Negotiators in San Antonio — trying to find common ground on state legislative and congressional districts so a primary date in Texas that can stick may finally be set — agreed to leave unchanged state Senate District 10, now represented by state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth.
This district has been the subject of lawsuits and is seen as a big win for Davis.
Sen. Wendy Davis
This is just for interim map purposes, obviously. The state will still try to get the legislatively drawn map approved via the preclearance lawsuit in DC and the subsequent appeal, whatever the ruling is. But beyond being a victory for Davis, whose re-election prospects just got a fair bit brighter, this is big for two reasons:
1. As SD10 was the only disputed Senate district, this is equivalent to saying that the state and the plaintiffs have agreed on an interim Senate map. Indeed, according to the Trib, we have a Senate map for November, pending approval from the judges which I presume will be a formality at this point. One down, two to go.
2. SD10 is a coalition district. The Justice Department did not object to the legislatively drawn Senate map in their initial response to the preclearance lawsuit. It was other intervenors, namely Sen. Davis herself along with State Rep. Marc Veasey and some other Fort Worth/Tarrant County officials, who were litigating this issue. If the state is willing to allow SD10, which like CD33 in the Abbott map is a coalition district, then I don’t see what the objection is to allowing CD25 to remain as a coalition district for the interim. (Ditto HDs 26, 137, and 149.) If the state is punting on SD10, that sounds to me like they may be ready to punt on the whole coalition district question for now and hope to win it later. Or maybe not. Here’s that Trib story:
That was a bright spot in a day when the lawyers and judges trudged through the lists of differences over political districts for legislative and congressional seats. The judges put the lawyers through their paces, asking them to make their arguments on congressional maps district by district.
With the incumbent in the middle of the gallery, the lawyers argued over Congressional District 25, a district that is either safe for or hostile to U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin. It depends on the map.
In the proposal offered by the state and accepted by some of the plaintiffs — notably, the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force — Doggett would find himself in a Republican district that stretches from Hays County, south of Austin, north to Tarrant County. He would probably run in a newly created Congressional District 35, which includes eastern Travis County and runs south to San Antonio. It’s Democratic, but designed to give Latino voters a bigger say in who goes to Congress.
Attorneys for Doggett and for several of the minority plaintiffs argued that his district gives minority voters a choice and as a result is protected by the federal Voting Rights Act. Attorneys for the state, and for the Latino Task Force, argued that it’s not a protected district and that the changes make it easier to draw a new minority seat.
In Congressional District 27, the plaintiffs argue that the state stranded more than 200,000 Latino voters, again in violation of the voting laws. But the state said that the adjacent congressional district is a new minority seat and that there aren’t enough people in that area to draw two such seats.
In Congressional District 33, an inkblot of a district that straddles the Tarrant-Dallas county line, the plaintiffs said the state packed black voters into another district and denied them more say in the new seat. The state said that district was drawn to accommodate growing populations and not to create a new minority district, and said the plaintiffs were trying — there and in Congressional District 23 in south and west Texas — to draw new seats for Democrats and not for minorities.
The arguments were tailored to each district but had a similar underpinning. The state said it drew minority opportunity districts where it had to, either because they already existed or because population growth required it. The plaintiffs said the state ignored opportunities to draw more minority districts.
No clue about the State House map, though I’ve seen claims that the sides are not that far off. We should know by the end of the day today if that is the case. We may also be inching closer to a settled primary date. May 29 is now the favorite, but as with everything else, that could change. Michael Li has Davis’ reaction on Twitter, and a press release from the Lone Star Project about this is beneath the fold. Burka and Stace have more.
UPDATE: More details on the now apparently settled May 29 primary date and the effect on precinct conventions.
State Agrees to Preserve Senate District 10
Senator Wendy Davis’ tough, smart, legal fight
protects Fort Worth minority neighborhoodsJust a short time ago, the state Attorney General’s office agreed to drop its efforts to dismantle Senate District 10. Under an agreement made with state Senator Wendy Davis and other plaintiffs, Senate District 10 will remain completely unchanged in its configuration.
The concession on the state’s part represents an enormous victory for Tarrant County voters, minority citizens in Fort Worth and Senator Davis herself. In an attempt to destroy Senate District 10, the state of Texas removed large African American neighborhoods in the southeastern part of the district and attached them to an Anglo Republican district extending one hundred miles to the south. The state then removed Latino neighborhoods in the northern part of the district and attached them to a Denton County Republican district. Under the agreement, all of these changes are reversed.
Senator Davis defied predictions that a legal challenge to Senate District 10 would be unsuccessful. This agreement represents a clean and complete victory for Senator Davis and other plaintiffs.
Comments from Lone Star Project Director Matt Angle:
Senator Wendy Davis and other key leaders like Commissioner Roy Brooks, State Representative Marc Veasey and Constable Sergio De Leon had the guts and the smarts to stand up to Greg Abbott. Their courage paid off.
Greg Abbott and state Republicans spent millions of dollars trying to eliminate the voting rights of Tarrant County citizens. Wendy Davis and Tarrant County leaders stood up to them and stopped them.
Your logic is specious here.
The state punted on SD-10 because it remains a Republican leaning district that every GOP candidate save 1 in the last decade has won.
CD-25 won’t be conceded on because the GOP can’t win that district, and they hate Doggett.
In any case, Texas Republicans are obviously banking on a win at the Supreme Court when they don’t get what they want. It would be quite interesting to try to argue that S5 should apply to districts where S2 does not; and thus creating a lesser secondary class of states.
As far as TX-33; the GOP did not add any meaningful number of blacks to TX-30.