Texas Redistricting in Review
How bad is it really, and what are some of the bright spots? Also, Gobble Gobble.
Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome to the FIRST EDITION of Waco Can’t Wait, a progressive newsletter focusing on Mclennan County, Texas, and Federal politics. I will be providing a “Week In Review” of important news, a preview of upcoming allied events in Waco/McLennan County, and my own commentary on things that are happening.
I have been looking forward to doing a deep dive into how Texas Redistricting has affected McLennan County, what the statewide landscape looks like, and what some bright spots might be. If you’re looking for a distraction from your family, this should surely suffice.
But first, let’s look at the news!
Week in review (a collection of articles from Waco, Texas, and beyond)
Waco:
Cary Dupuy has announced his resignation from the Waco ISD Board of Trustees, and there is now a vacancy on the Board for the fourth time in three years. It is worth mentioning that Hope Balfa Mustakim1, DuPuy’s opponent in November 2020, called for DuPuy to commit to serving his full term if he won reelection. He would not make that commitment then, and it is clear where he stands on the issue now.
Where does that leave us? The Board of Trustees needs to call a special election for this seat during the regularly scheduled May 2021 election, and it needs to leave this seat vacant until then. Waco ISD voters deserve a real choice for this seat, and their judgment should not be substituted by the Board’s. The next Public Hearing is on November 30 from 6:00-7:00pm, and the next School Board Meeting is on December 16 from 6:00-8:00 pm. If you have opinions, bring them. (Also, please share my letter to the editor published this morning concerning this issue.)
Erin Shank has launched her candidacy for State House District 56. Erin has been a bankruptcy attorney in Central Texas for over 40 years and a committed Democratic activist in McLennan County for as long as I have known her. I hope you’ll consider checking out her campaign, making a contribution, and signing up to volunteer for a great local candidate.
Texas:
It is official. Beto O’Rourke is running for Texas Governor, and it goes without saying that Texas Democrats are excited. He raised $2,000,000 in the first 24 hours, and the money faucet shows no signs of stopping. Beto will bring energy, volunteer power, and financial support to a midterm that was already going to be very difficult for Democrats. I am also excited to bust out my Beto merchandise.
BUT, it is not all good news for Texas Democrats.
Longtime RGV Democrat Ryan Guillen has left the Democratic Party, and switched to the Republican Party. In 2020, Guillen won in his district by 17 points while Trump won his seat by 13 points. After redistricting, his seat was changed to a Trump +25 district. During this last legislative session, Guillen was the most conservative member of the House Democratic Caucus, voting for permitless carry and the transgender athlete ban. Donald Trump has since endorsed Guillen. This topic merits more discussion, but Democrats should be very weary about the political leanings of South Texas in 2022.
Elsewhere:
Biden has signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, and the House passed Biden’s Build Back Better bill. These bills will invest trillions of dollars into our physical and human infrastructure, providing support for families, a response to a warming climate, and more resilient roads and bridges. That said, the work is not over. The Senate will begin their consideration of the bill soon, and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will surely take a whack at it. Stay tuned.
Let’s talk about redistricting!
Starting with McLennan County, Republicans have made it all but impossible for a Democrat to represent our community at the state or federal level.2 Let’s take a look at McLennan County’s representation in each chamber:
State House Districts 56 & 13 (so long Kyle Kacal)
Texas House District 56, represented by Doc Anderson, did not seem like it could get any redder than it already was. But where there’s a Republican, there’s a way.
By adding the cities of Gholson, Ross, and West, this seat went from Trump winning by 28.2% to 30.5%. Similar to the old HD 56, the City of Waco remains cut in half, with the most heavily democratic precincts in the city going into the newly drawn House District 13.
Charles “Doc” Anderson has represented HD 56 since 2004, when he narrowly defeated John Mabry, the democratic incumbent, 53% to Mabry’s 46%. Mabry attempted a comeback during the Republican Wave of 2010 and was defeated by a wider margin of 58.47% to 37.88%. Since then, Doc has had little to worry about in terms of reelection, and it shows in his performance. He was labeled as “furniture” by the Texas Monthly in 2005 and 2009 for being indistinguishable from his chair.
Lucky for us, we’ve had some brave challengers to Doc in recent years (shout out to Katherine Turner-Pearson), and Erin Shank appears to be our presumptive nominee for 2022. This will be an extremely tough race for our Democratic nominee, but hopefully the campaign can be a platform to highlight real issues in McLennan County.
