Posted on 07/09/2003 5:19:00 AM PDT by Dog Gone
Just hours after the Texas House passed a congressional redistricting bill, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and key senators all but declared the House map dead.
They had many good reasons to do so.
The House map, drawn at the behest of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, would be vulnerable to court challenges that it violated both the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. If adopted, the map would ensure that few Texas voters would know either the incumbent member of Congress or the challengers.
The House plan would disrupt longstanding representation of rural, urban and minority interests. Is there anything left to be served but DeLay's ambitions for greater and more permanent power?
Republicans in the Texas House passed their redistricting bill with such thoughtless haste that they did not bother to establish its merit in debate or counter the many arguments made against it. The lieutenant governor said House Republicans did not bother to consult him. Since his support is vital to final passage of a redistricting plan, House Republicans proved they were less concerned with passing legislation beneficial to Texans than with blindly doing DeLay's bidding.
Rep. Ron Wilson of Houston was one of only two House Democrats to vote for the redistricting map. He said it would improve the chances that a black candidate could replace U.S. Rep. Chris Bell, a Democrat, in District 25. Whatever motives Wilson had for making his pact with the House leadership, a genuine desire to advance the interests of Houston's minority residents was not among them.
Gov. Rick Perry bears ultimate responsibility for pointlessly prolonging the agony of the redistricting battle in a special session.
Perry might not care that editorials in most of the state's major papers oppose redistricting. He might not care that most of the voters who attended public hearings on redistricting spoke vehemently against it. But he should have some regard for his own honor and credentials as a leader who puts the good of the state above the whim of a Washington powerbroker.
Perry, like other state leaders of both parties, acknowledged before the start of the regular session that Texas had more crucial needs than redistricting. Many of those needs, such as school finance reform, have not been met. Perry should not have wasted the Legislature's time and the taxpayers' money on a divisive issue that offers benefits to few and harm to many.
President Bush publicly feigns indifference to redistricting but has his aide, Karl Rove, lobby for it behind the scenes. The president diminishes the bipartisan credentials he earned as governor of Texas and ignores his campaign promise to unite rather than divide.
Dewhurst and some senators say they want to craft a more reasonable district map than the one the House adopted. Any map they drew, however, would not correspond to the conservative dictum of compact, geographically logical districts. Worse, a reasonable map adopted by the Senate would be subject to sabotage in conference committee with the House.
State Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, said he could not vote for the House map. He and other senators not yet committed to vote along partisan lines should advertise their opposition to harmful redistricting long enough to convince their colleagues to drop the matter.
Redistricting more than once every 10 years would be bad for voters of both parties. The Senate would acquit itself well by acting on that realization
BARF!!!!
Why do we bother to vote at all when we have editors and their editorial omnipotent wisdom.
I love to see the LIBS squirm. I bet the Senate passes this thing (their own version) !!The Houston Comical's heros !!:
Thanks for the post and ping !
Here is a list of recent articles on Redistricting:FR Search: Keyword "Redistricting"
07-08-2003
Senators have problems with House redistricting map - Texas redistricting
07-08-2003
House passes remap
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Above article is worthy of showing that a picture indeed is worth a thousand words:
First the Chicken D’s run away to Ardmore, Oklahoma. That didn’t work, so here they are, still having a fit during the Redistricting debate:07-07-2003
TEXAS REDISTRICTING--Vote TONIGHT!
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(The-Terrific-Texan-Special-Session)
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