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The Associated Press

POLITICS 3 HRS AGO

Texas Democrats won 47% of votes in congressional

races. Should they have more than 13 of 36 seats?
Todd J. Gillman, Washington Bureau Chief

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Updated Saturday at 4:20 p.m. with more examples of lopsided congressional delegations in other
states.
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WASHINGTON — Texas Republicans collected half of the votes statewide in congressional races
this month. But even after Democrats flipped two districts, toppling GOP veterans in Dallas and
Houston, Republicans will control 23 of the state’s 36 seats.

It’s the definition of gerrymandering.

“You wouldn’t expect perfect proportionality, but when something is really skewed, that’s
probably a sign that something’s amiss,” said redistricting expert Michael Li.

Demographically and politically, the state is evolving — faster in some places than in others.
Many Texas Republicans in Congress faced surprisingly close calls in the 2018 midterms. 
Boundaries drawn early this decade to maximize GOP power blunted the damage. But the
bulwarks built after the last census have begun to weaken. The midterms exposed unexpected
shortcomings as college-educated white women — traditionally a major source of votes for the
Texas GOP — abandoned the party.

Some were repelled by President Donald Trump and, at the same time, intrigued by Rep. Beto
O’Rourke, the El Paso Democrat who offered a vision of less confrontational leadership, albeit
with a liberal bent.

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In Dallas, lawyer and former pro football player Colin Allred ousted Rep. Pete Sessions, a member
of the GOP leadership. In Houston, lawyer Lizzie Pannill Fletcher unseated Rep. John Culberson,
who led a subcommittee that controls billions in federal spending.

Both districts have seen some of the fastest demographic shifts in the state, with the nonwhite
share of the electorate rapidly shrinking. They were stocked with high-income, highly-educated
white voters long presumed to be Republican; many turned out to be swing voters under the right
circumstances.

“These districts ... weren’t built to elect Republicans in the age of Donald Trump,” said Li. “The
Republican Party of today is almost unrecognizable to people of 2011.”
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Independents in Texas have been in the habit of backing Republicans.

“But they can be re-educated to see Democrats as an option,” said Steve Bickerstaff, a retired
University of Texas adjunct law professor whose books include Lines in the Sand, about the 2003
redistricting fight in Texas.

Photo Gallery 1/7

(Smiley N. Pool/Staff Ph

Trump, O'Rourke factors

Both parties engage in gerrymandering when they can, in Texas and around the country.

Democrats enjoy a lopsided split in the two biggest states they control: 21 of 27 seats in New York
(78 percent), and 46 of 53 seats in California (87 percent). In both states, they drew about two-
thirds of votes in congressional races this month.

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Republicans have held a tight grip on Austin since 1998, when they swept statewide elections and
opened an era of one-party rule that has lasted two decades.

But O’Rourke came within 2.6 percentage points of Sen. Ted Cruz. O'Rourke's coattails, combined
with the drag Trump put on the GOP, showed that the 2012 map doesn’t provide as much
certainty as it used to.

“In Texas, you have pretty polarized voting by racial lines. So if you just draw districts to
minimize the African-American and Latino vote, you go a long way to having an advantage for
Republicans,” said Li, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
“It’s mostly worked this decade. It partially collapsed this election in a couple of districts that tell
you a little bit why gerrymandering is harder in Texas than in other states, because Texas is
changing so fast.”

In two GOP-held districts that Trump carried, O’Rourke topped Cruz. That helped fellow
Democrats come much closer than expected.

In the Dallas-area 24th District, Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, survived with a margin of just 3
percentage points over a little-known challenger he outspent 11-1.

Shifting electorate in North Texas led to close call for U.S. Rep. Kenny Marchant of
Coppell

In suburban Houston’s 2nd District, Rep. Ted Poe notched 2-1 blowouts for years. He retired this
year. Dan Crenshaw, a retired Navy SEAL who lost an eye in Afghanistan, won by 7 points.
National Democrats might have paid attention to the race had they recognized the opportunity.
Gerrymandering in Texas
Republicans got half the votes in Texas congressional races this month yet claimed 23 of 36
seats. Even so, Democrats ipped two districts, both designed to protect Republicans with a
buffer of suburban voters. Both saw rapid demographic changes since the last census, and
many suburbanites abandoned the GOP in 2018. Reps. Pete Sessions in the Dallas-based 32d
District, and John Culberson in the Houston-based 7th District paid the price.

The nearby districts illustrate the mapmaking methods, meandering through minority
precincts: the 33d, held by Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, and the 18th, held by Rep. Sheila
Jackson Lee of Houston, a fellow African-American Democrat. Click on a district to see 2018
election results:

View: Dallas Co. Harris Co.

SOURCE: Texas Legislative Council

John Hancock/DMN
O’Rourke fought Cruz nearly to a draw in the 6th District, where Arlington Rep. Joe Barton’s
retirement paved the way for his former chief of staff Ron Wright, the Tarrant County tax
assessor-collector.

There, the map enacted by the Legislature after the 2010 census operated as intended:
Democratic nominee Jana Lynne Sanchez ran up the score in Tarrant County precincts, but
conservative voters in Ellis County put Wright over the top.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, outspent his challenger 4-1 in a district that runs from the west
side of Houston to the east side of Austin. The rural midsection kept the outgoing House
Homeland Security chairman in his seat with a narrow, 4-point win.

