US House Redistricting: Texas

[Sam Spade]

I kind of did a run over the numbers and came to these conclusions with regards to a really pretty looking map in a GOP gerrymander with the present numbers.

Sam I require you to do the following:

5 Districts entirely within Harris County

Really easy actually.  You get three GOP CDs with 60%+McCain (Culberson, Poe and new Congressman), two Dem CDs, one Hispanic majority and one black majority (Green and Lee) completely within Harris and one Dem CD that extends into Fort Bend County to pick up the rest of Houston and the black precincts around Missouri City.  Yawn.

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This is the one problem county in a pretty Republican gerrymander.  You can't get the new Hispanic-majority CD into safe Hispanic-majority territory without pushing into Tarrant County (and TX-30 remains not black majority, but who cares).  You can create one Republican CD entirely within Dallas County, but the third CD would become pretty marginal.  If you say "screw the Hispanic district", then you can extend that third CD to another county to make it safe Republican.

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One GOP CD in NE Tarrant County.  Easy.  Then you've got to make it look ugly.  Give the most severely Dem areas to a CD that extends out to the west and north (not Denton).  Create the other GOP CD from the leftovers.  If the Hispanic CD moves into Tarrant, your job becomes easier and you may not have to extend out to the counties to the west and north (not Denton)

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Basically, you have Gonzalez and then you can draw Smith (and possibly Canseco) into a safe Republican seat, with the Bexar County excess Hispanics going into one of the other Hispanic-majority seats.

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So you pack Doggett into Austin.  Yawn.  As I showed in the last map, if you push McCaul's seat west, instead of east, taking in San Angelo, you make it much more safe even though you take in all the other Travis precincts.  It makes a lot more sense to do this now that Flores holds TX-17 (you can draw his seat to take in a lot (if not all) of the former TX-10 rural areas.

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Already did this.  Johnson's seat makes the most sense, of course.

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Already did this - the excess goes into the Trans-Pecos area seat.

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You can make Hinojosa's CD the entire county and spread it into Cameron to take precincts away from TX-27 to make it more Republican-friendly.  Not that difficult really.

[Sam Spade]

For some reason, it told me that it was contiguous, but I changed it in later versions when I saw it wasn't.  It's not a big deal - you can change things around Harlingen an the numbers are not particularly different.

In the federal district court trial on the 2003 district boundaries, the issue of the district boundaries in the Harlingen area were raised.  The plaintiffs claimed that these really weird boundaries (between 27 and 15) were drawn to cut out 15 Hispanic voters.  The State responded that they had simply followed the city limits, including fence lines of Harlingen.  For that reason, Torie's boundaries might be suspect since they ignored conventional redistricting practice of respecting city boundaries, especially if it appeared that the intent was done to deny Hispanics an equal opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.

What are exactly the "fence lines of Harlingen"?  The numbers don't make that big of a difference here in my book, so changes could be made to "respect that".

[Sam Spade]

i had a plan that would be to protect all 32 incumbents, which I found difficult to do. I tried to protect Marchant by getting rid of everything south of I-30 and adding some wealthier areas of NE Tarrant County for a 62 percent McCain district. I protected Sessions by getting rid of Cockrell Hill and some mexican areas of Dallas and attaching it to some Dallas county portions of CD 3.

The best way to protect McCaul is to take out the most dem areas of Austin.
Under that plan the only area of Travis County left would be the Pflugerville area (not sure if he lives there). Despite it being a 58% McCain district, it is somewhat difficult to protect Pete Olsen. His district has 900,000 people, so it needed to shed a lot of precincts. I took out a lot of areas in Galveston and Harris counties out of the district, which made it look more compact. The issue for him is that those are the most republican parts of his district, and without them, it would be a 50-50 district for him.

It is rather easy to protect all incumbents not named Canseco and Farenthold, if you want to.  The creation of the Hispanic-majority CD in DFW allows you to get 60% McCain on all Dallas area CDs without the map looking too bad actually.  As for McCaul, I haven't figured out exactly where he lives in Austin, but the best way to protect him (oddly enough) is to go west, not east, which is made a heck of a lot easier now that Flores holds TX-17 (lives in Bryan-College Station).  That way, you can append Waco to some other CD, like Barton, for example and push Flores to take up McCaul rural areas.

