Congressional reps Jackson Lee and Green are unsurprisingly not very happy about the proposed TX maps that put them together in one seat.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/04/texas-congressional-map-redistricting/
Texas Tribune: U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green — both Houston Democrats — testified Monday at the Texas Capitol against proposed district maps that would break up communities of Black voters and pit the two incumbents against each other.
“It doesn’t look right for the only two persons in the state of Texas to be running against each other in a congressional district from the same party to be of African ancestry,” Green said at a hearing of the the Texas Senate Special Committee on Redistricting.
Green and Jackson Lee are two out of five Black members of Texas’ 36-person congressional delegation, but in the proposed redrawing of the districts, Lee is drawn out of her own district and looped into Green’s.
“Thirty-eight districts,” Green said, noting the two new congressional districts added to Texas because of population growth, which was fueled by people of color. “Two African Americans running against each other in the proposed map.”
Despite their objections, the Senate committee voted out the redrawn congressional map Monday without addressing the district overlap. The map heads next to the full Senate for a vote. It also has to be approved by the House and can still change before it is signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Jackson Lee represents District 18, once represented by Barbara Jordan, who in 1972 became the first Black Texan elected to Congress after Reconstruction. There are families in the district who have lived there for 50 years, Jackson Lee said.
“The 18th [District] has been surgically, erroneously and unconstitutionally, under federal law, been drawn incorrectly,” Jackson Lee said.
