Let’s take a moment and pour one out for the real victims of the proposed Congressional redistricting, Texas’ Republican Congressional incumbents.
Democrats aren’t the only ones who won’t be happy with the way Texas Republicans on Wednesday proposed redrawing the state’s 38 congressional districts to comply with President Donald Trump’s directives.
While no Texas Republican members of Congress have gone on record to oppose the maps, the impact is clear. The new maps dice up neighborhoods some have long represented, stretch them in some cases hundreds of miles from their homes, and potentially open them to GOP primary challengers in areas where they don’t have the same ties.
And it all comes as most haven’t been raising money as aggressively, given they didn’t know until the last few weeks that their districts would undergo major reconstructive surgery.
The new maps would push U.S. Rep. August Pfluger, a Republican who lives in San Angelo, into parts of Austin, adding nearly 200,000 constituents in places he’s never represented in Travis and Williamson counties. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, will lose nearly 200,000 people combined near Katy, Benham and Bastrop. And U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, will lose another 50,000 people in Harris County, driving him deeper into Montgomery County.
It’s all happening as 13 of the current 25 Republicans in Congress haven’t raised more than $600,000 over the last six months for their re-elections.
Candidates bracing for competitive election cycles typically spend months building up their funds. U.S. Reps Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, and Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, who have traditionally had more competitive districts, for example both have over $1 million in their account heading into the March primary season.
None of the Republicans in Congress from Texas have testified in any of the hearings over the last two weeks about the redistricting, but U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, said he knows many of the Republicans are upset but just aren’t willing to speak up because of fear of getting sideways with the Trump White House.
“It’s just that Texas Republicans in Congress are too chicken to say it on the record,” he said at a rally in Austin on Friday.
Your heart just breaks for them, doesn’t it? If only they had access to political power and a venue for expressing their opinions to those in power. Imagine what they could accomplish if only they had that.
Anyway. The Downballot does its deep dive into the five districts that the Republicans aim to flip, and they have 2020 election data to go along with the 2024 data. Under 2020 conditions, the two South Texas districts (CDs 28 and 34) were won by Joe Biden, and the other three (CDs 09, 32, and 35) were won by Trump by margins of five, two, and ten points, respectively. In other words, it would not take too much for the Republicans to end up going 0 for 5, if the climate is sufficiently Democratic. The Republicans are making a bet that the gains they saw in 2024 with Latino voters will continue in this election and beyond. (The Downballot gets into that in their latest podcast episode.) Maybe that’s a good bet, maybe it’s not. Trump’s polling with Latinos ain’t great right now. How lucky do you feel?
The Trib also gets into this, and I see it’s because the full set of election data is now available. Here’s the 2018 data and the 2020 data. I was too optimistic above, the new CD32 is just too red in even a 2018 scenario, but the other four would be at worst tossups. And Beto beat Ted Cruz by ten points in CD15 in 2018, though Trump carried it by two and a half in 2020. How much have Latinos really shifted? We’ll find out.
The incumbents who will really feel the squeeze, regardless of what year 2026 performs like, are Democratic incumbents.
In their newly proposed congressional map, Texas Republicans are looking to forge red districts in Central Texas, Dallas and Houston that would push a handful of Democratic incumbents into nearby districts already occupied by another Democrat.
The new configuration would leave Democratic members in those regions with the uncomfortable prospect of battling each other for the dwindling seats in next year’s primaries; retiring; or taking their chances in nearby GOP-leaning districts where they would face uphill battles for political survival.
For now, Texas Democrats are focused on fighting to stop the map by testifying at hearings across the state, firing up donors for a potential quorum break and taking every opportunity to blast the proposal as racist and illegal. The map, introduced by state Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, is still subject to changes from the Republican majority, in addition to Democratic attempts to fight it. And if enacted, it would surely face legal challenges which could further change the makeup of districts.
But if the new lines go through for 2026, they could pit long-serving older members of the Texas delegation against younger newcomers, drudging up existing tensions in the Democratic Party over age and seniority.
In Austin, where Republicans have condensed two Democratic-held seats into one district, progressive Reps. Lloyd Doggett and Greg Casar — ideologically similar but 42 years apart in age — have both been drawn into the same seat.
In North Texas, the three Democratic incumbents in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area would need to decide how to condense themselves into the two remaining blue-leaning districts. While the core of Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s downtown Dallas district was kept largely intact in the new map, Republicans want to dismantle the suburban Dallas district of Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmer’s Branch, pushing many of her voters into the exurban districts of her Republican neighbors. Those changes would leave Johnson with a suddenly bright red district.
Rep. Marc Veasey’s nearby 33rd District, meanwhile, would remain blue but undergo a major transformation, dropping much of Fort Worth — the political base Veasey has represented since he was a state legislator in the mid-2000s — and adding parts of Johnson’s current district.
