Redistricting Help May Be Illusion
for Endangered House Republicans
Capitol Inside
September 5, 2021
Texas Republicans could find reinforcements in short supply this fall when they attempt to fortify more than a dozen suburban Texas House districts where Democratic President Joe Biden won or came close in 2020.
GOP leaders and lawmakers in Austin face a monumental challenge trying to hold the party's majority in the Texas House in a state where Latinos accounted for 49.5 percent of the population growth in the past decade based on the new U.S. Census count for 2020. A mere 4.7 percent of the state's new residents since 2010 are white.
The Texas population was more than 45 percent white 10 years ago when less than 37 percent was Hispanic. The 2020 Census found Texas to be 39.7 percent white and 39.3 percent Hispanic, 11.8 percent Black and about 9 percent Asian and other. The Republicans will find the low-hanging fruit at an all-time low as a result in terms of the potential pools of GOP voters to shuffle in and out of House districts to preserve their current numbers with little chance for gains.
The GOP - for the first time in three shots as the party in control of redistricting - could be at initial disadvantage in the map design process at the statehouse in Austin as a product of the seismic demographic shift in a state with dwindling reserves of Republicans on whom the majority party could still depend for a successful gerrymandering effort.
The Republicans will find minimal opportunities to bolster nine House seats in districts where Biden beat Donald Trump last fall in suburban districts in the largest metropolitan areas in Texas. The task will be equally complicated in a quartet of House districts in the suburbs of Tarrant County where Trump prevailed by less than 2 percentage points. Democrats were victorious at the top of the Tarrant ticket last year for the first time since Texan Lyndon B. Johnson's election as president in 1964.
The Republicans have complicated their quest to preserve seats in the major Texas suburbs with their almost unanimous support for a summer special session agenda that's being portrayed as an attack on women, minorities and individual freedom and choices.
The agenda that cleared the Legislature in a second special session last month was customized for rural interests and potential Republican primary challengers by foes on the extreme right. The Legislature approved bills this year that will make the suburban House Republicans in swing areas easy targets for allegations of racism with a historically restrictive elections measure that targets Blacks and Hispanics along with a ban on critical race theory - an issue that they've fabricated in recent months for the Trump base.
The Republicans haven't appeared aware or concerned on a growing exodus of moderates from the party into the independent ranks in the aftermath of the Trump election challenge and riot that killed five people including a police officer at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
The special session - as a consequence - could have been a kamikaze mission for suburban Republicans who GOP leaders and rural allies appeared content to sacrifice in exchange for a radically conservative agenda that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has hailed as the foundation for the Texas future with voting restrictions on top of abortion and critical race theory ban as three of the four cornerstones.
The GOP's new election bill is designed to make it harder for Texans in the state's largest cities and suburbs to vote by targeting Black and Hispanic voters. The Republican modeled the voting measure after Trump's baseless claims on voter fraud in an election that he knew he would lose for months before the vote. Abbott and the white male Republicans could backfire dramatically in suburban swing district have given women the suburbs another massive incentive to vote against them in suburbs where the GOP's ban on school masks had already alienated them at record levels.
Governor Greg Abbott's popularity has been tanking since he backed down from the state's fight against COVID-19 and pivoted 180 degrees with the mandate that prohibits local governmental entities from requiring masks and vaccines for the sake of protecting the children, educators, parents and communities with the delta variant raging out of control. The GOP lawmakers' unconditional loyalty to Abbott and Trump doesn't appear be helping them based on a new University of Texas poll that shows the Legislature's disapproval ratings just two points shy of Abbott's own at 48 percent. Only 28 percent of the registered voters in the Texas Politics Project poll approved of the Legislature's performance this summer.
The UT poll found that 52 percent of Texans think the state is on the wrong track compared to 35 percent who see Texas going in the right direction. Forty-five percent of white voters said the state is going the wrong way compared to 43 percent who say Texas is going the direction.
This could be a bad omen for the majority party in a state where the Republicans have been in power for two decades and failed to maintain sufficient infrastructure including a reliable and resillient electricity grid. The Legislature's dreadful poll numbers suggest that Texans - especially those in suburbia - haven't been impressed with the Legislature's focus this year on a right-wing agenda while giving the grid lip service in terms of truly significant improvements during the regular session despite Abbott's claims to the contrary. Another episode this coming winter like the freeze here in February could be the final nail for the majority.
