Posts Tagged ‘Redistricting’

Texas Gains 2 Congressional Seats, California, New York Lose 1 Each (With Some Thoughts On Texas Redistricting)

Tuesday, April 27th, 2021

The 2020 Census results are out:

Florida and Texas gained House seats while California and New York lost one seat each as a result of population shifts, according to the 2020 census results announced on Monday.

Texas gained two House seats in the census apportionment for a new total of 38 congressional districts, while Florida gained one House seat, bringing its total number of districts to 28. California lost one House seat and will decline to 52 congressional districts, while New York also lost one House seat and will now have 26 congressional districts. Those four states are the nation’s most populous and together provide one-third of the House’s total seats.

A census official noted that if New York had counted 89 more people, the state would not have lost a House seat.

Too bad Andrew Cuomo killed off all those old people before they could be counted.

The population of California stopped growing several years before the coronavirus pandemic, and in 2020 the state lost more residents to outmigration than it gained. Residents have migrated to Texas as well as to neighboring states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon.

Once again, blue states lost population and red states gained population. People flee Democratic governance and its symptomatic poverty, high taxes, crime and disorder. It’s also the first time California has lost a congressional seat ever.

With two new congressional seats to play with, how will Texas Republicans approach redistricting? I am very far indeed from a redistricting guru, but I have a few educated guesses about how they’ll approach things:

  • Obviously, they’ll try to carve out two more Republican districts, but that may prove difficult. Expect a new Metroplex-area suburban/exurban Republican majority district, but don’t be surprised if they have to create another Hispanic majority district for Democrats somewhere.
  • The next-highest priority has to be taking back the two seats lost in 2018, AKA The Year of Beto. Both the 7th (John Culberson losing to Lizzie Fletcher) and the 32nd (Pete Sessions losing to Collin Allred) were typical sleepwalking incumbents caught by end of election cycle demographic shifts, but there’s no reason those districts can’t be redrawn to make them Republican majority districts again. Republican challenger Wesley Hunt only lost by 3% in the 7th in 2020. (Sessions carpetbagged his way into the Waco-based 17th.)
  • Next up would be protecting Republican incumbents whose current districts are starting to get purple. To that end, I would guess that the 2nd District, with Dan Crenshaw, a rising national star regarded as a solid team player (as newly minted congressmen Beth Van Duyne and August Pfluger can attest) in a district that’s only R+5, would be the top candidate for shoring up. Van Duyne’s 24th (R+2) and Chip Roy’s 21st (R+5) would be next. John Carter’s 31st (R+6) is starting to get purple as well, but since he’s 79, he may not get as much consideration as other incumbents. Michael McCaul’s 10th (R+5) would be another candidate, but as one of the richest incumbents, there might be sentiment that he can stand fast without much additional help. Van Taylor’s 3rd (R+6) looks like a candidate on paper, but neither he nor previous Republican incumbent Sam Johnson ever won by less than 10 points.
  • A separate issue than the above, due to different dynamics, is what to do about the 23rd. The only true swing district in Texas over the last decade is currently held by Republican Tony Gonzalez, who defeated Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones by 4% in 2020. Despite having a giant target on his back every time, Republican Will Hurd held the seat for three cycles before retiring despite never breaking 50%. The fate of the 23rd is highly dependent on whether they decide to carve out another majority Hispanic Democratic district for San Antonio, or whether they want to…
  • Make a play for the Rio Grande Valley? One of the more surprising results of 2020 was that Republicans made significant inroads into the Valley, including President Donald Trump winning Democrat Henry Cueller’s 28th outright. Part of this is due to Trump’s increasing popularity among Hispanics, but the Texas Republican Party has been pouring significant resources into the Valley. Combined with Biden’s border crisis, all this adds up to an opportunity to pick up one or more seats through redistricting. Michael Cloud’s adjacent 27th is looking pretty safe, so the temptation will be to turn one or more of the 28th, Vicente Gonzalez’s 15th (D+3) and/or Filemon Vela Jr.’s 34th (D+5) into competitive swing districts.
  • Another issue will be what the hell to do with Austin, the blue tumor in the heart of red Texas. One driving rationale for the shape of the 35th district (running from Austin down I-35 to San Antonio) was trying to knock off Democratic incumbent Lloyd Doggett by forcing him to face off against a San Antonio-based Hispanic Democrat. That failed, and Doggett won handily. It’s going to be mighty tempting for Republicans to throw in the towel and fashion a liberal urban core district for Austin to free up redder suburban areas to shore up Republican incumbents.
  • I can see one approach solution that solves a lot of those problems: an urban Austin district, a new majority Hispanic district near San Antonio, and a new majority Hispanic district huddling the Rio Grande Valley, reinforcing the 23rd and turning two of the 15th, 28th and 34th into majority Republican districts. But the fact it is obvious means that it probably won’t come to pass, with the likely result a more sophisticated (i.e., gerrymandered) solution.

