Laredo Democrat Files Complaint with Justice Department Over GOP Redistricting Plan

Charging the Texas House Redistricting Committee and its Republican chairman Joe Crabb with "blatant hostility to Hispanic voters," Laredo state Rep. Richard Raymond filed a formal complaint Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Justice.

At midnight Wednesday, the House committee passed a "midnight map," which would remove seven to eight Democratic congressional districts, Raymond said. Democrats currently hold 17 of 32 Texas seats in Congress.

Taking action on behalf of himself and his constituents, Raymond is alleging violations of the minority language requirements of the Voting Rights Act and certain provisions of the Civil Rights Act.

"This is only one obvious example of the pervasive hostility to the rights and interests of minority citizens in Texas," Raymond stated Wednesday.

Crabb, who is from Kingwood, which sits north of Houston, did not return a Wednesday phone call.

Represented by attorney Renea Hicks, former solicitor general of Texas, Raymond has asked the Justice Department to handle the complaint expeditiously. He has the option to seek remedy through the courts.

The Laredo representative sits on the House Redistricting Committee, which has had marathon sessions on redrawing the Texas congressional district map approved 2001 by three federal judges. Redistricting typically occurs the year after every decennial Census.

At noon Wednesday, Raymond held a press conference in the Speaker's committee room at the state Capitol with strong backing from Democratic colleagues.

"Our community should be outraged, and I'm doing this on their behalf," he said from Austin immediately afterward.

Republican Congressman Tom DeLay (who is Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives) is pushing the controversial redistricting issue through his Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, also known as ARMPAC.

"The entire (redistricting) process has taken less than a week, which is absolutely unheard of," Raymond said. "They introduced a plan at 9 p.m. Tuesday, which nobody had seen, and passed the map at midnight, the midnight map."

In the map, Webb County is split in half down I-35. Laredo is divided vertically. The western half, which includes El Azteca neighborhood, would go to newly configured Congressional District 28.

The eastern half would go to the newly configured CD 15 and span 500 miles, from Mercedes and Mission in the Valley to just north of Austin.

"It's ridiculous, and this is a perfect example of why the Voting Rights Act was established in the 1960s. It provides for communities of interest to have meaningful participation in the redistricting process," Raymond said. "Their actions indicate that the Voting Rights Act doesn't matter anymore in Texas."

He stressed that the House Redistricting Committee "has failed and refused to follow its traditional practice of holding public field hearings throughout Texas."

During the wee hours of the morning Saturday, during one marathon session, Chairman Crabb denied Raymond's request to hold statewide public hearings. Crabb also responded to Raymond's complaint that no adequate notice or information was given to non-English speaking communities in Texas, including Laredo.

"Mr. Raymond, there are only two people that I know of on the committee that speak Spanish. The rest of us would have a very difficult time if we were out in an area other than Austin or other English-speaking areas to be able to have committee hearings or to be able to converse with people that did not speak English," Crabb said.

The only committee Democrat who voted in favor of the plan was state Rep. Vilma Luna of Corpus Christi, who is often aligned with Republican House leaders this session.

Margaret Moran, Texas LULAC state director, said Crabb's statements "only serve to polarize and create ethnic and racial divisions among our communities. Texas LULAC asks that his peers in the legislature shun his leadership trajectory and unite behind a common goal of serving all Texans."

Moran added, "His comments against holding bilingual public hearings just because he himself is not fluent in Spanish, speaks volumes as to the stated intent by some legislators to create a bipartisan effort in this legislative session towards addressing the critical challenges facing the state of Texas."

State Rep. Pete Gallego (D-Alpine) who chairs the 41-member Mexican-American Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives said congressional redistricting "is just one more issue in a long line where the (Texas) House is going to be even more divided."

"We worked a long time to have Hispanic Congressional seats. Texas is changing and for them to throw away the seniority that some of our Hispanic members have built up is unfair," Gallego said from Austin.

Over on the Texas Senate side, Gonzalo Barrientos of Austin says he has enough votes to prevent the redistricting bill from being debated on the Senate floor.

"We have tremendous concerns right now in the Legislature. A budget that is $10-12 billion short. Worries about thousands and thousands of children being left out of health insurance. Frail and elderly being without homecare to dress them, bathe them and feed them. Thousands of state employees being laid off and several other very heavy issues," Barrientos said from Austin. "We have already gone through the redistricting process, and the federal courts have spoken. The taking of time to deal with that now is purely partisan and self-serving for those individuals trying to push it."

(Staff writer Tricia Cortez can be reached at 728-2568 or tricia@lmtonline.com.)

Why do we have American citizen voters who don't speak English? If a person is born in this country, they must learn English by the time they are old enough to vote. If a person becomes a naturalized citizen, don't they have to demonstrate proficiency in English? I am annoyed by this constant insistance of bilingual voting issues.

Why won't the Republicans fight this hard?

What are you talking about? Pushing this redistricting plan is aggressive as hell. The Rats are on the defensive, bigtime.

The next thing the Republicans should do is file suit in a friendly courtroom over this plan, making up some issue. That should ensure that any Democrat court challenge would be heard by a Republican judge.

We let the Rats beat us to the punch on that score last time, and we shouldn't let it happen again.

I meant that the Republicans in the State Senate do not want to see this redistricting bill come to them. They feel about redistricting about how Trent Lott and Chief Justice Rehnquist felt about the Clinton impeachment trial of 1999.

I am surprised that the TX House Republicans have pushed as hard for redistricting as they have. The clock is also about to run out on the whole process. The plan is likely to pass the House but not be considered by the Senate.

I think you ought to trust Tom DeLay on this. If he didn't have a strategy to get this passed, he wouldn't have started the process.

I think the key may be the new hispanic district being carved out in the Valley. That could be the plum that gets enough Democrat support to get the plan passed.

Tom DeLay could have tried this approach and get a redistricting bill through the House, knowing that it is DOA in the state Senate. Or he could have done nothing. Alas, either way, it is likely that nothing will be done, and the Democrats will again win 17/32 U.S. House seats in TX in 2004. The current districts, drawn by Democrat federal judges, are all nearly locked in for a particular party.

I guess that's the difference. When I see her on TV, I am so thankful that she's the most prominent Democrat in Texas.

Every time she opens her mouth, she drives more ordinary Texans into the GOP ranks.

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