Texas redistricting sparks debate over Latino voter representation

Texas Democrats continue to reject Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting push, which could deliver five additional U.S. House seats to the GOP. The Democratic lawmakers, who fled Texas to deny the state House a quorum on the proposed congressional map, argue the plan would disenfranchise the state’s fast-growing Hispanic population.

“They’re silencing Latino voices and keeping us from the most powerful legislative body in the world,” Rep. Ramon Romero Jr., chair of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said at a news conference in Chicago, where Hispanic Texas House members have been staying to block a vote. “Let’s be clear, this map slices and dices our neighborhoods, from the Rio Grande Valley to Dallas-Fort Worth, from Houston to Central Texas.”

The proposed map, however, would increase the overall number of majority-Hispanic districts in Texas by one. The shift lies in which voters will hold influence: liberal-leaning Hispanics in urban areas would be dispersed into more rural districts, while Republican-leaning Hispanics in rural areas would have more power to elect like-minded representatives.

“The new districts empower Hispanic Republicans in a way that some of the old districts empowered Hispanic Democrats,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University professor who has conducted electoral analysis on Texas Hispanic voters. 

One example of this, Jones said, could be the proposed 9th Congressional District, which would stretch from the heavily Hispanic and working-class eastern Houston suburbs to exurban northern Harris County. This seat would come at the cost of the predominantly Hispanic 29th district, currently held by U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, where Latino Democrats were often able to pick the candidate of their choice. In the proposed 9th district, Texas Republican leadership will likely back a Hispanic Republican candidate to energize Hispanic conservative voters and others in the district.

Read more: Texas Republicans pushing redistricting are gambling that Trump’s gains will hold

The 9th district and two other Democratic-held districts that the GOP hopes to flip will become both more Hispanic and more Republican as the party seeks to push regions that tilted rightward in the 2024 election even further in that direction. One is U.S. Rep. Greg Casar’s current district, District 35, where Republican map-drawers are hoping to cut out Austin voters and center the district southeast of San Antonio. Another is the 28th district, currently held by Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.

Casar told NPR that he was concerned that the new maps would leave the Austin, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan areas without a Hispanic opportunity district, or one crafted to allow Hispanic voters to determine the outcome of a race. Democrats have also complained that the proposed redistricting removes one of two Houston seats intended to give Black voters the same power — the seat currently held by Rep. Al Green.

Casar’s statement highlights Democrats’ frustration with the dilution of urban Hispanic voters, who continue to support their party in large numbers. 

Republicans have rejected claims that their redistricting proposal dilutes the voting power of specific racial or ethnic groups, noting that their map creates new Hispanic-majority districts even as it eliminates others. Federal courts have allowed gerrymandering for partisan advantage but not on the basis of race.

“Blame, blame, blame. That’s all the Democrats do,” veteran GOP political operative Wayne Hamilton said of Democrats’ claims that the maps disenfranchise Latino voters. “It’s always somebody else’s fault. (The Democrats) need to get to work and shut their mouths.”

Hamilton leads Project Red TX, a group that recruits and supports Republican candidates in South Texas. The former Republican Party of Texas executive director said he’s confident Latino voters in the region will continue trending right in upcoming elections and argues the map gives them more power. 

Texas Hispanics are a diverse and shifting political bloc, and political demographers say they at times vote more like their non-Hispanic neighbors than like Hispanics in other parts of the state.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor, said the new maps suggest Republicans are betting on the “fracturization of the Latino vote” on lines of gender, age and geography — in a way that could make Latino voters resemble Anglo voters in the future.. 

Democrats’ concern, he added, is that the new maps could make them “exclusively an urban party,” with their areas of growth packed tightly into districts they already control. 

A Statesman analysis of demographic data for the existing and proposed congressional districts found that nine districts now have a majority Hispanic voting-age population.

Under the new maps, Hispanics would make up the majority of eligible voters in one additional district, bringing the total to 10 of 37 districts where more than half of the voting population is of Hispanic descent. 

Jones cautioned that a slim Hispanic majority among eligible voters does not guarantee that Hispanics will be the dominant force in an election. White voters, he noted, still turn out at much higher rates than Hispanic voters. 

University of Houston political scientist Jeronimo Cortina cautioned that more Latino-majority districts do not necessarily translate to improved, or complete, representation for Latino voters. 

The current congressional map is “problematic,” he said, noting it is still tied up in a lawsuit alleging that it violates the Voting Rights Act by disenfranchising voters of color. The case went to trial in May. The loss of incumbents could also hurt districts by removing officials familiar with the needs of their districts, he said.

Cortina added that partisan gerrymandering — the practice of grouping voters for political advantage— hurts representation for all Americans. 

“Gerrymandering is bad, period. For both parties,” Cortina said. “It’s bad simply because it dilutes the very own notion of having a representative democracy, and that is extremely important.”