    A Look At The State-Level Democratic Crash

    Thursday, November 19th, 2020

    With the final results of the presidential race still up in the air, let’s look at the horrible job the Democratic Party did in down-ballot races.

    Let’s start with Florida:

    After suffering crushing losses from the top of the ballot down, the state party now is mired in a civil war that could have profound consequences for future elections.

    High hopes for gains in the state Legislature have given way to recriminations and finger-pointing. Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo is almost certain to lose her job, but no one has stepped up to claim her mantle. Prospective 2022 gubernatorial candidates, including state Rep. Anna Eskamani and state Sen. Jason Pizzo, are slinging blame. And redistricting, which could deliver Democrats into another decade of insignificance, is around the corner.

    Even as Joe Biden heads to the White House [Disputed -LP], state Democrats know that President Donald Trump did more than just win in Florida. He tripled his 2016 margin and all but stripped Florida of its once-vaunted status as a swing state. His win, a landslide by state presidential standards, was built on record turnout and a Democratic implosion in Miami-Dade County, one of the bluest parts of the state.

    “We have turnout problems, messaging problems, coalitions problems, it’s up and down the board,” said Democrat Sean Shaw, a former state representative who lost a bid for attorney general in 2018. “It’s not one thing that went wrong. Everything went wrong.”

    While Democratic losses were particularly devastating in Florida, the party fared poorly across the country at the state level. The timing couldn’t be worse. Political redistricting begins next year and Republicans in control of statehouses across the country will have a chance to draw favorable maps that will help their state and federal candidates for the next decade.

    What happens next in Florida could be an early signal of how the Democratic Party’s current progressive-centrist divide plays out in Washington and elsewhere. In interviews, more than 20 Democratic officials, organizers and party leaders throughout the state said the party schism has grown only deeper since Election Day. Would-be gubernatorial candidates have already begun trading fire as they begin to lay the ground to try and defeat Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    This year, Florida Democrats had one of the worst performances of any state party in the country. They lost five seats in the state House after expecting to make gains. Three state Senate hopefuls were defeated, and incumbent U.S. Reps. Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who represented districts in Miami, were unseated.

    Many of the party’s failures over the years can be traced to unforced errors. When Democrat Andrew Gillum lost the governor’s race in 2018, he had $3.5 million still sitting in the bank. He then pledged to register and reengage 1 million Florida voters this cycle, but that evaporated after he left public life amid scandal.

    That would be the whole gay meth orgy thing.

    Florida Democrats haven’t held the governor’s office for more than two decades, and they’ve been out of power in the Legislature for nearly a quarter-century. Since their last big win, when President Barack Obama won Florida in 2012, Democrats have won just a single statewide race — out of 12.

    This year, the party continued to make mistakes.

    As Trump made the state his official residence and his top political priority for four years, lavishing resources and attention on it, the Democrats again neglected to build an infrastructure for talking to voters outside of campaign season. The Biden campaign chose to forgo voter canvassing in the state because of the coronavirus pandemic. And outside money that the party apparatus couldn’t control sometimes worked against its own candidates.

    Democrats also failed to counter GOP messaging that branded them as anti-cop and pro-socialism, an expected and effective — albeit misleading — message aimed largely at South Florida Hispanic voters.

    “Misleading” here is used as a synonym for “a truth that hurts Democrats.”

    The day after the election, nine state lawmakers who had survived the GOP rout met by phone to air grievances, according to Sen. Jazon Pizzo.

    Among those on the call were Pizzo, who also is considering a run for governor, Annette Taddeo and Rep. Joe Geller — a mix of centrists and liberals.

    The group fumed over pollsters who failed to capture what was happening on the ground, complained about the party’s use of out-of-state consultants and questioned whether they hit back hard enough against Republican falsehoods.

    “I’m not a f—ing socialist,” Pizzo later said in an interview. “My life is a manifestation of the American dream. I believe in free markets.”

    That brings up the question of what he’s doing in the Democratic Party.

