The federal court that drew up the current plan did so, in accordance with preexisting law, after the Legislature failed to agree on a redistricting plan last time it met in 2001. At least two of the three judges on the district court panel were, if I recall correctly, Republican appointees, and their plan was subsequently approved by the quite conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Please understand that despite our past I am in no way impugning your honesty in this circumstance when I say that I find this hard to believe. It seems to me no big deal to say “Those dirty rotten Democrats perpetrated a fraud when they held the majority and did the districting in such a manner as to better serve their selfish desires, conspiring to defraud the will of the people. By this redistricting now, we hereby right this injustice.”
You have misremembered this. My brother in law married a Texas woman, not I. We went to Houston last year for the wedding, hence your innacuracy.
They have a rationale. It seems you missed it. Apparently, according to DeLay the previous effort was “unfair,” to Republicans and certain minorities. It does not reflect the clear Republican majority of the Texas electorate (is this reflected in State held offices? Are they usually all Republican)
I have no clue whether this holds water, how much or if it is simply a pretext. In any case I was sure one had to be there.
Can’t have a power-grab without a pretext. I know that much.
Yep, that theres a rationale, all right. Unfair to the Republican minority, injustice upended by the iron imposition of the will of the Republican majority.
I think he meant Republican majority and certain minorities. My bad paraphrase.
Again, I know nothing of Texas politics, and am clueless as to the fairness of the past redistricting. So I ain’t going to stand here and try to argue that the last redistricting was a bogus atrocity in need of remedy.
And how would you say this rationale is any different from what I described? They want more Republican seats in Congress.
Every statewide office is held by a Republican and has been for about the last six years. Apparently, this entitles the Republican Party to every elected office in the entire state, though I’m not quite sure how. I think it’s in the Pledge of Allegiance, somewhere.
Scylla while power grabbing may be bizness as usual, it should be pointed out that not everybody votes straight party.
for many of the past number of years in MI, we had a republican governor, but two democratic US Senators. US House reps were all over the map (well, that’s not really accurate, the west side of the state has mainly republicans, the D-troit - Ann Arbor - Lansing - Flint area mostly Dems-except for some odd pockets in Oakland County north of D-troit), a dem in both sec. of State and Atty General and a rep. majority in state Sen, varied in state house.
In the last presidential election, our state voted for GOre. Our last election, we sent the only Rep. US Senator we’ve had in, I think, two decades, packing to return to 2 dems, while we switched from a Rep to a Dem in governor’s office, but switched Dem to Rep. in Atty General.
IOW, I think it’s not correct to attempt to claim that because some officials were elected that the electoriate that voted for them voted for the party more than the person, and would therefore rather have more of that party elected everywhere.
Certainly there are folks who vote straight party ticket and are avid/rapid dem/rep. Naturally, both Rep. party and Dem party would rather that be the case (except here in MI, where the REps attempted to disallow straight party voting because they believed that Dems were more likely to use it than Reps).
I admit that both parties are guilty of the whole “if you voted for Mr. Dem, you obvioulsy are Dem and would naturally want to see all of the Dems’ elected” kind of thinking.
But I think they’re wrong. Both factually and morally.
Even I, hardcore Dem to the end, typically vote for 10-15% Republicans in contested elections, when the Republican is reasonably moderate and/or effective and the Democrat is nutso liberal or incompetent.
Sheesh! I was disgusted when the Republicans shut down the government in the 90’s, but this makes me physically ill.
First, it’s important to note that the Dems are not just playing within the rules by busting a quorum. Texas House rules specifically prohibit intentionally busting a quorum, which is why the DPS and state troopers are justified in arresting the guys that ran to [shudder] Oklahoma.
All due respect, but that’s blatantly wrong. First, redistricting happens outside of the ten year cycles all the time. For example, the last redistricting was in 2002, and the one before that was 1996.
Second, far from making a power grab, the Republicans are saying that they’re fulfilling their constitutional duty. For a complete analysis of this issue, I’d suggest this opinion by the attorney general of Texas. But it’s long and filled with legal mumbo-jumbo, so I’ll try to summarize for those of you imbued with the spirit of the Dude.
