GOP Map Aims to Preserve Majority
in Short Run at Party Future Expense

Capitol Inside
September 30, 2021

Texas House leaders unveiled a highly-anticipated redistricting plan on Thursday in a move that seeks to protect the GOP majority and most of the incumbents on both sides of the aisle on a map that appears to be relatively status quo on paper.

The House Republican plan would boost the number of white majority seats by six to 89 at the expense of three Hispanic majority districts and three Black majority seats. The proposal drew immediate criticism from Democrats and minority groups whose members accounted for 95 percent of the populatioln growth in Texas during the past decade.

The Republicans who currently hold 83 House seats would have a chance to flip the Williamson County district that Democratic State Rep. James Talarico of Round Rock represents if the proposal became law in its current shape. State Rep. Ryan Guillen - a veteran Rio Grande City Democrat - landed in a district on the House plan that would be significantly Republican.

The map that GOP State Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Chrsiti proposed today in House Bill 1 would give the Republicans a net gain of three seats on paper based on voting trends and projections. But the GOP would be conceding the Tarrant County seat that rookie Republican State Rep. Jeff Cason of Bedford won last fall in an open race.

The Republicans would expect to pick up the House District 65 seat that Democratic State Rep. Michelle Beckley of Carrolton is relinquishing so she can run for Congress instead in 2022. A fourth targeted Democrat - State Rep. Erin Zwiener of Driftwood - could move across Hays County to run again in her current district that would be located there exclusively.

Democratic State Reps. Claudia Ordaz-Perez and Lina Ortega would be paired on the map that GOP State Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi filed today in House Bill 1. The heavily-Hispanic House District 76 seat that Ordaz-Perez captured in 2020 would be relocated to Fort Bend County where Asians would have a plurality of the population with 33 percent.

While HD 76 would appear to be safely Democrat, the shift would likely cost Hispanics a seat in the Legislature's lower chamber despite the fact that Latinos accounted for 50 percent of the population growth in Texas during the past 10 years based on the 2020 Census count. Hispanics would have a 35 percent plurality in a reconfigured HD 92 where Cason would be a goner with the white population slashed from 48 percent to 26 percent.

The only other proposed pairing in HB 1 would pit GOP State Reps. Kyle Biedermann of Fredericksburg with Terry Wilson of Marble Falls in a dramatically redesigned version of HD 20.

But Biedermann has indicated that he plans to move to Comal County, which he currently represents, so he can run for a new term in HD 73 where Democratic State Rep. Erin Zwiener of Driftwood landed on the Hunter plan. Zwiener could move a few miles to the east to get back in her current district, HD 45, which would be located exclusively in Hays County on the proposed map. She would have no chance to win in the new HD 73.

But incumbent protection was the overriding objective in the first redistricting plan on GOP Speaker Dade Phelan's watch in his first term in the dais. The proposed plan would give most of the endangered suburban Republicans significant infusions of white residents to prop them up for the 2022 election in a move that would accelerate an inevitable takeover by the Democrats in the Capitol's west wing.

The Phelan team was able to minimize the number of districts where two incumbents would be running for re-election next year with recent retirement announcements by Republican State Reps. Chris Paddie of Marshall and Jim Murphy of Houston.

GOP State Reps. Phil King of Weatherford and Glenn Rogers of Graford would be paired in the HB 1 plan. But King plans to run for a Senate seat on a map that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick crafted with GOP State Senator Joan Huffman of Houston as the sponsor. Huffman and Hunter are chairing redistricting committees on their respective sides of the rotunda.

more to come ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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