    The meeting, which was not previously reported, amplified the fact the politicians can’t answer a simple question: Who is the leader of the Florida Democratic Party?

    Progressives say the Election Day drubbing is proof that centrism and party pandering to corporate donors doesn’t work.

    “Systematic change is what we need,” said Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat and a leading voice on the left who is considering a run for governor. “We can’t win more seats unless we lead with values and fight back and challenge corporate interests. Money was not a real problem this cycle, and we still lost.”

    Centrists, who traditionally have made up the party’s base of power in Florida, say a lurch to the left will decisively doom the party’s chances of taking the governor’s mansion in 2022.

    “We are a center-right state,” said Gwen Graham, another potential contender for governor who once represented a conservative congressional seat.

    Sounds like Texas before the hard left decided they wanted to throw conservatives out of the party.

    Republicans also cleaned up in key states for redistricting:

    Republicans are set to control the redistricting of 188 congressional seats — or 43 percent of the entire House of Representatives. By contrast, Democrats will control the redistricting of, at most, 73 seats, or 17 percent.

    How did Republicans pull that off? By winning almost every 2020 election in which control of redistricting was at stake:

    • The GOP kept control of the redistricting process in Texas by holding the state House. Given that Election Data Services estimates Texas will have 39 congressional seats for the next decade, this was arguably Republicans’ single biggest win of the 2020 election.
    • Republicans successfully defended the Pennsylvania legislature from a Democratic takeover, although they’ll still need to share redistricting power over its projected 17 congressional districts, as Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has veto power.
    • Republicans held the majority in both chambers of the North Carolina legislature, which will enable them to draw an expected 14 congressional districts all by themselves.
    • Amendment 1 passed in Virginia, taking the power to draw the state’s 11 congressional districts out of the hands of the all-Democratic state government and investing it in a bipartisan commission made up of a mix of citizens and legislators.
    • In Missouri (home to eight congressional districts), Gov. Mike Parson was elected to a second term, keeping redistricting control in Republican hands.
    • In an upset, Republicans managed to keep their majority in the Minnesota state Senate, thus ensuring Democrats wouldn’t have the unfettered ability to draw the state’s projected seven congressional districts. The parties will share redistricting responsibilities there.
    • The GOP kept control of the state House in Iowa, with its four congressional districts.
    • Republicans maintained their supermajorities in the Kansas Legislature, enabling them to pass a new congressional map (worth four districts) over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.
    • Finally, Republicans surprisingly flipped both the state Senate and state House in New Hampshire (worth two congressional districts), seizing full control of both the state government and the redistricting process.

    Let’s take a closer look at Democrats’ failure to turn Texas blue:

    In a big blow for the party, Texas Democrats were unable to flip nine state House seats they had hoped would give their party the majority this election season.

    It was the biggest shot they’ve had in two decades to gain control of any lever of government in the state. For the past two decades, Republicans have had control of everything – the governorship, the state Senate and the state House.

    Democrats thought things might change this year, mostly because they made serious inroads in Republican-held House districts in suburban counties in 2018. That year, Democrats flipped 12 seats in the Texas House, mostly in districts with changing demographics in the suburbs.

    Democrats set their sights on nine more seats they thought could also go their way.

    But Victoria DeFrancesco Soto with the Center for Politics and Governance at UT’s LBJ School said 2018 was a high-water mark for the party.

    “I think that there was just a ceiling that was reached,” she said.

    More on that theme:

    [Texas Governor Greg] Abbott’s top political strategist, Dave Carney, was blunter in an interview late Tuesday night. He said Democrats were massively underperforming expectations because “they buy their own bullshit.”

    “Here’s the best standard operating procedure for any campaign: Stop bragging, do your work and then you can gloat afterward,” Carney said, contrasting that approach with “bragging about what’s gonna happen in the future and being embarrassed.”

    “Why anybody would believe what these liars would say to them again is beyond belief,” Carney added. “How many cycles in a row” do they claim Texas will turn blue? “It’s crazy.”

    Other evidence of Democratic Party weakness: “‘Experts’ Listed 27 House Races As Toss-Ups. Republicans Won All 27.”

    Republicans also won all 26 races deemed “leaning or likely Republican,” and even picked up 7 of the 36 seats listed as “leaning or likely Democrat.”

    Despite nearly unanimous predictions that Democrats would further cement control of the House, they now hold just a 218-204 advantage, with Republicans poised to pick up more seats, as they lead in 8 of the remaining 13 races.

