Redistricting in Texas, for better or worse

So, here’s a question as the dog days of summer amble our way: Could it be that President Trump is adding a Texas tune to his playlist at Mar-a-Lago? I have in mind “Running Scared,” written and made famous by the soaring, soulful tenor, the pride of Wink, Texas, the late Roy Orbison. I ask, because Trump no doubt realizes that if history— and current poll numbers— are any guide, Republicans stand to lose the House next year to the beleaguered Democrats. (Republicans now hold a slim eight-seat majority, with three seats vacant.) If the House flips, pretty much the president’s whole agenda withers, except for what he can mandate with a perpetual avalanche of Sharpiesigned executive orders. So there’s a reason why the Orbison classic might be a Trump earworm.

Most certainly, the very real possibility of losing the House is the reason his political team has successfully persuaded Texas Republicans to set in motion an unusual mid-decade redistricting effort, which Gov. Greg Abbott made official on Wednesday. By redistricting, they would hope to squeeze a few more Republican victories out of a congressional map that’s already grotesquely gerrymandered in GOP favor.

At the moment, they hold 25 of the state’s 38 congressional seats. Democrats expect to add an additional seat to their dozen when voters finally elect a representative for Congressional District 18, the reliably Democratic seat held by the late Sheila Jackson Lee and then by Sylvester Turner. Since Turner’s death in March, the seat has remained vacant thanks to the governor’s delayed call for a special election.

You might ask, didn’t Texas just redistrict? Of course we did. In 2021. The Constitution requires that each state redraw its political maps once a decade in response to the latest U.S. Census. Redrawing the districts is designed to account for population growth. The Texas law requires districts that are contiguous and that keep counties intact to the extent possible, though as any cursory glance at the maps will show, those rules are stretched to the limit in practice.

Nothing prevents a state from redistricting mid-decade, as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was quick to realize back in 2003. The powerful Sugar Land congress member, working with Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, “began carving historic congressional districts into new fiefdoms,” as journalist Lawrence Wright explored in his 2018 book “God Save Texas.” The newly drawn districts were contorted into proverbial salamander shapes— some looked like salamanders hanging by their tails from a clothesline— for no other reason than to hold power in perpetuity. In other words, lawmakers presumed to choose their voters instead of the other way around.

“The redistricting process that took place in Texas has since been replicated in statehouses around the country, creating districts that are practically immune to challenge and giving Republicans an impregnable edge,” Wright notes.

He quotes Craddick: “Texas became a model for how to get control.”

And control they’ve kept ever since here in the Lone Star State.

So why wouldn’t Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows kowtow to Trump’s desires? That’s the usual response to whatever the wouldbe monarch wants from Republicans at every level of government. Why wouldn’t they do another DeLay during the already scheduled special session?

The answer is that, even as Abbott heeds Trump’s command, Texas Republicans may be humming “Running Scared” themselves. They’re agreeing to a plan that would pluck GOP voters out of their safely red districts and transplant them into nearby blue ones. Current officeholders are not sure they want to be that generous. Given demographic changes across the state, particularly in growing suburban areas, they just might be stretching Republican districts too thin (even as they further marginalize minority voters).

But far be it for a good Republican lawmaker to buck the retribution king in the White House. Knees have been placed firmly on the ground.

Some of our fellow Texans might be quick to remind us that Democrats would be just as redistricting-ruthless as Republicans. Given human nature when it comes to wielding power, there’s a good chance that’s true. You can’t test the theory, of course, because Texas Democrats have grown gray and weary waiting for the opportunity to draw lines in their favor.

There is another way. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 10 states, including Arizona and California, have shifted redistricting responsibilities to a board or commission. In addition to the 10 giving a commission primary responsibility, four have an advisory commission, while three have a backup commission that will redistrict if lawmakers can’t meet their deadline.

Commissions have their pros and cons, as NCSL points out, and yet commissiondrawn maps tend to be less grotesquely gerrymandered than lawmaker-drawn concoctions. I’d love to see how they would work in Texas. Yet the chances that Texas legislators, Republican or Democrat, would ever agree to a redistricting commission are about as likely as the lyrics from another Orbison classic, the one that features “a candy-colored clown they call the sandman.” It’s called “In Dreams.” Joe Holley, a member of the Houston Chronicle editorial board, was a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2022, as part of the Chronicle editorial team that produced a series of editorials on Donald Trump’s “Big Lie”; and also a Pulitzer finalist in 2017.