Gerrymandering
Texas
Each party has used carefully drawn
maps to claim a lopsided share of U.S.
House seats compared to their share
of votes in congressional races.
Democrats last controlled redistricting
in the 1990s.

Year 2018
Party Democrat
% of votes 46.93%
Seats 13
Proportional
share 17

Year 2018
Party Republican
% of votes 50.44%
Seats 23
Proportional
share 19

Year 2012
Party Democrat
% of votes 38 49%

SOURCE: Texas Secretary of State for election

totals, Dallas Morning News research
Todd J. Gillman/DMN
Just north of Austin, Rep. John Carter, another senior Republican, beat M.J. Hegar by 3 points in a
district that Trump carried by 13 points.

“Those districts were gerrymandered to absorb Democrats,” said Matt Angle, a veteran
Democratic strategist who has been involved in Texas redistricting fights for two decades. “There
are some of these congressional districts that Beto defined as more in play than any of us
thought. ... Those exurban areas are getting away from them.”

Dave Wasserman
@Redistrict

At this rate Rs will have no choice but to draw a new safe Dem Austin vote
sink when TX gains seats in 2022, much as Rs did in Columbus, OH in
2012.

Michael Li @mcpli
TX-31 is a great example of a near GOP dummymander, where GOP desires to
deny Ds a seat in the metro Austin area almost was undone by population growth
& demographic change. But this map is also great for seeing how Rs cost Ds a
state house seat in Bell Co. #txlege #fairmaps 1/ twitter.com/JMilesColeman/…

247 9:05 AM - Nov 21, 2018

108 people are talking about this

Other lopsided states

Texas is hardly the only state whose partisan ratio in Congress is out of whack.

North Carolina’s split has been 10-3 in favor of Republicans all this decade. In Ohio, Republicans
hold 12 of 16 seats. Yet in both states, the parties are at near-parity in statewide voting.

“You might as well not have elections,” said Li.

In Pennsylvania, which like Ohio has one senator from each party, voters picked Barack Obama
twice and Trump in 2016. Yet Republicans nabbed 13 of 18 House seats in the last three elections.

In January, the state Supreme Court struck down that map and imposed a new one. This month,
Democrats and Republicans split the pie in half: nine seats each.
In March, the Brennan Center published a study titled “Extreme Gerrymandering & the 2018
Midterm.”

The closer the correlation between votes and seats, the higher the responsiveness. Texas has an
especially “nonresponsive” map, where even a huge jump in the minority party’s share of votes
isn’t likely to yield much gain.

Heading into the 2018 midterms, Texas Democrats held 11 of 36 seats. Brennan projected that
getting to 13 would be nearly impossible unless they topped 51 percent of the vote statewide.
They managed it with 47 percent.

Li credits the combination of the Trump and O’Rourke factors.

“Whether that’s a realignment or a blip remains to be seen,” he said.

Still, Texas Democrats would have four more seats in January if their share of districts tracked
their share of votes.

“That defines gerrymandering. Texas is racially and politically gerrymandered in an egregious

way,” Angle said.

Photo Gallery 1/5

 (File

In 1992, the last time Democrats controlled Texas government and redistricting, they won 21 of
30 U.S. House seats with just under half of the statewide vote — a far more lopsided outcome than
the one Republicans achieved in the past several elections.

Texas had been awarded three new seats after the 1990 census. Those were drawn to ensure
minority control. The rest, recalled Angle, were drawn to protect incumbents in both parties —
creating a slow-motion shift.

When John Bryant quit to run for the Senate, Sessions replaced him. In the 1994 Republican
Revolution, Mac Thornberry defeated Bill Sarpalius, and Steve Stockman ousted Jack Brooks. (The
Democratic takeover ends Thornberry's stint as Armed Services chairman. Stockman recently got
a 10-year prison term for stealing contributions.)

“That map was an incumbent gerrymander. It was not a Democratic gerrymander,” Angle insisted.

Li views that distinction as blurry, noting that most incumbents at that time were, in fact,
Democrats.

The most contentious redistricting fight in Texas and, perhaps anywhere, came in 2003 when Tom
DeLay, then the U.S. House majority leader, prodded Republicans in Austin to take a second crack
at congressional lines — an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting.

Democratic state lawmakers fled to Oklahoma and New Mexico but couldn’t stall forever.

The new map took aim at 10 Anglo Democratic incumbents. Eight were pushed out or defeated.

“The plan was a master of gerrymandering,” said Bickerstaff, the retired attorney. DeLay "was
trying to make the Democratic Party unattractive to non-Hispanic white voters and candidates by
making all of the elected officials either black or brown.”

Areas of Democratic strength were carved up. Travis County was split five ways. Dallas and
Tarrant counties also were divided to dilute Democratic voting strength, Bickerstaff said.

Republicans claimed 21 of 32 seats, with 58 percent of the statewide votes.

Texas gained four seats after the 2010 census. With the same 58 percent vote, Republicans
claimed two-thirds of the seats. Growth this decade puts Texas on track to gain two or three more
seats after the 2020 census.

Bickerstaff pointed out that Democratic turnout spiked in 2018, so this year wouldn’t be a good
benchmark to say how many seats each party should win. But, he said, “If there has been any
change, it has favored the Democrats.”

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