Now this is very good news if it plays out the way The Hill seems to think it will: Texas Republicans are basically looking to settle their redistricting case with the DoJ, which would have to include approval by the minority representation groups that are the plaintiffs, that would give the state a number of new districts that would be won by Dems.
“They’re backed up against the wall and have to come to some agreement and it’ll be awfully favorable on our end,” said one of the plaintiffs in the case.
Another plaintiff agreed. “It’s clear they know they’re in a vulnerable position and that’s why they want to settle,” he said.
Any settlement would need to get the multiple minority group plaintiffs on board, and would create more majority-Hispanic and majority-African American congressional districts. Two of the plaintiffs predicted that an agreement will be reached early next week.
That’s pretty much a massive capitulation by Republicans in the state, who purposely drew the four new districts in the state legislature to favor Republicans precisely by splitting Latino and African-American neighborhoods across district lines and using pencil thin lines to connect them to overwhelmingly red districts, assuring that at least three of the four new districts would be safe GOP seats for the next decade.
But the DoJ gets ultimate veto power over this sort of thing for states like Texas, and that decision by a three-judge panel is expected soon. Texas Republicans are apparently so terrified of this that (especially after the Supreme Court punted the map back to Texas to work it out as a state issue) they are begging for a settlement before the DoJ takes them out back with a two by four and a grim expression.
If the state of Texas and the plaintiffs in the case reach an agreement it would solve a drawn out process with two separate lower court battles and a Supreme Court opinion already on the books.
Texas is gaining four seats in Congress and will have 36 total House seats next election. Most of the state’s population growth has come from African Americans and Hispanics, but the Republican state legislators who drew the maps gave the groups few new opportunities in the state.
Any agreement would lead to a minimum of 13 Democratic-leaning seats, and possibly a fourteenth seat depending on how the districts in Fort Worth are drawn.
With conservative former Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) running for a Galveston-area seat, Democrats could win as many as 14 or 15 seats in the state, up from the nine seats they currently hold. Republicans would hold 21 or 22 seats, down from the 23 they currently have.
Dems picking up 5 to 6 House seats in Texas would go a long, long way towards regaining the House in 2012. Republicans know this and they’re looking to settle anyway, which shows you just how bad they think their position is in respect to the three-judge pre-clearance panel.
On the other hand, the districts that Texas is gaining is coming at the expense of states like Ohio and New York, and ultimately one of the reasons that I think the GOP is looking to take the settlement here is that they know redistricting Dem districts out of existence in other states they control like Missouri and Louisiana (and in Ohio especially) will make Texas into a wash at best for the Donks, especially given that GOP-controlled SC and Georgia are getting a new district and Florida two. They were going for all the marbles in the redistricting pile, and they’ll have to settle for merely half as a losing proposition, which was the point of the entire exercise given the level of state control handed to the GOP in 2010.
And once again we come back to the fact that voters picked a really awful time to give the Republicans more power by deciding President Obama and the Dems hadn’t moved fast enough in Operation Ponycorn With Sprinkles. The repercussions of that nonsense will be felt for, well, a decade.
What an utterly disappointing group of twits the emoprogs and professional left folks have turned out to be. Thier complete lack of comprehension where strategy and pragmatism are concerned has caused them to become the biggest obstacle to their own policy goals.
I do agree. If one more person per precinct had voted in Ohio, nothing that happened there would have happened at ALL. Sitting home in a self righteous snit is a good way to get nothing. But try telling that to the self important “progressives”.
Hmmm – I heard a commentator say that the SCOTUS decision was the death knell for Dems. Apparently NOT. It’s why I give pundits little hearing. And this comment was on NPR. The complexity of things seems to elude most commentators – and most Americans – so I tend to wait and watch. DOJ has a real impact here because of the state’s historic discrimination and the DOJ’s duty to oversee fair redistricting. So things may not work out well for slavering bias, and they may not work out well for ignorant pundits, but it all may work out well for democracy. Sorry if that deprives breast-beaters of their angst.
One of the things that absolutely infuriated me about the emoprogs was their lines about “sending Obama a message” by letting Republicans take the House. It wasn’t the control of the House they screwed up, it was the legislatures and governorships of the states, including control of redistricting.
While the Wisconsin protests and the repeal initiative in Ohio are all well and good – even inspiring – the brutal reality is that they would never have been necessary had Democrats been voted in. Floridians are screaming their heads off about what Rick Scott is doing, but you know what? That’s what the emoprogs wanted, because they decided to sit at home and pout, while encouraging everyone else to do the same.
And the emo-contingent’s inevitable reply will always be “Things have to get worse before they get better!”, won’t it?
And the emo-contingent’s inevitable reply will always be “Things have to get worse for you little people who lack the security of our cushy media jobs and think tank largesse before they get better!”, won’t it?
FIFY.
I would agree, except that there are also large numbers of such “little people” buying into that nonsense. Look at it as “our side’s” version of the underemployed blue-collar Republican voters.
Probably the biggest disappointment of the lot would be the “Occupy” types. The ones who complain about having no future or prospects, yet can’t be bothered to actually understand what’s going on or figure out that the victories eventually won will be in courtrooms and legislative chambers, not in parks. The ones who complain about their interests not represented, while they steadfastly refuse to register to vote. The ones who insist against all reason that “they’re all the same” when they fail to see the distinction between a friend who occasionally disappoints and a sworn enemy.
It’s not just the cloistered Professional Left that we have to deal with on our side. It’s also the barely educable rabble thinking that the drum they’re banging on in a park is an instrument of social change.
Ha! I remember canvassing one district in Central Texas. I had to get on the highway, cross a river, a major university campus, go around a giant football stadium, past a huge water tower and over the railroad tracks then drive through about 20 blocks of dense housing to get to the other side of the same district. Give you 3 guesses what these two disconnected halves of the same district had in common.