And in Houston, the Democrat who emerges from the 18th Congressional District’s November special election could see their time in office abruptly cut short. The 18th District has a storied history, as the first southern district to send a Black woman — the legendary Rep. Barbara Jordan — to Congress. Several prominent Black Democrats have since held the seat, including longtime Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died last year. The district has been vacant since March after Jackson Lee’s successor, former Houston mayor Sylvester Turner, also died in office.
But with Republicans packing Democrats into three blue Houston-area seats rather than their current four, the winner in the 18th District’s special election — which will decide who finishes out Turner’s term — could end up in a primary a few months later against one of the more experienced incumbent Democrats or face pressure to bow out.
No Texas Democrats have announced how they would handle the musical chairs scenario the new map would trigger. But with a Dec. 11 deadline to file for next year’s midterms — and pressure from donors and party leaders likely to force their hands well before then — they will have to ponder their futures quickly.
The new map could compel members to retire, change districts or run for a different office rather than face a bruising primary against a colleague.
See also this Chron story. It’s too soon to say what will happen. All things considered, if this map passes and isn’t blocked, and one outcome is that it convinces a Julie Johnson or Marc Veasey or Greg Casar to run for Governor instead, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. I’d rather have them all in Congress, of course, but as lemonade goes that’s not too shabby.
Here’s one optimistic take.
“Just imagine how you’d feel if you worked for Julie’s [campaign], and you work real hard and you block walked and phone banked and then, boop, now you’re in Keith Self’s [district],” Darrel Evans, a communications chair with the Collin County Democratic Party, told the Observer. “You just feel so disenfranchised, I would imagine.”
So things don’t look great for Democrats in North Texas’ urban core.
But Evans isn’t despairing just yet, and the source of his belief that Democrats can make this proposed map work is northern Collin County.
Part of what’s weird about this situation (other than the fact that the President of the United States is getting directly involved in a state issue and lawmakers are just letting him) is the fact that redistricting is typically done at the start of each decade, after new census data is available. This ensures that the people drawing the state maps know how many people are in each state, determining how much representation each state has, and where those people are.
The last census was conducted in 2020, and since that time, northern Collin County has been ground zero for some of the fastest growth in the entire country. Take Princeton, for example. Between July 2023 and July 2024, the town’s population grew nearly 31%. Celina, Anna and Melissa were also named some of the United States’ fastest-growing towns, and all are in Collin County.
Evans believes that the massive migration to these areas could give Democrats some new footholds, without Republicans ever seeing it coming. The growth in these areas has led to infrastructure issues like water shortages, understaffed emergency services and inadequate roads. Those aren’t issues Evans believes that establishment Republicans are prepared to face head-on, but they are issues that he thinks will drive voters to the polls, even if it’s a Democrat running on the platform.
“[Republicans] are doing this, I want people to remember, without good data,” said Evans. “And I’m really hoping that they’re going to make some errors, because I don’t see the Texas GOP as being all that competent.”
It’s a possibility. Certainly something to work towards.
Finally, we close a loop from before.
A Texas Senate committee overseeing congressional redistricting voted along party lines Wednesday to block efforts to subpoena a U.S. Justice Department official and a conservative mapmaker involved in drawing a newly proposed congressional map. All six Republicans on the panel rejected the motion, while the three Democratic members voted in favor, falling short of the votes needed to compel testimony.
The vote followed Democrats’ push to question Harmeet Dhillon, a Justice Department attorney who authored a letter alleging that several Democratic-held districts, three in Houston and one in North Texas, were racially gerrymandered. Dhillon’s letter, sent to Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton on July 7, argued that the districts improperly packed nonwhite voters, raising constitutional concerns. Senate Democrats also sought to subpoena redistricting strategist Adam Kincaid, whose group is reportedly behind the latest proposed map.
Sen. Borris Miles (D-Houston) criticized Republican members for declining to investigate those behind the map changes. “We couldn’t garner enough respect from our colleagues to just question the person who wrote the letter attacking our districts, attacking our communities,” he said, as reported by The Dallas Morning News. Democrats contend that Dhillon’s letter directly influenced Abbott’s decision to include redistricting on the special legislative session agenda, alongside flood relief and emergency preparedness.
Committee Chair Sen. Phil King (R-Weatherford) defended his vote, stating that Dhillon’s letter was not addressed to the Senate and that she had already been invited to testify. “I think we’re a little premature in that regard to consider a subpoena,” King said, noting that only three business days had passed since the invitation.
She’ll never testify, and she’ll never be pushed to testify. Leave no stone turned, that’s the motto. Now gird up for today’s hearing.