How the redistricting case could play out

Michael Li games out how the Texas redistricting litigation may go from the anticipated court ruling to final resolution.

So, in short, Texans could end up with a new set of maps (drawn by the Texas Legislature or drawn by the court or drawn by the legislature and then tweaked/modified by the court). Or the whole process could be put on hold [until] the Supreme Court rules on whether there are underlying violations that require redrawing of the maps.

In any event, maps may not be final until early 2018. That would mean, at a minimum, that candidate filing deadlines for state house and congressional races will be moved (and potentially much angst for those thinking about running for those offices). Depending on how long it takes for the Supreme Court to rule, it is possible that the entire March 2018 Texas primary might have to be moved or, in the alternative, that the primary might be held in two parts – one part for congressional and state house races and one part for everything else).

I jumped ahead to the conclusion in Li’s piece. Go read the whole thing to see how he arrived there. Along the way, he cited this Upshot post about possible outcomes in the Congressional map.

Texas’ defense seems simple. How could it have discriminated in adopting a court-drawn map? The problem: Two of the districts found to be in violation in the April ruling were unchanged on the court-drawn map.

Short of victory, the best case for Texas Republicans might be a ruling confined to those two districts. It would probably cost them one seat in the Austin area, most likely the one belonging to Roger Williams.

But the challenge is far wider.

A third district was found to be in violation in April; it was altered on the temporary map, but only slightly. That district belongs to Will Hurd, already one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the country. He won both of his elections by the margin of the high-turnout Republican suburbs of San Antonio, which were said to dilute the power of the district’s low-turnout Hispanic majority. Without those high-turnout Republican suburbs, Mr. Hurd’s re-election chances would look bleak, especially in what is already shaping up as a tough year for Republicans.

The April decision also left open the possibility that Texas might be required to draw an additional minority opportunity district — where the goal is to give racial or ethnic minorities the sway to elect the candidate of their choice — in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. If that happened, a Republican seat would need to be sacrificed here as well, most likely Joe Barton or Kenny Marchant, or perhaps the district held by Sam Johnson, who is not going to seek re-election.

What would “Armageddon” look like? Well, the likeliest version is the possibility that such changes to a few districts ripple across the map, endangering additional Republican incumbents.

The “Armageddon” scenario was reported on by the Trib in late May, which I blogged about here. The worst case scenario for the Republicans is a loss of six, maybe even seven, seats. That’s unlikely, but the low end is two seats, and that may not be much more probable. We won’t know what the scope may be for a few more weeks, when the court’s ruling comes down, and we may not know for certain until January or February. If you thought the 2012 primaries were fun, just you wait for 2018.

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