    Those are some mighty fine anti-coattails Biden has…

    Republican dominance in supposedly 50-50 districts is yet another reminder of just how wrong polls were in 2020, and how wrong they have been for some time. What should embarrass pollsters most, though, is not the fact that they were wrong, but how one-sided they were in the process.

    Across the board, pollsters routinely underrepresented support for Republicans while falsely painting a picture of impending Democrat dominance. Are the American people supposed to think that it’s a coincidence that nearly every time a poll missed the mark in 2020 — which was often — it was in favor of Democrats?

    Everything about this election looks like a Republican wave election, not the “Blue Wave” election so many in breathlessly predicted. Everywhere but for President. I wonder why?

    It seems like Democrats never get tired of getting high on their own supply…

    Supreme Court Validates (Most) Texas Redistricting

    Monday, June 25th, 2018

    “Most” in this case means that the Supreme Court sided with Texas in Abbot v. Perez for 10 out of 11 disputed districts:

    Extinguishing the possibility that Texas could be placed back under federal electoral supervision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday pushed aside claims that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against voters of color when they enacted the state’s congressional and state House maps.

    In a 5-4 vote, the high court threw out a lower court ruling that had found that lawmakers intentionally undercut the voting power of Hispanic and black voters, oftentimes to keep white incumbents in office. The Supreme Court found that the evidence was “plainly insufficient” to prove that the 2013 Legislature acted in “bad faith.”

    The Supreme Court also ruled that all but one of the 11 congressional and state House districts that had been flagged as problematic could remain intact. The one exception was Fort Worth-based House District 90, which is occupied by Democratic Rep. Ramon Romero and was deemed an impermissible racial gerrymander because lawmakers illegally used race as the predominant factor in deciding its boundaries.

    The decision also means that “preclearance” (i.e., Texas having to have all redistricting cleared by the federal government) is finally well and truly dead.

    Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, with concurrences from justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Gorsuch.

    Here’s the text of the decision.

    As for House District 90, the text of the decision states that “On remand, the District Court will have to consider what if any remedy is appropriate at this time.” Since it’s already held by a democrat, expect the lower court’s enthusiasm for an immediate remedy to the issue to be tempered, and this late in the game, they might merely order that the issue be addressed following the 2020 census, which would fall to the 87th Texas legislature in 2021.

    Supreme Court Voting Rights Act Decision Texas Fallout

    Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

    We’re already seeing some fallout from the Supreme Court’s Shelby County vs. Holder decision (the complete text of which is now online).

    According to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Voter ID law will take effect immediately.

    “With today’s decision, the State’s voter ID law will take effect immediately. Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.”

    What remains unclear is whether the State of Texas can declare the 2011 redistricting maps valid without further court challenge. There’s currently a bill before Gov. Perry to confirm the 2012 interim maps as the official maps. However, that passed the Texas House and Senate before the Supreme Court ruling. Perry may well decide to veto the measure in order to go with the 2011 maps, which would be more favorable to Republicans.

    Supreme Court Limits Preclearance Provision of Voting Rights Act

    Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

    The Supreme Court today limited use of the “preclearence” requirements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

    Hopefully I’ll have more details when the actual text of the decision is up later today.

    I also wonder if Texas might re-institute the 2011 redistricting map, which was struck down by the San Antonio district court largely on the ground the Supreme Court just invalidated.

    SCOTUSblog has more.

    You Can’t Beat Something With Nothing

    Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

    Now that all the post-redistricting filings have been finalized, I thought I would take a look at Texas U.S. congressional races to see where either the Republican or the Democratic party has failed to field a candidate. While districts are usually drawn to protect incumbents and minimize the chances of the out-of-power party, it’s usually best to contest all possible races, for a variety of reasons:

  • You can’t beat something with nothing.
  • It helps tie down time, money and effort that could otherwise be shifted to other races.
  • It helps down-ballot races by drawing voters to the polls.
  • It offers a chance for Republicans to get their message of limited government, lower taxes and greater freedom out to people who might not otherwise hear it, and possibly make some converts in the process (the parable of the sower).
  • Stuff happens. Sudden, unexpected twists of fate can play out at any moment. Incumbents get caught stuffing bribe money into their freezer or consorting with prostitutes. Planes crash. And there’s always the possibility of someone being caught in bed with a dead woman or a live goat.
  • Unexpected opportunities arise, but you can’t take advantage of them if you don’t have a candidate in place.

