TX redistricting OK'd; appeal to be made to USSC

"Troublemakers." That's what House Speaker Tom Craddick's press secretary called Texas House Democrats on Sunday.

Not "loyal opposition." Not "honorable but misguided colleagues from the other side of the aisle."

The word choice isn't accidental, nor is it likely that it was just Bob Richter's opinion. Official spokesmen rarely use words that haven't first been uttered by their bosses.

"Troublemakers" was just the latest verbal example of the deterioration in relations taking place in the Legislature over the issue of midcycle congressional redistricting. The decay infecting the state's political bodies, however, is not restricted to the R's and D's in the House.

Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst took a shot last week at the House GOP leaders, likening them to "Iranian cabdrivers" in their efforts to reach a compromise map with the Senate. Dewhurst said that House leaders exhibited "a style of negotiating in which they wait to the last minute and then try to pile on additional requests."

The obligatory apology was quick in coming from Dewhurst spokesman Dave Beckwith. Iranian-Americans didn't deserve the comparison.

Is it any wonder that voters have become cynical about politicians and their promises?

Texans are arguably observing the greatest leadership vacuum in nearly 158 years of statehood. (emphasis mine) Signs pointing to that as a truism abound:

• Spurred by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Gov. Rick Perry, the Republicans initiated the divisive debate on midcycle redistricting during the regular session, when many other pressing issues faced the state.

• Perry has called an unprecedented three special sessions -- and has hinted at a fourth -- on the completely unnecessary issue of redrawing congressional lines.

• Democrats twice fled the state to halt the redistricting debate, stalling or killing votes on other legislation important to Texans.

• The Republicans inexplicably did not reach agreement among themselves on a redrawn map during the weeks they sat around Austin, waiting for the Senate Democrats to return from Albuquerque, N.M.

Ego is the disease of politics, and the leadership of the Texas Legislature is eaten up with it. Some illnesses abate with time and a heavy infusion of antibiotics, but recovery for Texas' political leadership will take nothing less than a miracle.

...With just six days remaining in a third special legislative session called on the divisive issue, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst announced that a deal had been reached on a map designed to give Republicans a majority in the Texas congressional delegation.

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The new map, if used in the 2004 elections, should give DeLay at least five more Republican seats in the U.S. House from Texas. Details of the proposal will not be released until today.

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(Rep. Martin) Frost said the Republican plan will be "dead on arrival" in the federal courts because it violates federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. He predicted the map will not be used in the 2004 elections.

--edit: the map is available for viewing online; click hereand follow the clicking instructions in the sidebar[/color]

I wonder if NIMH in the Netherlands knows about "Gerrymandering"

It means the drawing of District Lines in order to maximize the electoral advantage of a political party.

I wonder if NIMH in the Netherlands knows about "Gerrymandering"

A day after the Legislature passed a bill that would strip two high-profile programs from Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office, she racheted up her verbal attack on Gov. Rick Perry and said today she wouldn't rule out challenging him in 2006.

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Strayhorn told the luncheon crowd at a downtown Houston hotel that she was disappointed in Perry's decision to take her stance on the state's budget shortfall and inability to balance it in June as something "personal."

"Texas taxpayers and Texas school children and the Texas Comptroller's Office are being punished for me telling the truth," she said. "I was telling the truth when I said we had a budget shortfall. I was telling the truth when I said the budget did not balance. ...

"Last Friday, behind closed doors in the Pink Granite Building, the Governor told the House Republican Caucus he wanted these programs stripped from the Comptroller's Office because 'it was personal.' ... My telling the truth is apparently what the governor takes as 'personal.'"

Strayhorn said what she sees as personal is the 160,000 school children without health insurance, the thousands of jobs that have evaporated, higher property tax rates and insurance and "the unacceptable inequality in our public education system that leaves too many children behind." She said the problems, which also include the state's transportation crisis and decreased higher education expenditures, all have come "under this governor's administration."

"What is most personal to me is the lost civility, the lost dignity, the lost honor, the lost effectiveness, and the lost spirit of bipartisanship championed by then-Governor and now President George W. Bush," said Strayhorn, whose son is Bush press secretary Scott McClellan.

Passage of a congressional redistricting bill by the Texas Legislature is a political windfall for Washington Republicans, but a sad event for nearly everyone else...

(T)he Texas remap effort could have been labeled the Anglo Democrat Expulsion Act, since it targets the 10 Anglo Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. It will be surprising if even three of them survive next November's elections.

In exchange for ideological purity, the Legislature showed its eagerness, for example, to expel Rep. Charlie Stenholm, D-Abilene, and his unmatched expertise in and advocacy for agriculture, which is so critical to the Texas and San Angelo economies.

If Abilenians feel abandoned by the Republican officials they supported devotedly over the years, they should. The GOP attitude toward Abilene shows us who our true friends are.

The congressional redistricting map adopted by the Legislature makes it obvious that in the eyes of GOP leaders, Abilene is expendable. Pairing Abilene with Lubbock -- meaning one city will lose an incumbent congressman -- and isolating Abilene reveals that Republicans' oft-repeated pledge to maintain communities of interest in this process was nothing more than lip service.

Abilene fell victim to two power grabs, partly because this overwhelmingly Republican district has been electing a Democratic congressman, Charlie Stenholm. Speaker Tom Craddick's insistence on Midland as a district center meant separating it from Lubbock's dominance and putting Abilene with Lubbock instead. And U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's animosity toward Stenholm made Stenholm's removal an odd but prime objective.

The hard truth of the final (redistricting plan)... is that lawmakers have shafted the Panhandle.

The result of this hatchet job is to reduce the Panhandle's clout in Congress while giving Republicans a shot at gaining as many as six additional seats in the Texas delegation.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen of the legislative Republican leadership.

This attempt to redraw the lines, forced upon legislators by the likes of DeLay, was particularly brutal, partisan and unforgiving.

The (redistricting) struggle has not been good for the state, and the result will not be good for West Texas.

(Sen. Robert) Duncan valiantly resisted a district map that would pit freshman Republican Randy Neugebauer of Lubbock against veteran Democrat Charlie Stenholm of Abilene -- and for good reason. Both are on the House Agriculture Committee. If they run against each other, one will lose, and West Texas will lose an important voice in agriculture.

In the end, Duncan saw that he could not win and shifted his efforts toward trying to keep Lubbock in a strong position in a congressional race.

It is difficult to argue with the Republican point that the 17-15 Democratic control of Texas' congressional delegation does not accurately reflect the political makeup of Texas.

But it is unfortunate that one of the targeted Democratic congressmen was Stenholm, who not only has served well in Congress, but also has represented agricultural interests well. The manipulation of districts to challenge him has been detrimental to West Texas.

SONORA, Texas - To folks in this hamlet on the western edge of the Texas Hill Country, redistricting seemed an issue for the big cities.

That was until state lawmakers divided Sutton County between two U.S. congressmen, splitting a place where natural gas fuels the economy and where hunters fill the main drag each autumn.

"With just 3,000 people here, it's just absurd," said John Tedford, the county's Republican party chairman. "We haven't been considered at all."

Tedford says he's now considering leaving his party post after 40 years rather than take on the responsibilities of working in two districts. County elections officials are also frustrated, saying the changes will likely cost them thousands of dollars they didn't know to budget for.