Messin’ with Texas

THE saga of the 2003 Texas redistricting-which reached its nadir when 51 state Democrats fled to a Holiday Inn in Oklahoma to prevent the quorum necessary for a vote on the plan-neared its final chapter this month at the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices heard aggrieved Democrats make the case that the new map is unconstitutional. The justices will not render judgment on the case until early summer, but there are several indications that they will decide-correctly-that the redistricting should stand.

A coalition of Democrats argued that the mid-decade redistricting was unconstitutional because Republicans undertook it for purely political reasons. In 2000, the U.S. Census gave Texas two additional seats in the House of Representatives. Because the Texas legislature was divided-Republicans held the senate, Democrats the house-the parties couldn’t work together to draw a new map, so the responsibility fell to a three-judge federal district court to adopt one of several proposals from a redistricting board. Although Republicans dominated the board, the result did little to change the Democratic gerrymandering of years past. As a result, Democrats retained a 17-15 majority of the Texas congressional delegation after the 2002 elections, despite winning only 44 percent of the state’s congressional votes.

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Stephen Spruiell

Stephen Spruiell is a former staff reporter for National Review Online.

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THE saga of the 2003 Texas redistricting-which reached its nadir when 51 state Democrats fled to a Holiday Inn in Oklahoma to prevent the quorum necessary for a vote on the plan-neared its final chapter this month at the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices heard aggrieved Democrats make the case that the new map is unconstitutional. The justices will not render judgment on the case until early summer, but there are several indications that they will decide-correctly-that the redistricting should stand.

A coalition of Democrats argued that the mid-decade redistricting was unconstitutional because Republicans undertook it for purely political reasons. In 2000, the U.S. Census gave Texas two additional seats in the House of Representatives. Because the Texas legislature was divided-Republicans held the senate, Democrats the house-the parties couldn’t work together to draw a new map, so the responsibility fell to a three-judge federal district court to adopt one of several proposals from a redistricting board. Although Republicans dominated the board, the result did little to change the Democratic gerrymandering of years past. As a result, Democrats retained a 17-15 majority of the Texas congressional delegation after the 2002 elections, despite winning only 44 percent of the state’s congressional votes.