    With that in mind, let’s see how well Republicans and Democrats have done in finding candidates for all 36 Texas congressional races:

    U.S. Congressional Races Where Democrats Failed to Field a Candidate

  • U.S. Representative District 2: Republican Incumbent Ted Poe
  • U.S. Representative District 3: Republican Incumbent Sam Johnson
  • U.S. Representative District 4: Republican Incumbent Ralph Hall
  • U.S. Representative District 13: Republican Incumbent Mac Thornberry
  • U.S. Representative District 17: Republican Incumbent Bill Flores (in a seat that was held by Democrat Chet Edwards until 2010!)
  • U.S. Representative District 19: Republican Incumbent Randy Neugebauer
  • U.S. Representative District 25: Open seat, formerly Lloyd Dogget’s until he moved to the newly created 35th District following redistricting. No less than 12 Republicans have filed for this seat (including former Senate candidates Michael Williams, Roger Williams, and Charles Holcomb). 56% of the newly reformulated 25th District’s residents voted for McCain in 2008; that’s solidly, but not overwhelmingly, Republican. But not one Democrat bothered to run…
  • So that’s seven U.S. Congressional races where Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee National Chair for Recruiting and Candidate Services Allyson Schwartz, and, well, whoever the hell it is at The Texas Democratic Party in charge of recruiting candidates, were unable to find a single person out of approximately 688,488 citizens in each of those districts to run for the United States House of Representatives. Say what you want about Alvin Greene running for Senator in South Carolina, but at least he showed up, which Texas Democrats couldn’t even manage to do in almost one-fifth of U.S. Congressional races this year.

    By contrast, Republicans only fell down on the job in one congressional district:

    U.S. Congressional Race Where Republicans Failed to Field a Candidate

    U.S. Representative District 29: Democratic incumbent Gene Green gets a pass. In a district that went 62% for Obama, any Republican was going to have an uphill race. But given that there are five districts even more heavily Democratic (the 9th, 16th, 18th, 33rd, and 35th) where Republicans fielded a candidate, this seems like a lost opportunity, especially for a Republican Hispanic candidate in a Hispanic district headed by an old white guy. (Granted, this didn’t work for Roy Morales in 2010, but I would have preferred that Morales file again and run a token campaign over no one running at all.)

    All in all this is good news for Republicans. If I were a Democrat, I’d be mad at how thoroughly the state and national party fell down on the job of recruiting candidates.

    A suggestion: All six Republican incumbents who haven’t drawn an opponent should each hold a fundraiser for Republican Incumbent Francisco “Quico” Canseco, who figures to have the toughest race of any incumbent this time around.

    References

  • The Texas Congressional Delegation
  • List of 2012 Texas Republican Congressional Candidates
  • List of 2012 Texas Democratic Congressional Candidates
  • Daily Kos redistricting breakdown that includes numbers on how each District voted in the 2008 Presidential race.
  • More Redistricting Fallout

    Friday, March 2nd, 2012

    Now that redistricting is (mostly) settled (for this year), reverberations are still being felt around the state in various races. First a correction: Candidates have until March 9 to file, not the March 6 date I reported yesterday.

    Other tidbits:

  • Republicans have a list of newly filed candidates, including former winery owner John Yoggerst running against Lloyd Doggett in District 35.
  • The Democrats don’t have a separate page, but you can sort by date on the main candidate page. So far there are only a couple of new Sheriff filings.
  • Following yesterday’s roundup, Democrat Pete Gallego is warning fellow Democrat Ciro Rodriguez not to jump into the District 23 congressional race against Republican incumbent Francisco “Quico” Canseco (who unseated Rodriguez in 2010). Rodriguez is currently running against Lloyd Doggett in District 35.
  • For the second election in a row, Solomon Ortiz has been booted. Ortiz Sr. was defeated by Blake Farenthold in 2010, and now Solomon Ortiz, Jr. is calling it quits from the Texas House because “District 33 has been eliminated.” I was going to make fun of him for exaggerating, but dang, he has a point: District 33 has gone from Corpus to NE of the Metroplex.
  • Finally, not Texas, but Dennis Kucinich’s district was eliminated in Ohio’s redistricting, forcing to run against fellow Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur. (Cue the nelson.jpg.) That primary is March 6. At least he’ll have someone to console him is he loses…
  • Texas Congressional Redistricting Breakdown