The big news is that the portion of McLennan county not in HD 56, which Biden won by 12.2%, will no longer be included in House District 12 (which ran from Waco to College Station). House District 12 is currently represented by College Station Republican, Kyle Kacal. As of the 87th legislative session, Kyle Kacal was ranked the third most moderate Republican in the Texas House out of 82 members, despite representing a seat that Trump won by 31.4%. I don’t want to give him too much credit though, because it doesn’t take much to distinguish yourself from the current Texas Republican Party.3
The newly created House District 13 has some significant overlap with the old House District 12, but it lacks Robertson and Brazos counties, while adding Bosque, Hill, Freestone, and Leon counties. The kicker is that Trump won this district by 43.2%, making it the 27th most conservative district in the Texas House. Not even Joe Manchin could win this seat.
This new district also has no incumbent, and the Republican Primary is starting to take shape. Two candidates have filed for the Republican Primary (so far): Angelia Orr and Joe J. Williams (Williams appears to have filed for the old House District 13 represented by Ben Leman, so he will likely not be a part of this race).
Angelia Orr is a resident of Itasca in Hill County. In 2010, she became Hill County’s District Clerk, and in 2018 she resigned to become the District Director for State Representative Cody Harris of Palestine (the 15th most conservative Republican in the House).4 When Harris was a freshman in the Texas House, his top priority was a bill allowing foster parents to store their guns and bullets in the same firearm safe. Orr’s endorsements so far include State Representative Harris, Congressman Roger Williams, and former Congressman Bill Flores. Here is some more information on her from the Waco Tribune and the Hillsboro Reporter.
It remains to be seen who else will file for this seat, but it seems like a foregone conclusion that whoever wins the Republican Primary will be the next representative for this seat. If Orr is anything like her current boss, then we should be deeply concerned.
State Senate District 22 (A Birdwell in the hand may be worse than two in the bush)
The new Senate District 22 makes no changes to McLennan County, but does have some significant changes in the northern portion. While McLennan County remains untouched, the new SD 22 loses Navarro, Johnson, and portions of Ellis counties, while adding Comanche, Eastland, Erath, and Hamilton. Also, the Tarrant County portion of the district (a little blue sliver) runs a little deeper into the DFW metroplex, capturing more blue voting precincts in the process.
Some good news is that this seat is significantly bluer than the old SD 22, moving from a seat that Trump won by 32.2% to only 21.9%. On top of that, this seat is trending left from 2016, thanks to growing Democratic strength in Tarrant county and the fast growing exurban counties around DFW. Brian Birdwell has already announced that he will run for reelection, and no Democrat has filed for this seat. Any Democrat that does would face serious challenges, one of them being that Texas Senate Districts are bigger than our Congressional Districts. A candidate would have to put up some serious money and have a sophisticated ground game to properly contest this seat.
17th Congressional District (Pete Sessions is still the worst)
Texas’ 17th Congressional District (TX-17) has seen some serious movement in the past decade. Like many other seats originally designed to crack up Democratic voting strength in the big cities, this maneuver began to backfire when Travis county continued to grow faster than the rest of the state while also putting up serious numbers for Democrats. Brazos and McLennan County have also been trending left, thanks to shifts in voting behavior and increased activity on college campuses.
In 2010, Bill Flores defeated Chet Edwards 61.8% to 36.6% in the midst of the Republican Wave. Chet was a great statesman who built a strong political brand based on moderation and providing for his constituents. Despite his proven record of bipartisanship and preserving benefits for veterans, Chet could not overcome the precipitous decline in ticket splitting in 2010.
Fast forward to 2020, and two-time challenger Rick Kennedy was able to put up a respectable showing of 40.9% to Session’s 55.9%. Further up the ballot, Biden was able to win 43.5% of the vote to Trump’s 54.5%.
Perhaps in a couple more cycles, the right candidate and a good national environment could make this seat more competitive. Alas, Republicans “appear” to have learned their lesson from the last redistricting cycle, and have instead opted for an incumbent protection plan that creates mostly Safe Republican seats in lieu of more Lean/Likely Republican seats. This includes the new TX-37, a Democratic vote sink in the heart of Travis county that voted for Biden by 52.6%.
In this vein of incumbent protection, our TX-17 undergoes a serious makeover. TX-17 loses Bastrop, Burleson, Lee, and portions of Brazos and Freestone counties, while adding Angelina, Houston, Trinity, Nacogdoches, and portions of Walker and Williamson counties. You guessed it, it looks ugly as Hell.
Using 2020 election results, TX-17 would go from voting for Trump by 11% to 22.6%. These numbers look pretty good for Pete Sessions, which isn’t good news for his aggrieved constituents. Sessions is one of the 100+ Republicans that refused to certify the 2020 election results, alleging fictitious voter fraud. Sessions also recently cited his opposition to the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure package, claiming that he would not support it because a portion of the money went towards servicing public housing in New York City. This is despite the fact that the bill contains money for high-speed internet in rural communities, removal of lead pipes, repairs for roads/bridges, and (importantly for Texas) a much needed upgrade to our power infrastructure (including weather resilient transmission lines, increased capacity from renewables, and thousands of jobs). But I digress.
