Texas AG Tries To Pull A Fast One

During the last legislative session, Texas Republicans tried to use their majorities in both legislative houses to create legislative districts that would unfairly favor the Republican Party. One of the aspects of the Republican redistricting plan would give the nearly all-white Republican Party all of the four new U.S. Congressional Districts the state got due to its population growth in the last ten years. In an effort to avoid scrutiny by the U.S. Justice Department, the Republicans then bypassed the Justice Department and asked federal courts to approve their redistricting plan.

That hasn't worked out too well for them. The federal court told them to work out a compromise plan with minority groups and the Democrats, or be subject to a plan imposed by the court itself (at least for the coming election). Yesterday, Texas Attorney General Abbott announced that a compromise had been reached. He said the compromise would create two new Hispanic-majority districts (and evidently leave the other two new districts as white-majority Republican districts).

The problem is that this wasn't a "compromise" at all. To reach his ballyhooed agreement, the Attorney General simply left out any organizations that didn't agree with his "new" proposal -- including the Mexican-American Legislative Conference, the Black Legislative Caucus, and the NAACP. The Democratic Party also refused to give its blessing to the Texas AG's "compromise", saying:

Attorney General Abbott issued a statement outlining an agreement reached with some parties regarding the ongoing redistricting legal fight. We were not involved in the discussions that produced this agreement, we are not in agreement to the maps released by the Attorney General, and we do not expect that these maps will be used for the 2012 election. 

We're greatly disappointed the Attorney General did not deal in good faith with all parties involved. 

For the Texas Democratic Party, any maps that do not have the consent of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the Legislative Black Caucus, and other plaintiffs are nonstarters. 

The Attorney General is clearly terrified that the DC court will find that the state’s maps are discriminatory in both effect and intent. Until there’s a legitimate agreement among the parties, we support the court continuing to do its work.

I have to agree with those opposing the AG's new proposal. Let's look at a few facts about the population of Texas. While the state did experience significant population growth, nearly 90% of that growth was due to a growth in the minority population. It was primarily due to Hispanic growth, but the African-American sector of the population also grew by 22%. In fact, the non-Hispanic white portion of the Texas population actually decreased as a portion of the total population, and now makes up only 45.3% of it while minority groups make up 54.7%.

How can it be right for a decreasing portion of the population (one that only made up 10% of the growth at most) to claim ANY of the four new seats, let alone all or even half of them? The answer, of course, is that it isn't right -- or fair. If the Republicans wanted to be fair (a concept they have yet to master), they would have drawn up a redistricting plan that gave ALL of the new congressional seats to districts with a minority-majority population. I personally think it should be three new Hispanic districts and one new African-American district.

Gerrymandering is wrong. And gerrymandering to reduce the voice of minorities in government is much worse -- it is illegal. But that is what the Texas Republicans are trying to do. It is time for the federal courts to slap them down.