    Thursday, March 1st, 2012

    I’ve been reading up a bit more on the compromise redistricting lines released by the San Antonio district court. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot was able to keep most of what the legislature passed, and the Governor signed, intact, but a few changes were made to satisfy Democratic demands to win in court what they couldn’t at the ballot box settle lawsuits by various minority interest groups under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

    Though U.S. Congressional Districts, State Senate Districts, and State House districts were all affected by the new maps, I want to focus on three U.S. Congressional Districts, including some shown in this map here:

  • District 35: Lloyd Doggett may not be gone, but District 35, the one Doggett plans to run in, is now 65% Hispanic and mostly based in San Antonio. And the recriminations have already started among Democrats: “If Lloyd Doggett would man up and spend that $3 million he’s been hoarding for the last decade, then we could have an extra Democratic seat.” Doggett dodged a bullet when District 20 incumbent Charlie Gonzalez (son of long-time Congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez, who held the office before him) announced he was retiring, letting up-and-comer Joaquin Castro run for that seat instead of 35, but there’s no shortage of San Antonio-based Democratic contenders, including Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector Sylvia Romo. (There are two Republicans running for District 35, Susan Narvaiz and Rob Roark, both of San Marcos, but given that the new district went for Obaama by 63%, it’s going to be quite an uphill climb for any Republican.) One of the candidates currently running in District 35 is former Democratic Congressman Ciro D. Rodriguez (who is very pissy indeed about redistricting), who previously represented:
  • District 23: This seat is currently held by Republican Francisco “Quico” Canseco, who beat Rodriguez by a little over 7,000 votes in 2010. The redistricting map passed by the legislature made Canseco’s district more Republican, but the compromise district scales back Republican gains. It’s now slightly more Republican (50% of the new district voted for Obama in 2008, down slightly from 51% in the old district), but it’s still close enough that Democrats have to consider this a prime takeover target. Still, Canseco now has the power and name recognition of incumbency, and even if Obama wins (doubtful and frightful, but possible), I doubt his coattails will be particularly long in San Antonio. Texas State Rep. Peter Gallego is the likely Democratic candidate, but so far Canseco is beating him in the fundraising race over three to one. (Disclaimer: Canseco is one of two U.S. congressional candidates I donated to in the 2010 election cycle (three if you count attending a couple of John Carter’s picnics at $10 a pop).)
  • District 27: This is the district where Republican Black Farenthold narrowly edged Democratic incumbent Solomon Ortiz in 2010. (Despite the narrowness of the result, Ortiz announced he wouldn’t be trying to reclaim his old seat.) The interim map successfully makes Farenthold’s seat more safely Republican; Obama pulled 53% of the vote in the old district, but only 40% in the new. Farenthold also has a considerable fundraising advantage. The Democratic who raised the most for that race is Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos. However, Cameron County is now in District 34.
  • All in all, Texas Republicans expect to pick up two to four U.S. Congressional seats thanks to redistricting, which looks extremely doable.

    And now we finally have election dates:

  • March 2: Filing for office reopens
  • March 6: Filing closes again
  • May 14: Early voting begins
  • May 26: Early voting ends
  • May 29: Primary Day
  • June 7-9: Republican and Democratic state conventions
  • July 31: Primary Runoff
  • References

  • Interactive Redistricting Map
  • The Texas Congressional Delegation
  • FEC Page for Texas Congressional and Senate Fundraising
  • List of 2012 Texas Republican Congressional Candidates
  • List of 2012 Texas Democratic Congressional Candidates
  • The Texas Redistricting Blog
  • Over on the left side of the Blogsphere, the Kos Kids have put up the a breakdown that includes numbers on how each District voted in the 2008 Presidential race.
  • The New Maps Are Here, The New Maps Are Here!

    Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

    The new redistricting maps, that is. Sounds like they haven’t been made final just yet, but most likely will be. If that happens this week, that might mean a late April (rather than May) primary.

    You can take a look at them here.

    (Hat tip: Blue Dot Blues, who, alas, hasn’t put me on her blogroll…)

    Voter Registration: Chill

    Friday, February 24th, 2012

    The Right Side of Austin offers up reassurance for those anxious over the fact they haven’t received their voter registration cards: Relax.

    Because Democrats and liberal special interest groups like LULAC and the NAACP want to achieve in courts what they couldn’t at the ballot box, voter registration cards can’t be sent out until the legal redistricting battle has been settled. But if you were a registered voter last year, your new voter registration card will automatically be mailed out once the redistricting fight is settled.

    So if you’ve been worrying, don’t. Once a date for the primary is set, everything should take care of itself…