Potential Collin Sacrifice Could
Keep GOP House Gain at 1 or 2

Capitol Inside
October 5, 2021

The Texas House Redistricting Committee approved a plan for new voting districts on Tuesday with significant alterations including the addition of a swing seat in Collin County in a move designed to prolong the eventual takeover by Democrats there.

The panel backed the revised map in House Bill 1 in an 8-6 vote that was cast exclusively along party lines. The vote capped off a marathon hearing that consumed 16 hours with shows of temper on both sides of the aisle after midnight when Democrats protested the fast-track tactics that their Republican colleagues on the panel were employing to move the map.

State Rep. Todd Hunter - a Corpus Christi Republican who crafted the plan as the panel's chairman - sought to reframe the narrative on the proposal that had been widely depicted as an unwarranted power grab by whites in a state where minorities accounted for all the growth in the past decade. Hunter said the revised map in the committee substitute for HB 1 would actually increase the number of districts that minorities control with two more for Hispanics, one for Blacks and multiple Asian coalition seats.

The proposal would give the GOP a net gain of one or two seats on paper when an overhauled version of House District 70 in the suburbs north of Dallas is shifted to the Democrats' side of the ledger. HD 70 is being described as a Democratic-leaning seat with a voting age population that's 49 percent white and 23 percent Asian.

The GOP would be in position to pick up the districts that Democratic State Rep. Michelle Beckley of Carrollton and James Talarico of Round Rock represent on the current map. Democratic State Rep. Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City could feel compelled to run as a Republican based on substantial changes that HB 1 would make to his district that stretches from south of San Antonio to the border.

A pair of El Paso Democrats - State Reps. Claudia Ordaz Perez and Lina Ortega - would be paired on the new map after the relocation of House District 76 in Fort Bend County as the first seat with an Asian plurality. But that would not affect the partisan balance in the lower chamber where there are 83 Republicans and 66 Democrats

GOP State Rep. Scott Sanford of McKinney announced last month that he wouldn't seek the HD 70 seat again in 2022. HD 70 is 59 percent white in its current form. The initial proposal in HB 1 would have kept the white share of the VAP in HD 70 at 56 percent.

But the redistricting committee endorsed an amendment that Republican State Rep. Craig Goldman of Fort Worth proposed in a development that converted HD 70 into a district that looks more like the swing seats that GOP State Reps. Jeff Leach of Allen and Matt Shaheen of Plano currently represent in a swath of the Dallas-Fort Worth area that's been turning blue in recent years.

The Goldman revision made it possible to reinforce the districts where Shaheen, Leach and GOP State Rep. Candy Noble of Lucas are running again with white Republicans by shuttling minorities into HD 70. Goldman took a page from his own playbook with the amendment - having directed the reconfiguration of Tarrant County House districts in the original House plan that Hunter filed for consideration in the third special session in Texas in 2021.

The initial map transformed House District 92 in the suburbs east side of Tarrant County into a herding ground for packing minority voters as a way to spread more white people to the other districts that the GOP will hope to control a few years longer with a payment of HD 92 up front.

more to come ...