With the strictures of the VRA, it's going to be hard to protect Doggett, if you want to protect Farenthold (as demonstrated earlier).  Otherwise, you'll probably be able to move the scale in favor of Canseco and Farenthold only a few points.  My idea of giving Canseco one of the new districts and redesigning TX-23 is also possible.  You can probably do the same thing with Farenthold, but it's more difficult to do it for both and still have enough Hispanic CDs.

[Sam Spade]

You can probably do the same thing with Farenthold, but it's more difficult to do it for both and still have enough Hispanic CDs.

In actuality, because I had not yet done this, I stand corrected. 

You can give Canseco and Farenthold 60% McCain CDs (Canseco would fear Anglo GOP challenge, of course) and redesign TX23 and TX27 to be 63/64% Hispanic CDs with 55% McCain and 52% McCain totals respectively. 

TX23 remains similar to the Odessa map Torie detailed and TX27 takes the Brownsville portion of Cameron County (pushing the Harlingen part to TX-15, which is a little counterintuitive), pushes up north, bypasses Nueces, takes in San Patricio and centers the other half of the CD around Victoria.  Farenthold's new CD goes along the coast and then moves up to take Paul and McCaul old territories.

That means two of the four open CDs will be very marginal territory, but it may actually make more sense for the GOP, as Victoria (and the surrounding areas Hispanics) are a bit more reliable GOP voters down ballot.

[Sam Spade]

Sam, have you been following the fight between Perry and Doggett over education funding? Do you think Perry might push the legislature to cut up his seat after this?

Not really.

Perry might do it.  It can be done - you either make it into a Hispanic-majority seat, he may still win anyway, or you draw him out of the district, but I don't know where exactly he lives in Austin.  The Hispanic-majority seat not pretty, but it can be done.  The only issue is that it makes creating Hispanic-majority seats where GOPers can win a bit more difficult in other parts of the state.

[Sam Spade]

so who will represent the hispanic district in Dallas? I'm thinking someone like Rafael Anchia may represent him. He's fairly young and has been in the legislature for four terms. He is supposed to be an up and comer. Kind of reminds me of Raul Grijalva only less liberal.

Watch - you'll get a whitey there like Gene Green, although Gene had extremely favorable circumstances when he first ran.

[Sam Spade]

Sam, have you been following the fight between Perry and Doggett over education funding? Do you think Perry might push the legislature to cut up his seat after this?

Not really.

Perry might do it.  It can be done - you either make it into a Hispanic-majority seat, he may still win anyway, or you draw him out of the district, but I don't know where exactly he lives in Austin.  The Hispanic-majority seat not pretty, but it can be done.  The only issue is that it makes creating Hispanic-majority seats where GOPers can win a bit more difficult in other parts of the state.

So Torie sent me the exact whereabouts of Doggett, and my conclusion is that it's going to be very hard to f-ck him.  You can't draw him into a GOP district without having a really ugly looking claw, and even then you will include a lot of hard Dem territory to where it marginalizes the GOP area and will most likely be minority (which will break the justification).  Drawing the Hispanic minority-majority CD is also difficult in that you need to make sure you've got more San Antonio than Austin, which is difficult, almost impossible.

In short, it's probably not worth the effort.

[Sam Spade]

Cd-9 and CD-18 are also not contiguous and I don't know how they could be.

I haven't started posting any maps yet because I have to get the partisan figures for the big counties into an excel file in order to properly gerrymander (like Torie does). 

[Sam Spade]

Cd-9 and CD-18 are also not contiguous and I don't know how they could be.

I haven't started posting any maps yet because I have to get the partisan figures for the big counties into an excel file in order to properly gerrymander (like Torie does). 

It's designed to be touch pointed.

Fair enough.