The poll showed that 56 percent of Texans support school mask mandates compared to 35 percent who sided with Abbott and the Republicans. That support is substantially higher in suburban districts where some House Republicans could be out of luck in redistricting as far as making their seats salvageable. Fifty-percent back vaccination requirements for students and staff at Texas schools where 39 percent oppose such mandates.
State Rep. Morgan Meyer of Dallas represents an inner-city district that U.S. Senator Mitt Romney won in 2012 by 20 percentage points as the GOP presidential nominee before Biden defeated Trump by 14 points last fall. Republican map artists might need to be pulling rabbits from hats to save House District 108, where Biden's margin of victory spiked 8 points in 2020.
The only other House Republican in Dallas County - State Rep. Angie Chen Button of Garland - is based in a suburban district where Romney prevailed by a dozen points in 2012 before Biden won there by 1 point four years later. Biden trounced Trump in House District 112 by almost 9 points in 2020. The Republicans might be able to move some voters into Button's district from four surrounding districts that Democrats have flipped in recent years. That would kill the GOP's chances to reclaim them, however.
Republicans could have more wiggle room with a pair of Collin County districts where GOP State Reps. Jeff Leach of Allen and Matt Shaheen of Plano are planning to try to defend in 2022. GOP leaders could shift some GOP voters from neighboring districts that State Reps. Candy Noble of Lucas and Scott Sanford of McKinney represent. The districts that Shaheen and Leach represent now have been mirror images - with Romney winning 24 percent of the vote in both in 2012 and Biden beating Trump in both by 9.1 percentage points last year. HD 66 and HD 67 have both recorded 33 percent over swings of 33 percent in the Democrats' favor at the top of the ticket in the two elections with Trump as the party's nominee for the White House. Meyer has seen the biggest swing against the Republicans in endangered House districts at 34 percent since 2012.
The suburbs in Collin and Denton counties appear to be more of a wild card in the air as an area that appears poised to gain a Texas House seat when lawmakers crafted the new map in a third special session that Abbott is expected to call to get under way around September 20. On the flip side, a district that's located in both Collin and Rockwall with GOP State Rep. Justin Holland of Heath as the incumbent could lose the county where Shaheen and Leach are based on the new map.
But Shaheen and Leach are based in southwest Collin County in districts where Asians account for 26 percent and 20 percent of the population respectively based on estimates in 2019. That could be a problem with Democrats portraying them as racists frequently in light of their votes on the election measure, the critical race theory ban and the state's new abortion prohibition that Biden blasted as un-American late last week. The GOP's most significant challenge in the suburbs north of Dallas could be trying to separate the base conservatives and hordes of moderates who used to be Republicans but call themsleves independents now.
Padding GOP State Rep. Lacey Hull's with Republicans could be tough in a Houston district that's 32 percent white, 47 percent Hispanic and 11 percent Black according to projections. Biden carried HD 138 by 4 percentage points after Romney won there by 20 points in 2012.
The same could be said for HD 132 where Republican State Rep. Mike Schofield of Katy has won twice and lost once in the last three election cycles. Schofield's current district is 37 percent white, 38 percent Hispanic and 17 percent black. HD 132 has 57,000 more residents than the new state House norm at 194,000. But the GOP has to be careful of shedding too many Democrats in HD 132 as a result of the destablizing effect it would have on other suburban swing districts and areas
That's a major problem that the Republicans will encounter in most if not all of the swing districts that they seek to reinforce with GOP voters in the majority protection quest in 2022. The district where rookie Republican Jacey Jetton of Sugar Land expects to run again next year in a district where Romney won by 27 percentage points before Trump prevailed there by mere 5 points in 2016. Trump lost to Biden bt 3 percentage points in HD 26 - a district that's 39 percent white and 30 percent Asian now.
State Reps. Steve Allison of San Antonio and David Cook of Mansfield - a pair of Republicans in districts that Biden won - will have minimal places to turn for help in redistricting as well.
more to come ... |
