Posted on 09/19/2011 3:11:50 PM PDT by smoothsailing
David Wasserman
September 19, 2011
The Obama administration is issuing its first civil rights challenge to a redistricting plan against Texas, the state that will gain the most congressional seats from the once-a-decade redrawing of the nation's political map.
It marks the first challenge by the Justice Department to a redistricting plan this year and it has major political implications: The fight could determine which party stands a better shot of winning four new Texas House seats, and it potentially represents the opening round of a political fight between the president and the Lone Star State governor who is vying to unseat him, Republican Rick Perry.
Attorneys for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Tuesday said they will fight the Republican-drawn Texas congressional and state House maps in a preclearance trial before the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that it violates Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Latino groups, along with Texas Democrats, had alleged that the Perry-signed congressional map granted Latinos no new net opportunities to elect the candidate of their choice even though Latinos accounted for a majority of the population growth that is earning Texas four new House seats. Texas Republicans, led by Attorney General Greg Abbott, foresaw that the Justice Department would deny them preclearance and are currently going to trial against the DOJ in the DC District Court to seek approval for the map.
The Justice Department is expected to lay out its specific objections to the maps and stipulations for fixes tomorrow. So far, the Justice Department has been relatively lenient in clearing state redistricting plans, disappointing some Democrats earlier this summer by approving a Republican-drawn map in Louisiana that denied African-Americans a second majority seat. However, given the Latino surge and high stakes in Texas, Democrats were not surprised that DOJ lawyers found the Texas plan to be discriminatory to Latinos in its intent and effect. Had the Texas plan been okayed, said Democratic redistricting attorney Gerald Hebert, “I would think that there’s nobody home at the Justice Department.”
Given Texas Republicans’ legal strategy to bypass the DOJ, the Civil Rights Division’s stance shouldn’t come as a surprise to the GOP either. But according to one GOP redistricting expert who requested anonymity in order to speak more candidly about the process, the fight over the Texas map is now entering the “kind of worst possible world.” The expert predicts the Justice Department's position and large number of interveners in the case could add up to an extended discovery phase and a long and costly trial at the DC District Court, which could prompt a federal court in San Antonio to “draw a de novo plan using the current plan as a benchmark.”
The Republican map already has taken plenty of hits in this month’s separate trial before a three-judge federal panel in San Antonio. Latino groups ranging from the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund to the League of United Latin American Citizens expressed optimism at last Friday’s conclusion of the trial that the judges would rule some of the most blatant elements of the map to be unlawful and discriminatory. “Judges were asking why no new Latino seats were drawn in North Texas,” says Hebert, who participated in the trial.
Another ominous sign for Republicans: the GOP’s defense of the map in San Antonio veered off track when one of their own expert witnesses, Rice University professor John Alford, testified that the congressional map created no new net Latino opportunities.
The San Antonio federal court faces a time crunch: they would prefer to wait to issue their own ruling until the DC District Court rules on preclearance, but Texas’s candidate filing period for the March 2012 primary is supposed to open in November. While the federal court could theoretically delay the date of the state’s primary, it’s unclear how far they would be willing to push back the state’s calendar to give the GOP’s map a chance. “If I were in Democrats’ shoes,” says the GOP expert, “I’d draw [the DC District Court trial] out as long as possible.”
A de novo (from scratch) plan would indeed amount to a disastrous outcome for Texas Republicans, whose line-drawing handiwork would never see the light of day if federal judges impose their own map for 2012. The GOP-approved congressional map created 26 safe seats for Republicans and 10 safe seats for Democrats. Insiders on both sides of the partisan divide a court-drawn map could cost Republicans the West Texas 23rd CD and Dallas-area 33rd CD at a minimum and put as many as three additional GOP seats in limbo.
Is it a coincidence that the DOJ has picked its first redistricting fight over a Perry-signed map that Latino groups allege is discriminatory? Could the GOP have guaranteed more of what it wanted by playing it safe and ceding one of the four new seats as a Latino opportunity district? Those questions, says the GOP expert, may be “imponderables.”
Not that I did this, but why would it matter if I did? Is it now a negative to actually pull for a GOP candidate who has a 10-year record of leadership in a growing state? So much so that you felt the need to join a thread, not comment on its substance, and then continue with your anti-Perry victimhood?
A big bunch of the Hispanics report themselves as “white ~ not Hispanic” in the census. Makes it hard to carve them out a new district.
When the legislatures in New York and Illinois redraw their districts to eliminate as many Republican seats as they can, do you suppose the Obama Justice Department will take them to court as well?
“it is not like 49.5% Hispanic” = “it is now like 49.5% Hispanic”
The hubbub seems to be that a new Hispanic district was not drawn in the Dallas area. The buzz I’ve heard leading up to this challenge revolved around that point.
