The Republican-led Texas House on Wednesday approved the new congressional map geared to possibly hand five additional U.S. House seats to the GOP over fierce opposition from Democrats, who cast the plan as a racially discriminatory attempt by President Donald Trump to stack the deck in next year’s midterm election.
The House adopted the map, 88 to 52, along party lines. A Senate panel advanced the map Thursday morning, and the full chamber was expected to send the new lines to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk later this week.
To create up to five Republican pickup opportunities, the map dismantles Democratic strongholds around Austin, Dallas and Houston and makes Democrat-held seats in South Texas redder — all without seriously jeopardizing any of the 25 districts Republicans already control. The proposed map also would push a handful of Democratic members of Congress into seats already represented by other Democrats, setting up possible primary battles between long-serving members of the Texas delegation and younger newcomers. There will be no boundary changes in Denton County.
“The main changes were in the (Rio Grande) Valley,” said State Rep. Ben Bumgarner, R-Flower Mound. “The last two cycles they have been voting more red so they said it was time to un-gerrymander those seats. Our state was literally out of compliance and we essentially got the state into compliance with federal statute and the Dems walked out because of it.”
Democrats in the Texas House staged a two-week walkout over the plan in a bid to stall the map’s passage and rally a national response among blue states, where lawmakers could launch their own retaliatory redistricting efforts.
While Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to eventually sign the map into law, Democrats who oppose the plan have vowed to continue their fight against it in the courts, characterizing the Legislature’s ratification as the first chapter in what is all but certain to be a protracted legal battle.
