Supreme Court Overturns Part Of Texas Congressional Map

MSNBC ^ | 6/28/2006 | MSNBC

[AntiGuv]

And I say that purely as a redistricting junkie. I'm just excited that I get to play with maps while I follow along. :)

[new yorker 77]

Let them hate themselves.

Their relevance is matched by their cognitive reasoning skills.

[ntnychik]

Well, not perfect news, but pretty good nonetheless. Btw, I'm betting on a "SCOTUS repudiates DeLay" theme on tonight's MSM news.

[cotton1706]

You're absolutely right. Hispanics are not a race of their own. My ancestors were from England and Ireland, theirs from Spain. 300 miles do not a race make. And if I was of French ancestry, then I would be white but a person descended from somebody on the other side of the mountain would be hispanic. Ridiculous.

[george wythe]

It seems wrong to see them as a group rather than as individuals.

Excellent point

For instance, creating school districts where blacks are segregated from whites is bad, according to liberal orthodoxy.

In contrast, creating Congressional districts where blacks are segregated from whites is good, according to liberal orthodoxy.

If you ever find a rational answer from a liberal to your excellent point, please ping me. I still don't understand why segregation is good sometimes, but it's bad at other times.

[hispanarepublicana]

For now, it is a victory.
However, it's bittersweet if it costs Bonilla his seat and if reshuffling his district affects the other nearby ones. Watch and see.

[Wings-n-Wind]

MSNBC headline is BACKWARDS due to bias....

Should read...

SUPREME COURT UPHOLD TEXAS DISTRICT MAP: SMALL ADJUSTMENTS ACCOMMODATE LOCAL DEMOGRAPHICS

IMHO...
Food for thought

[Clump]

Only Kennedy stands in the way of some really solid decisions from the SC. He is always just a little off. On the other hand, it could be worse. He is light years better than those 4 goons on the far left.

[Mo1]

Doesn't sound like the Dem won much from this decision

[Theodore R.]

Cuellar lives in Bonilla's district now. Cuellar cannot vote for himself. Cuellar will run anywhere he can win.

[Theodore R.]

But then again Justice Anthony Kennedy is a liberal racist who believes in political apartheid - for minorities, who can only be represented by liberals.

Yes, but Reagan appointed him!

[Sam Spade]

Yep, this is what I'm seeing as well. The real question in my mind is whether the redistricting will be court-imposed or court-required of the Leg to do.

Down there, I can't see how the changes can be limited to Bonilla/Cuellar unless the northern part of Cuellar's district can be lopped off to Bonilla to suffice for gaining the other part of Webb County, and somehow I don't think the numbers would work. The issue on the whole in re-re-re-districting will be the southern part of Bexar County.

Otherwise, I think a re-districting solution could affect areas up to Austin (maybe not CD-10) over to CD-14.

Of course, all this is moot, if the court imposes a solution.

[rwfromkansas]

The Court okayed the vast majority of the map, and the impact will be minimal.

It is an okay ruling, not the best outcome, but not going to overturn the GOP dominance in Texas.

[hispanarepublicana]

In the primary, wasn't the DNC running/supporting a primary opponent because they thought Cuellar too conservative?

[mewzilla]

I loathe gerrymandering.

[AntiGuv]

I rather doubt there is any solution short of recreating a Laredo-based district, and I don't see how they do that without compacting all those long districts stretching from the border toward Austin, and I don't see how they do that without substantially altering much of the South Texas map.

What some people here are missing is: (a) fixing TX-23 to meet Kennedy's ruling requires shifting about 100,000 voters, which is between a third and a half of a Texas congressional district; and (b) Kennedy explicitly rejected a "non-compact" Latino district (new TX-25) substituting for a "compact" Latino district (old TX-24).

In other words, this is hardly a trivial shift just to fix the TX-23, and there is an inevitable domino effect, and because Kennedy's ruling requires not just that Texas have six Latino districts, but that those districts be compact districts, there is very little leeway for manipulating the maps.

[AntiGuv]

PS. That one segment should read TX-23 for the old "compact" Latino district, and not TX-24. What Kennedy rejected was that Doggett's "non-compact" TX-25 district makes up for Bonilla's old "compact" TX-23 district.

[rahbert]

he's going to be pretty Frostrated..

[Torie]

Well this one should be pretty easy to unwind. You just give back to the 23rd the part of Webb that was lopped off, and excise from it an offsetting part of Anglo Bexar, give to the 28th some of the southern portion of the 25th to replace the excised part of Webb, give to the 25th more of Travis to replace the lost southern counties, and give to the 21st the Anglo Bexar precincts that the 23rd gave up.

Cuellar runs in the 23rd and replaces Bonilla, the guy Cuellar beat gets the 28th, Doggett gets a more compact district and loses a bunch of Hispanics, and the 21st becomes hyper GOP. Everybody is happy - except Bonilla.

[BJClinton]

Hardly. The lines will shift a bit but we'll keep our gains. Hell, we may even be able to squeeze an extra seat out of a court-ordered redistricting.