House Could Follow Patrick Lead
by Going for Broke in Map Session

Capitol Inside
September 20, 2021

The Republicans could pick up nine Texas House seats or more in a special redistricting session that begins on Monday if they follow the same basic strategy that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick employed in the production of a new Senate map.

The proposed voting districts in Senate Bill 4 would put the GOP in position to gain at least one seat in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with a decent shot at another district in deep South Texas that would be extended into the Corpus Christi area with the goal flipping it to red as well. The GOP, which has 18 seats in the 31-member Senate, would have an 11 percent increase in Senate seats with a gain of two in 2022.

With 83 current Texas House seats, the Republicans would end up with 92 if they found a way to design new voting districts as artfully as Patrick has on the plan that State Senator Joan Huffman of Houston is sponsoring as the chair of a special Senate Redistricting Committee.

The House blueprint for its own new election districts appears to still be a work in progress - with GOP Speaker Dade Phelan soliciting input from members and apparently catching substantial push back from some. Patrick didn't waste time on small talk - in contrast - calling senators in to show them their new districts without the need for feedback in a chamber where he makes all the major decisions and knows that Senate Republicans will approve all of his priorities without dissent.

While the Legislature has the task of drawing new legislative and congressional districts based on the newest Census, the Senate's scorched-earth approach is designed for the 2022 without concern for long-term consequences with massive potential to backfire.

The Senate plan spreads GOP voters as thinly as possible with maximum gain in the now. Some of the Senate Republicans would be forced to give up significant percentages of white voters who they represent - increasing the odds that their districts will go blue at some point before the next Census in 2030.

With the white population stagnant in a state where all of the state's new residents in the past 10 years have been minorities, the guiding theme for the Republicans in the redistricting process will be to get as much as they can now for a potential last hurrah in the next regular session in 2023.

The Republicans appear poised to push the envelopes to new extremes in the first decennial redistricting process in decades without the need for preclearance from the Department of Justice. While Texas is still bound by certain legal limitations and requirements in the redistricting process this year, the Republicans here appear to be approaching redistricting as though they have carte blanche - confident that they would prevail in a legal challenge based on the current Supreme Court's partisan leanings.

more to come ...