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Posted on 10/12/2003 7:07:59 PM PDT by Dog Gone
Important people traveled last week.
Gov. Rick Perry searched New York City for factories to transport to Texas. He set aside a little time to raise money from those who sell insurance to state governments.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, worked Austin's state Capitol offices in search of additional Republican votes in Congress.
Perry and DeLay both had practical aims based on sharp-eyed calculation. Yet each, in his own way, is sort of a dreamer.
The governor told the financial media what we might call "The Texas Story": Balanced budget, good tort reform, independent electricity grid, good for business. He left out the chapters on low skills, bad schools and bad health.
The Texas Story came with The Perry Promise: Despite laying off state workers, he could show that this year, the Legislature moved $295 million in "economic development" money into the governor's kitty and he stood ready to reward corporations for moving plants to Texas.
As Perry plied Wall Street, DeLay was downright gubernatorial. He shuttled between the offices of House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, working to concentrate further his power in Washington.
In three days, The Hammer produced what Perry could not in three months: A new congressional districting plan that would end Democratic dominance of the Texas delegation and yield as much as a seven-seat switch in favor of Republicans, now outnumbered by Democrats 17-15.
As the Texas-Oklahoma football weekend approached, the legislative aviary emptied for Dallas, and the new plan remained vague. The map had some distinctly DeLayian touches, such as:
1. Rewarding Midland County (population: 117,000), the home of Craddick, by placing it in the center of a sprawling new district. This would give Texas' declining oil industry the voice it sorely deserves in Washington.
2. Punishing the liberal stronghold of Travis County (population: 850,000) by destroying the lone resident congressional seat now held by Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin.
The Hammer would leave Travis a mere dish of federal sashimi, sliced into three translucent, ribbonlike districts in which no Austinite stands a chance of election.
One district would stretch from U.S. 183 to the Texas-Mexico border. The district would be so serpentine that it is reminiscent of North Carolina's famous 12th District, held by Democrat Mel Watt, which stretches 160 miles from Durham to Gastonia, and at some points is no wider than Interstate 85.
As is said about Watt's district, if Doggett drove his proposed district its length with his car doors open, he'd kill half his constituents. The seat's successful claimant will be from the Rio Grande Valley.
Another Travis district will stretch to the northern suburbs of San Antonio, protecting incumbent Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, who now represents western Travis.
North Austin? Dear friends, expect to be lumped with every U.S. 290 burg in the 130 miles from here to Katy, a community whose Web site pictures the town water tank.
DeLay's passion for policy was ignited around 1973, when he became frustrated with the government meddling in his business, Albo Pest Control.
Since then, he has aggressively pursued deregulation of business (and regulation of human reproduction) in the Texas Lege and in Congress. He is the most powerful majority leader in a lifetime.
Just politics? Sure. When in-power Democrats do it to Republicans.
Perhaps it was just a Texas version of Camelot when in the late 1990s Republican Gov. George W. Bush and two Democrats, Speaker Pete Laney and Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, worked together on education reform. Just a show; mere trifle.
So we're back to normal, with arrogance and hubris.
Having pushed aside Speaker Dennis Hastert to rule the U.S. House, DeLay has now pushed aside Perry to lead the Texas Legislature. He has produced a plan to diminish Central Texas' influence in Congress.
The hope here is that the Department of Justice or courts will strike down the plan and, failing that, Texas will be protected by the pendulum of political history, which inexorably swings in the other direction when a majority abuses power.
Rich Oppel is editor of the Austin American-Statesman.
Any redistricting plan that can keep Austones out of government sounds pretty good to me!
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