It's odd that for the opposite reason, Laredo has had a Republican congressman since 1993. Laredo was put into a suburban San Antonio district to dilute its liberal impact on other adjacent districts. But in 2005, Laredo will have both a Republican AND Democrat congressman, quite a lot of representation for a middle-sized city.
I think the number of representatives should be doubled or tripled. It is ridiculous to need almost 700,000 people to have one congressman. I'm not sure if what we need is more districts or some sort of minority representaion similar to the method used by the Illinois legislature.