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Monday Dewhurst held a meeting with community leaders from all over West Texas in the capitol complex. Craddick prevented those invited from Midland from attending. Most of those there opposed the House plan. Most also agreed we had gotten the short end of the stick with the judicial panel's map. At one point Dewhurst asked straight out how many there opposed the House plan because they wanted to keep Stenholm, and not a hand went up.

I know there are a lot of ranch/farm voters who will split a Republican ticket for Charlie, but numerically they are not that significant. We have worked our butts off out here and come damned close to busting Charlie out twice now, Izzard in '94 and Beckham last time.

One fly in the ointment is that Craddick has finally made it clear he will settle for nothing less than a Midland Congressman, and I don't think he gives a tinker's damn what the rest of West Texas wants or what happens to us under his map. One "compromise" quietly mentioned from his camp was that if we didn't like pairing San Angelo with Midland, we could pair Midland with Abilene and San Angelo with Lubbock! Now that's a couple of geographically compact districts. Not to mention you could hear the Abileners' teeth start to grind at that idea.

I have proposed that the same energy we are spending on redistricting and alienating voters in the process, could be applied to winning the five seats now held by Dems in Republican majority districts. The flip side of that is that a majority district is NOT an automatic Congressman. If we win redistricting, but do it ugly enough to turn off the voters, we could end up with TEN dems in Republican majority districts. Yes, the common voter is starting to notice, they may not fully understand the process, but the "waste of money, something stinks" feedback is starting to come in.