I just want to note it's taken 18 years for Texas Republicans to go from attaching 50/50 rural areas to hyper Republican suburbs to gain power (DeLaymander) to attaching 50/50 suburbs to rural areas, now hyper Republican, to try to keep from losing power.
Rural areas of Texas vote more Democratic than you think.
Several of the target of re-redictricting were Democrats primarily in rural areas. What re-redistricting did was tie urban areas and rural areas with suburban majorities to decrease the influence of these two traditionally Democratic strongholds (in Congress anyway). The rural folks might vote Republican locally, but they tend to vote for Democrats in Congress (of the Texas variety, but still better than a Tom DeLay clone).
Yep, East Texas got screwed
We're certainly not liberal (and we're trending more repub), but we are still a Dem stronghold. Delay really put the screws to our area in his warped idea of re-re-districting. And urban Houston and Austin didn't fare much better.
The Suburbanites are now in charge, thank you very much. In my area that means the voters of The Woodlands, Kingwood, Humble and Conroe get to call the shots. And if you've seen the majority of these Stepford Clones, you know just how bad the situation really is! Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!*
this is exactly why
we need to shake trees to get voters to the polls, and harass the kerry campaign to get the candidates' butts down here a couple more times. i'm tired of the D/FW & other metro areas having a strangle-hold on the rest of the state. besides, we all know from what we hear/see in the streets that bush is in big trouble here in texas, but do we see that in the polls? nope, which is why neither party is spending much time or money here in texas.
