House Map Seeks to Bolster
Unjustified White Rural Clout

Capitol Inside
October 7, 2021

Rookie Republican State Rep. David Spiller of Jacksboro could end up getting stuck in rush hour traffic in Fort Worth if he tried to travel on a weekday from one end of his rural district to the other if a map that the Texas House will debate on Tuesday becomes law. Spiller might need four or five hours or more to drive from Gainesville on the Oklahoma border to Lampasas in the southern end of House District 68 in the Hill Country not far from Austin on the map that cleared the Redistricting Committee this week on an 8-6 party line vote.

HD 68 would be a top candidate for a suburban conversion if rural West Texas were to lose two House seats like it deserved to do based on the 2020 Census count. But the map that's on the table now would keep all of northwest and central West Texas white, rural and Republican with the district that freshman GOP State Rep. Glenn Rogers of Graford represents as the lone exception. Rogers' home base in House District 60 would be one of the ruling Republicans' new hybrid seats in PLANH2176 with 80 percent of the new residents based in the suburbs west of Fort Worth in Parker County.

East Texas didn't fare quite as well as a region that would be saying goodbye to at least two House seats on a map that reflected Texas in 2021. But East Texas would come out better than it should on the new map with only one House district exported to the big city suburbs where it's designed to remain Republican.

While HD 68 might seem to raise the bar on the art of the gerrymander for the protection of rural Republican incumbents, the district that GOP State Rep. Phil Stephenson of Wharton represents may be the epitome as a seat that's turned suburban over the course of the past decade but would become rural again in HB 1.

Almost 72 percent of Stephenson's current constituents in House District 85 are located in Fort Bend County in suburbs like Sugar Land, Richmond and Rosenburg on the southwestern outskirts of the Houston area. Fort Bend County would account for less than 15 percent of the HD 85 population in the proposed House plan.

The original and revised plans have Stephenson listed as a resident of House District 26 where he would be paired with rookie GOP State Rep. Jacey Jetton of Sugar Land if that had been correct. But Stephenson has been a resident of Wharton County and would be running again in HD 85 on the proposed current map unless he's moved to Fort Bend County in a move that would be kamakazi.

But Stephenson would regain his rural roots without the need for a residence change in a newly-proposed HD 85 that would gain 75,000 mostly-white people in Austin, Colorado and Fayette counties while shedding 115,000 residents in Fort Bend County where 75 percent of his constituents who are eligible to vote are Hispanic, Black or Asian. But HD 85 would have fewer than 30,000 people in Fort Bend County in the committee substitute for HB 1.

Sponsored by GOP State Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi, HB 1 gained a Democratic-leaning swing district in Collin County in the map that the Redistricting Committee that he chairs endorsed on Tuesday after a tense 16 hour hearing that began the previous day. Hunter, a former Democrat, said that the altered version of HB 1 would create two new Hispanic seats and one new district that Blacks would be in position to control.

The proposal that's on the House calendar five days from now would convert two GOP districts in Denton and Collin counties from Republican to Democrat in a move that could leave the majority party with a net gain of one or two seats based on current estimates. But the move is more self-serving than altruistic because it would bolster the other GOP districts in the state's two fastest-growing suburban counties.

House District 76, which would be shipped from El Paso to Fort Bend County, would have the first Asian plurality on the lower chamber map. In a state where 50 percent of the new residents in the past decade have been Hispanics, Democratic State Reps. Claudia Ordaz Perez and Lina Ortega would be paired in the El Paso area in the aftermath of the loss of a House seat there.