[Sam Spade]

I might add, though, that the purpose of touch pointing on that map is kind of limited. All it does is let you put all the Hispanics in CD-9 and create yourself a 'free' Hispanic majority district to make LULAC happy, and with any luck, get rid of Sheila Jackson Lee. It doesn't net the Pubbies any seats.

Al Green won't defeat Sheila in that CD-18, though I see how you're drawing him in, but he'll be toast.  Gene Green's residence would now be in CD-9, so CD-29 would be very open.  A lot of your proposed CD-29 is very idiosyncratic territory - you could get any type of race in control there, don't let the Hispanic numbers fool you.

You also won't like the partisan numbers on your proposed CD-7.  I also wonder on the partisan numbers of CD-9 and CD-29, they'll be Democratic enough, though.

[Sam Spade]

Al Green won't defeat Sheila in that CD-18, though I see how you're drawing him in, but he'll be toast.  Gene Green's residence would now be in CD-9, so CD-29 would be very open.  A lot of your proposed CD-29 is very idiosyncratic territory - you could get any type of race in control there, don't let the Hispanic numbers fool you.

You also won't like the partisan numbers on your proposed CD-7.  I also wonder on the partisan numbers of CD-9 and CD-29, they'll be Democratic enough, though.

Hmm, I approximated that CD-7 at 56% McCain or so; its a 59.8% Anglo district. The precincts are pretty carefully chosen. It might be a problem a few years from now, though.

CD-22 was actually my real concern given the massive shifts in Fort Bend.

The old Culberson CD was 58% McCain, so if that's the case, you've given him a weaker CD.

[Sam Spade]

I think TX-7 could be safe Republican even with a lower McCain number, much like Torie's district in California. Obama won many high-income voters over McCain-Palin in 2008 that are simply not going to vote for a Democratic candidate for Congress and may not vote for Obama again in 2012.

You're probably right, of course, but there's no reason not to play it safe since the numbers can be made stronger without much hurt otherwise.

[Sam Spade]

How is that eliminating Gene Green's seat? It's a purpose drawn Hispanic Dominated seat as is. Yeah, Green's white, but it's not been an issue except on his very first election in 1992.

He means flip it to a Republican seat.

And yes it is possible, but you'd probably run into a VRA challenge as a result.  By definition a district like that would have to basically contain a bunch of uber-Republican whites to out-vote the Hispanic majority, which I don't think is allowed.  Though you can certainly cut out the Black-heavy parts of the current district to get it down to basically swing while still Highly Hispanic.

You can actually do the same thing with the 27th and 23rd as well (a Laredo-Odessa/Midland District is like 67% Hispanic and 60% McCain), and possibly also with the 28th and the San Antonio suburbs.

Yeah, it sounds easy to draw a couple Hispanic majority McCain CD's in Texas involving rural areas and not too much of the border. Is this mainly due to plenty of Hispanics not being citizens (or not turning out) or do some of these areas have more GOP Hispanic support?

It's a bit of both.  I've been recently going through the barrio precincts in San Antonio, and turnout in 2008 in most of these was around 20%-25% of VAP, at best.  Seriously.  Granted, there's a high percentage of non-citizens, but still...

Also, in the suburbs, you get plenty of middle-upper income areas which are much more likely to have Hispanics voting Republican.

[Sam Spade]

doubt it'll get by the DoJ, but the only real complaint against it from the community of interest perspective is not including the far western edge of East End and Denver Harbor.  And also dividing Jacinto City?

[Sam Spade]

and now for an amusing lawsuit...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7508489.html

[Sam Spade]

redistricting in Texas is always so much fun... 

[Sam Spade]

Not an impossible plan, but from the Republican perspective the 31st is a bit questionable, though Carter will not be in trouble there, but will he serve until he's 80?

[Sam Spade]

I'm putting this one into Dave's App right now, but it'll will take some time.

I've only done the Dallas metro (which is where Laubenberg lives), and it is a pretty good (IMO) gerrymander of that place without the Hispanic district (which makes me question whether it will be legal under VRA). 