Also, I think Lloyd Doggett’s CD is now majority or plurality Hispanic, so maybe it’s a net two.
The gist of this thread is going to be in the next debate. One of the candidates will say that Perry is pandering for the Hispanic vote so hard he even gives entitlements to the illegals among them—and yet they still go against both him AND the Texas GOP.
Silly gringo.
In the census, there is a separate question for whether the person is Hispanic, wholly independent from the racial question. One can answer white, black, Asian, Native American or other in the racial question and then answer “yes” on whether one is Hispanic. For purposes of Hispanic-majority districts and the Voting Righst Act, it doesn’t matter how the person answered the racial question so long as he answered that he’s Hispanic.
Yankees still punishing the Confederate states and treating them as racists it looks like.
Wait, I just re-read your post, and noticed your quotation marks. You’re saying that a lot of white Hispanics in TX answer “white” but then answer “not Hispanic” on the Hispanic question? That’s odd, unless they don’t consider themselves Hispanic because only one of their parents is Hispanic or something). But the people that are most mad at such respondents are the LULAC folks and the like, since they want the Hispanic percentage to be reported as high as possible even if they get there by convincing Sephardic Jews to say they’re “Hispanic” because some of their ancestors got kicked out of Spain in 1492 or by conning Azoreans or other Portuguese into saying they’re “Hispanic.”
The Nazis followed on the far more liberal Weimar Republic!
It turned out that in virtually every case it had been wise of the ancestors to NEVER say they were Jews!
Now we know Romney's next mission for Bachmann. Do you work for Mittens?
TX Republicans could have avoided this problem by drawing two Hispanic-majority CDs in Dallas/Fort Worth, both of which would lean Republican (because they would have so many non-voters). They could also draw two Hispanic Republican districts with half the population in El Paso, kept the TX-27 Hispanic-majority but strongly Republican, and drawn 4 or 5 additional 60% Hispanic, 60% Republican CDs. It would be well worth the risk IMHO.
Doggett’s TX-25 was made much more Republican and now stretched to the Dallas suburbs (Michael Williams is the frontrunner there, and will make a terrific congressman); however, the Hispanic portion of Austin was combined with some Hispanic parts of San Antonio to create a 63%-or-so Hispanic TX-25 where Doggett will run against the brother of the mayor of San Antonio (a Hispanic Democrat). The only other new Hispanic-majority CD is in Cameron County and part of Hidalgo County. But since the TX-27 no longer takes in Cameron County and its Hispanic percentage dropped from over 70% to a tad less than 50% (49.5% IIRC) so as to keep freshman Blake Farenthold happy (I guess that, unlike Quico Canseco, Farenthold was willing to run in a Hispanic-majority CD just the one time), there was a net gain of one Hispanic CD.
“Latino groups, along with Texas Democrats, had alleged that the Perry-signed congressional map granted Latinos no new net opportunities to elect the candidate of their choice even though Latinos accounted for a majority of the population growth that is earning Texas four new House seats”
What does that mean? Are Mexicans only supposed to vote for Mexicans? Are Mexicans not allowed to run in these districts. Are they saying that non-mexicans will not vote for Mexicans under any circumstances? Or is it that Democrat Mexicans (only) will not win in these districts.
Palin isn’t even running. Is it the job of Palin supporters to tear down every candidate?
Hint - Palin can’t win the general election, or even the primary. She quit her governship 1/2 way through her first term. She signed the law that led to her quitting her governorship.
She can’t win, IMO. Barry’s best bet is to go against someone he can paint as a quitter.
Also, Mexican-Americans are not a racial group. Some are white descendants of Spaniards. Some are black descendants of Spaniard owned slaves. Some are descendants of Indians. Many are a mix of some or all of the above.
I don’t even know what a “Latino” is. Mexicans, South Americans and Puerto Ricans are no more of a monolithic ethnic group than Americans, Canadians and British.
Palin is balin, that ship ain't sailin.
Maybe they should offer the cost of the lawsuit to Gene Green to retire. At least for the old map his seat was majority hispanic.
Very strange. I had this drop dead beautiful Hispanic gal come to my door volunteering for Wes Riddle to replace lord dog nuts in TX District 25 today. I got really interested when she gave me his card and it had the Constitution as part of the background.
She said the LEGAL Hispanics are sick and tired of the illegals. I told her to go see our neighbor Sandra up the street, and she said “No, she is the one who told me to drop off literature in our neighborhood”.
After talking to her for quite some time, she is a stay at home mom who is sick and tired of her husband trying to pay taxes and saving enough for their kids college. What a nice surprise.
I think Obama and Holder are overreaching here. They will lose if there’s any justice left.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.