Besides our crummy districts, what do Democrats have to look forward to?
Despite our own lack of representation in the Texas House, I believe Democrats statewide should be incredibly optimistic about our prospects for flipping the Texas House within the decade. Here is why:
Unlike the State Senate and Congressional seats, lawmakers drawing districts for the Texas House need to abide by Section 26, Article III of the Texas Constitution, otherwise known as the County Line Rule. The County Line Rule requires that, in addition to compliance with the one-person, one-vote standard mandated by the 14th amendment and the Voting Rights Act:
A county with sufficient population for exactly one district must be formed into a single district;
A county with a population smaller than the population needed for a whole district must be kept whole and combined with one or more contiguous counties to form a district;
A county that has sufficient population for two or more whole districts must be divided into that number of districts, with no district extending into another county; and
Each county with a population sufficient for one or more whole districts plus a fraction of another district must be divided into that many whole districts, with the excess population added to one or more contiguous counties to form an additional district.
The County Line Rule prevents Republicans from seriously diluting the partisan voting strength of Democrats in highly populated counties. Though they can still try to maximize partisan advantage within the counties, this can prove increasingly difficult when the county is either deeply Democratic, or has certain portions that are rapidly shifting left.
Two good examples of this are Dallas and Collin counties. In Dallas, where Biden won by 31.6%, Republicans were only able to squeeze out two Trump-leaning districts out of 14 total, and those two seats are projected to go to Democrats in the long-run. In Republican Collin county, where Biden won an impressive 46.92% of the vote and outperformed Trump in two Republican-held state house seats, Republicans had to sacrifice one of their seats to create a Democratic vote sink. To leave all of the seats as they were could have seriously endangered several incumbents, and Republicans opted for the safer route.5
Looking to this diagram below, the districts’ partisan lean follow a roughly linear distribution, and there are 68 Lean Republican districts, 62 Lean Democratic, and 20 districts within the range of being Competitive (45-55%). Compare this to the State Senate map, where 19 districts Lean Republican, 12 districts Lean Democratic, and NONE are Competitive. Given the Trump-Biden vote shares in 2020, you would expect something close to 69-70 Democratic seats and 80-81 Republican seats being a fair apportionment in the House.
Here is where it gets REALLY exciting.
54% of Texas residents live in counties that Joe Biden won in 2020. In counties that Biden either narrowly won or had 40+% of the vote share, we saw major swings from 2016 to 2020, including:
Williamson County —> D +10
Hays County —> D +12
Denton County —> D +12
Collin County —> D +13
Tarrant County —> D +9.2
What does this mean? This means that Democrats have a really strong chance to take back the Texas House within the decade, and it is actually possible to do this without winning a majority of votes for their candidates! How is that possible? Well, we kind of already did it in 2018. Even though Beto only won 48.3% of the vote statewide during his senate run, he actually won a majority of the vote in 76 of the 150 state house seats. There are a couple of reasons for this:
By the end of the decade, we were starting to see wide differences in population between all of the different districts. The districts that were growing quickly and had exceeded what should have been the statewide average happened to be seats that were also trending Democratic. The lack of up-to-date apportionment worked in our favor to help Beto win a class of seats that would have never been competitive in 2010.
Democrats benefit from their districts having a higher proportion of non-US citizens (undocumented or otherwise) that count towards the population for purposes of representation (but cannot vote). This means that we can have a lot of solidly democratic seats even without a high number of eligible voters.
Many Democratic districts vote at lower rates than their Republican counterparts, which can be for a variety of reasons including poverty, lack of voter access, discriminatory laws, etc.
Overall, I am feeling optimistic that we can retake the lower chamber before the next redistricting cycle given the current distribution of Democratic voters. Perhaps a split legislature would finally create an independent redistricting commission. A man can dream.
I want to disclose that this Spring, I will be working on Hope’s campaign for Waco ISD Board of Trustees, District IV (currently held by Trustee Angela Tekell). I don’t claim to be unbiased, and I will disclose my connections to candidates when necessary.
If you would like a more detailed look at some interactive maps, the Texas Tribune has created a great tool that allows you to look up your address and see who represents you. I will also be referring to the finalized maps that have been recreated in Dave’s Redistricting App by @JudahFromTexas. Here are the links for the State Senate, State House, and Congressional maps.
Sadly, the only people more moderate than Kacal, Lyle Larson and Dan Huberty, have both declined to run for reelection. Larson cited his self-imposed term limit, while Huberty is facing some heat back home for his drunk driving incident.
Orr is also a former school board trustee.
It also helped that State Rep. Scott Sanford announced his retirement, which opened up a free seat to play with.