Basically, every CD (except CD-30, of course) is at least 55% McCain, white majority, and less than 30% Hispanic.  CD-24 and CD-32 are bumped up a couple of points (CD-24 from 55 to 57; CD-32 from 53 to 55, respectively).  I think you can improve these another point or two, but the map will be even uglier.

CD-5 and CD-12 are bumped down to compensate (CD-5 from 63 to 58 and CD-12 from 63 to 56, respectively). I think even a more careful gerrymander could up CD-5 and CD-12 a couple of points (more effectively than CD-24 and CD-32), with CD-5 taking from CD-6 and CD-4 and CD-12 taking from CD-26 and new CD-36 (which is an ugly, but effective gerrymander), but CD-5 and CD-12 are done correctly in that they take in fast-growing white areas in the outskirts of the Dallas metro (CD-12 - Parker County, CD-5 - Kaufman County).

Food for thought.  More later.

[Sam Spade]

Hmmm...  I wonder whether this is Joe Barton's message to Mr. Lamar Smith.  Smith's CD gets reduced to 52% McCain.  lol  Of course, Smith does get the fast-growing areas...

Canseco's CD becomes 55% McCain, btw.

In DFW, it's a pretty good gerrymander.  Outside DFW, it is fairly inefficient from what I'm seeing, so far.

[Sam Spade]

Can Someone help me figure out how to post my screenshots of my TX Gerrymander?  I got the pics saved in Photoshop, but now Photo-bucket apparently can't find them in their folder.  Do i need to convert them to something else instead?

You can store pictures on this site, I believe.  Go to gallery.

[Sam Spade]

It's a whole lot easier when you can do the Austin pack, but I suspect that you're going to be required to do the Austin-San Antonio Hispanic thing.  Your TX-11 is a little strange also.

[Sam Spade]

Some observations:

1) The key to making a GOP Texas gerrymander safe for 10 years is two-fold - 1) utilize West Texas rural areas to eliminate certain issues in the I-35 corridor; 2) connect Democratic areas in the inner cities with suburbs that are likely to grow.  Too many Republicans are still locked in one place, imo.  My proposed map #1 (to be posted tomorrow) is a bit uglier, but it deals with this issue better.
2) I think the TX-11 thing is unnecessary and can be handled better.  It is of questionable legality, anyways.
3) Dividing Montgomery County in half eliminates all problems in the Houston area for Republicans.  I would do it without thinking.
4) There's no need to crack the South SA barrio if you do the Austin-San Antonio Hispanic thing.  And it allows you to let TX-20 take in most of the annoying for Republicans Leon Valley area, as Hispanics take over.

[Sam Spade]

The district is a bit more Democratic on a local level and Gene Green is a strong politician, so don't think that he is done, but I wouldn't want to be running in a wave year there.

I don't expect Texas Republicans to be this smart, though.  The two maps they've come up with so far have been very uncreative, imo.

As for legality, any map drafted will be challenged, so you might as well take chances.  As I said before, having grown up in this area, it is hard for me to argue against bleaching from a community of interest perspective in the way these maps are drawn, as black areas where Hispanics have infiltrated are quite different than white areas where Hispanics have infiltrated (these areas were Hispanic for much longer).  There are other aspects of challenge, of course.

[Sam Spade]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22ttramsey.html

Key quote:

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I can't imagine that Perry would ever let this happen.

Basically, they've got two weeks.  The budget is the other big thing that has to happen, and even though there is a general framework, details are not exactly in stone yet.  I don't know whether they'll be able to accomplish both, and Texas redistricters have not shown great creativity so far, which means they may prefer the court to draw the boundaries and wait, as the court tends to protect incumbents.  We'll see.

[Sam Spade]

The one I'm curious about is TX-22 - that's the one where I think there might be issues long-term for the GOP.  The other districts look pretty well-drawn with regards to where growth and population movement should occur.

Of course, not creating a Hispanic district in Dallas will bring lawsuits galore.  The rest of the gerrymander will be ok VRA-wise, I suspect.

No way Doggett runs in that TX-25; he'll move to the Hispanic district.  Where Ciro will undoubtedly run in - that's his old territory in Bexar.