Texas Democrats Fled the State to Stop Redistricting, Now What?

While the Texas Governor threatens to remove the absent Democrats from office, an unconstitutional move, we’ve been here before

Photo by Perry Merrity II on Unsplash

There has been a lot of talk about redistricting in Texas, an issue liberal, leftist, and independent Texans started talking about more broadly last month when Ron Filipowski told us we deserved what we got with the recent flooding in Central Texas. Many gladly pointed out just how gerrymandered our state already was while noting that the discussion about what Republicans are doing right now was already being had. Let’s just say, a lot of comments were tone-deaf.

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We knew they were coming after Democrat districts before the asinine comments seen all over social media were made about Texans. Now, we are at the precipice of arguably the most blatantly racist redistricting efforts in decades. The only way to create five seats, like Trump wants, is to create more white majority districts by dividing Black and Latino districts.

Yes, Republicans have been “packing” and “cracking” voting districts for a long time, hence the need for the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and each of its succeeding amendments. But rather than the slow progression of their previous strategy, it seems Texas Republicans embraced the more blatantly racist policies that fly in the face of the VRA, reeking of Jim Crow Era gerrymandering.

The “long, stringy districts” you see today started after the Civil War, when Black men won the right to vote. Despite falling off in the first half of the 20th Century because of other Jim Crow laws that suppressed the Black vote (poll taxes, threats of lynching, etc), gerrymandering made a major comeback after the VRA was passed, and again in the 1990s, where it picked up steam like never before, leading to many challenges to the VRA as well.

Texas Republicans have been pulling no punches over the last decade to tighten their grip on the control of the state. In 2021, Texas Democrats fled to Washington, D.C. to break quorum in protest over Republican-drawn congressional maps, also at Trump’s behest. The standoff lasted 38 days. In 2021, Texas signed into law Senate Bill 1, which disproportionately targeted voting access in Black and Latino communities.

The latest redistricting map targets the same communities. The new map will “pack” more Democratic voters in safe districts, increasing their margins of victory in major cities where Black and Latino populations are higher. Meanwhile, the map also “cracks” many predominantly Black and Latino communities by dividing them and whitewashing their votes with white suburban and rural voters, creating majority white districts.

This will leave the state with five fewer Democratic districts.

While it’s honorable to see Democrats invoke a right afforded to them according to Texas law under Article III, Section 10 of the Texas Constitution, precisely for the purpose they are using it, Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s threats, as Michelle Davis put it at the Lone Star Left, are political theater. However, Texans know how far Abbott will take political theater, as we have seen with his freak out over Jade Helm in 2015 and, more recently, the border.

While he may not have the authority to remove any Democrats from office, that doesn't mean he isn't willing to create a constitutional crisis both in the state and beyond. For Democrats, they’re exercising their authority using a rule designed to prevent the steamrolling of a minority party in the state legislature, precisely what Texas Republicans are doing with their redistricting map.

As it stands today, it seems Texas Democrats are willing to push this as far as they can, and I hope that the country can see that we have been trying to fight back against Republicans' disenfranchising voters. But last year, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates on gerrymandering by agreeing that South Carolina’s redistricting maps weren’t racial gerrymandering, but partisan gerrymandering, and that the founders also did it.

Texas Republicans are relying on “partisan gerrymandering” for cover.

But in a state where the population is roughly 40% Latino, 40% White, and 12% Black, it’s impossible to create all white majority districts. This left Republicans in a position to rely on the Latino vote in many areas of the state. It seems they are hanging on to the recent bump in Latino support for Republicans. However, there are growing doubts about that support as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have been targeting Latinos and Black immigrants through obvious racial profiling.

Several potential flaws could blow up in Republicans’ faces. The biggest: four of the five districts created by Republicans are majority Latino, some just barely. This means that Republicans are planning to be heavily dependent on the Texas Latino vote, which could swing either way in any given election. A more conservative Democrat or even an economically populist progressive candidate could open a door to steal one or two of those seats.

What happens next is that Democrats hold out for as long as possible, and the plan will give them as much opportunity to get their message out and put potential challenges to the redistricting map together. Unfortunately, while breaking quorum has been a part of Texas politics for 155 years, it is unlikely to change the outcome of the redistricting map.

It’s worth noting how unpopular this is in Texas. During hearings at the House Select Committee on Redistricting, Texans had a chance to voice their concerns, and those in favor of redistricting were outnumbered by those opposed at a rate of 100-1. Republicans have chosen to ignore those voices and voted in favor of advancing the map out of committee.

This is why Democrats fled.

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