Posted on 06/30/2014 12:17:29 PM PDT by thetallguy24
As disconnected as the politicians in D.C. appear these days, Austin politicians are often no better. If you’re like me, you rarely, if ever, see your State Senator where you live. While some may have multiple offices within the district, they rarely venture outside of their hometown (especially if it’s outside of the district). With only 31 Senate seats in Texas, a State Senator has a great deal of power and influence. This makes accessibility to the people very important, and with little of it available, this can be problematic for many Texans.
Most might begin by placing apathy as the source of the problem (and in many cases it is), but it’s also an issue of geography. The Texas Constitution states that there shall be only 31 Senators. It doesn’t say why (I’m assuming it’s to prevent ties), nor does it say how these districts are to be apportioned. Currently, these 31 districts are apportioned by population at approximately 806,000 people each. Obviously, this creates many districts that are concentrated in metropolitan areas. However, there are quite a few districts throughout the state that cover areas larger than many states. For example, District 31 represented by Sen. Kel Seliger is over 370 miles long end to end, covering the cities of Amarillo, Midland, and Odessa. Sen. Seliger resides in Amarillo and has offices in Big Springs, Midland, and Odessa. While he may regularly visit those offices, if an Odessa resident needed to speak with him and had to travel to Amarillo, they would have to drive 4 hours to do so.
One might say that this is just a rare result of District 31 being a rural, Panhandle district, but there are 8 districts across Texas that are at least 200 miles end to end (Districts 3, 18, 19, 21, 24, 28, 29, and 31). These districts would represent over 6 million Texans or ¼ of the state’s population. That’s a great number of Texas with little access to their State Senator.
Since there haven’t been any state proposals to alleviate this issue, we took it upon ourselves to create one of our own. Rather than the traditional apportionment by population, we assigned the districts into groups of counties. There are 254 counties in Texas, so the 31 constitutionally required districts would be assigned eight counties each, with six of those districts,mainly west Texas, being given a ninth. Nearly every district we proposed centers a major Texas city, as you can see below.
There are quite a few advantages to this idea other than improved accessibility to elected officials. First, since the districts would no longer be apportioned by population, having permanently assigned counties, the need for redistricting is eliminated. Thus, Texas would have one less fight to face every decade over the Voting Rights Act with liberal judges and activists. Redistricting also creates voter confusion, especially if certain voters’ districts are always changing. With the last redistricting fight, many voters were left limbo and didn’t know which district they were in. This proposal would allow voters to permanently know within which Senate district that reside.
Second, this apportionment would give local government better representation. Similar to the New Jersey Plan for the U.S. Constitution, which gave states, big or small, equal representation through the U.S. Senate, this plan gives county, city, school and utility districts of all sizes equal representation. No longer would local governments be carved up through gerrymandering. With exception to a few city, school and utility districts that cross county lines, the local governments within these districts would be assigned their own Senator.
Third, rural representation in the Senate would increase. With fewer Senators being concentrated in municipal areas, more favorable legislation would be possible concerning water, agriculture, oil & gas, and transportation. Metropolitan-based Senators and Representatives would have a more difficult time trying to take water rights away from or forcefully transfer state road maintenance to rural areas.
Finally, if you’re a Republican, this proposal would ensure a near permanent Republican super majority in the Senate. Instead of the current residence of 12 Democrats in the Senate, only 8 districts would most likely lean Democrat (Districts 4, 12, 13, 14, 18, 23, 26, and 27). With this alignment, Republicans could easily secure a 23-8 super-majority. The likes of Wendy Davis would probably never occur again.
There will be objections to this idea though. Obviously, Democrats would hate this proposal, as they have nothing to gain from it. The radical-left lobbying group, the Texas Municipal League, would complain that this takes away representation from large population centers. In a sense it does not, as the densely populated areas would still maintain their sizable representation in the House. This proposal essentially does to Texas what the U.S. Constitution does to the United States, having one legislative body represent permanent geographical areas, the Senate, and another body and represent the people in equally-sized groups based on population, the House.
Many Senators, mainly Democrats and some Republicans, would object to this reformation, as metropolitan areas with several districts would be consolidated into one, forcing Senators to run against each other. This is a common occurrence though with many other offices, such as State and U.S. Representatives, when redistricting occurs. The only difference would be that this would only have to happen once, instead of every decade. Also, if a Senator disapproved of losing his/her district, they could always carpetbag to a vacant district and run there. As we’ve discussed before, this is common practice in Texas.
In the end though, the pros outweigh the cons. Rural representation would increase, Senators should be more accessible to the voter, and Republicans would enjoy much greater flexibility getting conservative legislation through with a massive super-majority. With large Republican majorities already in both Houses, Republican leadership should waste no time in getting this idea placed on the ballot as a Constitutional amendment in the next session coming up in 2015.
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