As Texas Republicans try to muscle a rare mid-decade redistricting bill through the Legislature to help Republicans gain seats in Congress – at President Donald Trump’s request – residents in Austin, the state capital, could find themselves sharing a district with rural Texans more than 300 miles away.
The proposed map chops up Central Texas’ 37th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett, will be consumed by four neighboring districts, three of which Republicans now hold.
One of those portions of the Austin-area district was drawn to be part of the 11th District that Republican Rep. August Pfluger represents, which stretches into rural Ector County, about 20 miles away from the New Mexico border.
And you pretend that the Democrats haven’t been doing this since they were the Democratic Republican Party.
The Democrats proposed a bill last congress to ban gerrymandering and every single Republican voted against it.
It was also full of Democrat shenanigans that they knew the Republicans would not vote for, so they tossed in jerrymandering, knowing the bill would never pass to make it look like they were for it.
Without jerrymandering, the Democrats would lose many seats because they’d no longer be able to take large swaths of rural and suburban areas, then make a wonky looking maps to link them to cities to ensure the suburban and rural voters get outvoted by the urban voters. They’d also no longer be able to carve out mostly black districts that they have no chance of ever losing.
Without their jerrymandering, they wouldn’t have single party control of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Vermont.