trial, so I really could not share my perceptions, observations or conclusions without jeopardizing my situation and that of the legal team that I was working with until now.

I am not new to this process, I testified in both the 1991 and 2003 rounds of redistricting so that makes me a 30-year veteran of what have come to be known as the “Redistricting Wars.” There have been some amazing revelations in all of these trials but few have really been spoken of by a Latino who has played a part, albeit a small part, in the fight for Latino Voting Rights during this timeframe. Well, camaradas, that is about to change. Hang on to your seats because over the next several weeks I will be sharing some redistricting stories that rarely have seen the light of day.

Hasta luego.