Texas Democrats are in a snit over Republican plans to redraw Texas’s congressional districts to elect more Republicans in 2022. Too bad, so sad. That’s politics.
The Constitution of the United States requires the completion of a national census every 10 years, and the reallocation of congressional districts among the states to account for changing state populations. Every state is guaranteed at least one seat in the U. S. House of Representatives, but the larger a state’s population, the more seats it gets. Federal law caps the size of the House at 435 seats. So if one state’s population growth entitles it to more seats, other states with less growth, or with negative growth, must give up seats as well. For example, since World War 2, the size of Texas’s congressional delegation has grown from 21 to 38, as befits one of the nation’s most rapidly growing states. On the other hand, the size of New York’s congressional delegation, the nation’s largest in 1948, has shrunk from 45 to 26 (Bonus fun fact: Over the same time period, the size of California’s congressional delegation grew from 23 to 53 following the 2010 census, but the 2020 census dictates it must now lose a seat for the first time in history).
The big question before the Texas legislature is to determine how to redraw Texas’s congressional districts to create its 2 new districts. The legislature’s answer is both obvious and predictable: Redraw the district boundaries to create 2 two districts likely to elect Republicans in 2022. In other words, gerrymander.
To gerrymander is to draw election district boundary lines to achieve a political goal. The most common form of gerrymandering is partisan gerrymandering. Those who practice it want to maximize the seats their party can win at the expense of the opposition party. The practice, incidentally, was named after Elbridge Gerry, a 19th century governor of Massachusetts who directed the state legislature to redraw districts to increase the number of Democratic-Republicans Massachusetts would send to Congress in the elections of 1812. One district looked like a salamander; Gerry’s opponents called it a gerrymander and the process that produced it gerrymandering. The Texas Republicans, holding the trifecta of the governorship and majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, want to follow Elbridge’s example.
And this is only natural. In many states where a given party holds the trifecta, the dominant party is using its power to promote partisan gerrymandering. It matters not whether the dominant party is the Republican or the Democratic party. Both parties do it. For example, in Maryland, one of the bluest of blue states, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1, the state legislature is doing its best to eliminate the lone Republican district in the state. So what Texas Republicans are doing is only normal, natural, and a Democratic practice where Democrats predominate.
But Democrats in our state legislature are objecting and challenging the Republican plan in court. They argue that since 95% of Texas’s population growth is due to the growth of its Hispanic population, the two new districts should be “minority opportunity” districts and predominantly Hispanic.
How successful the Democratic challenge to the Republican redistricting plan will be is not altogether clear and remains to be seen. Historically the Supreme Court has been reluctant to “enter the political thicket” of redistricting and hence has accepted as constitutional the practice of partisan gerrymandering. But where race is an issue, the Supreme Court has sometimes said that to use redistricting to primarily suppress the chances of minority group members winning election may unconstitutionally deprive minorities of the equal protection of the law.
But there’s a strong relationship between race and party preferences. About two thirds of Anglos are Republicans while about nine tenths of Blacks are Democrats. About 60% of Hispanics are also Democrats. So how can one determine if a gerrymandering plan which produces more Anglo-Republican seats is a constitutionally acceptable plan to hurt Democrats, or an unconstitutional plan to hurt the minorities who support Democrats? Supreme Court rulings on this matter, taken together, seem arbitrary, contradictory, and incoherent. The clearest statement to have emerged from this ticket, or swamp, of rulings is Justice Clarence Thomas’s assertion that “A jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the state were conscious of that fact.”
So what does this all mean for Texas Democrats and Republicans? The Democrats’ best strategy, should they choose to pursue it, is to argue that the creation of more Anglo districts discriminates against Hispanics on the basis of race by reducing the opportunity to elect more Texas Hispanics to Congress. The best Republican counterargument is to claim that the real goal of the Democrats is not to provide more “minority opportunities” but to elect more Democrats—a perfectly reasonable goal if the Democrats were to become the predominant party, but since the Republicans are currently predominant, it is also both reasonable and constitutional for them to block the Democrats and promote themselves.
The Republicans will probably prevail, given Justice Thomas’s views and the fact that the Republicans currently hold a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. But given the Supreme Court’s proven incoherence on this matter, neither party should consider victory or defeat a foregone conclusion. The only certainty is that should the Democrats once again capture the Texas trifecta, they will follow the common blue state practice and do unto the Republicans as the Republicans intend to do unto them. That’s politics.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville and taught politics and government at Tarleton since 1987. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990 to the present). He was Mayor Pro Tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He is a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Stephenville Rotary Club, and does volunteer work for the Boy Scouts of America. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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