State legislatures have a duty pursuant to the US Constitution to establish congressional districts roughly equal in population. (This avoids an Equal Protection dilemma which would be caused by one person’s vote being worth more than another’s.) The Texas Constitution requires the first Legislature after every decennial census to redistrict. If the Texas Legislature fails to redistrict, the duty falls to the Legislative Redistricting Board of Texas. The 77th Legislature, which convened in 2001, failed to adopt a congressional redistricting plan. So did the Legislative Redistricting Board of Texas.
The failure to draft new redistricting plans led to a plethora of lawsuits against the State on Equal Protection grounds. In an effort to address those concerns, a state district court in Austin issued a congressional redistricting plan. Unfortunately, the Texas Supreme Court held that the district court’s plan was unconstitutional. Although they’d been trying to avoid it, a 3-judge federal court panel was finally forced to draft a congressional redistricting plan. However, the panel was careful to point out that they would usually have no business drafting a redistricting plan, and to say that their plan was a temporary, interim, stop-gap solution, which should last only until the Legislature got off their butts and passed a new redistricting plan.
The Texas Legislature meets every 2 years, so the next Legislature met in . . . 2003. Accordingly, House Repubs argue that they’re merely trying to fulfill their Constitutional duty. As pointed out by the US Supreme Court, “reapportionment is primarily the duty and responsibility of the state through its legislature or other body . . . .” Texas’s House Dems are just banging their spoons on their highchairs because they didn’t get the job done when they had the chance, and they’re not going to like the result now.
And for the record, I voted for a Dem for state rep.
Hmmm, as usual, minty has beaten me to the punch by about 15 posts. Sorry about that.
Please read Abbott’s decision. I think you’ll agree that it’s hardly the victory for Dems that you portray it as. Yes, he stops short of saying that the Legislature must redistrict. Instead, he says “It’s their duty, but we can’t make them if they don’t want to.”
It’s false because it’s impossible. The Texas Legislature meets ONLY every two years, and those years are the odd ones. 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003. Etc.
Big fuckin’ deal. So are the Dems.
Except they LOST that argument. Greg Abbott told them they were full of shit, in the very opinion you cite. And they haven’t advanced that argument since then, either.
Horseshit. Nobody could agree last time, R’s or D’s, so they threw it to the federal court to resolve the controversy. Said controversy was resolved and NOBODY–get that, NOBODY–said the slightest thing in campaigning for last year’s elections that the court’s decision was anything other than final.
It would be one thing if the Grand Old Party of Evil had told the voters of Texas that, if elected they intended to reopen the most divisive issue in Texas politics and redraw the congressional districts of the state. They did not. They merely found themselves in a position where they could do so, and attempted to shove it down everyone’s throats, contrary even to the wishes of the Republican leaders of both legislative chambers. Oopsie, turns out they miscalculated.
Big deal. I voted for a Republican Supreme Court. You’re still wrong.
And I DID read that AG opinion. It says they CAN redistrict, but they are not REQUIRED to redistrict, which was the outcome that they had asked for. Nobody is arguing that the Lege CANNOT redistrict. The Dems are saying saying that they SHOULD not redistrict.
Fortunately, in less than 27 hours, they cannot redistrict. God bless Texas.
Which merely means that 1) it wasn’t done by the Legislature, and 2) you haven’t read the AG’s opinion, in which he addresses this issue.
No, the Dems are saying they’re representing their constituencies. Plus, the Supreme Court, the federal court that drafted the latest redistricting plan, and a couple decades of law happen to agree with the Reps on this issue.
No, Abbott told them that the Legislature does have a duty to revise the federal court’s redistricting. He just also said that nobody can make them do it. That’s hardly a “loss” for the Reps.
I agree that both parties were responsible for the Legislature’s failure to pass redistricting legislation last time. But the Dems controlled the House last time, so they doubtless view it as a failure on their part to use their majority to push it through.
Second, you’re correct that nobody (that I know of) campaigned on the redistricting issue. But nobody campaiged on it in 200 either, or any year that I’m aware of. Redistricting is not a hot button issue for anybody but the party that just lost power. The fact that they didn’t make it a platform just belies the fact that both parties view it as a political spoils game, and not a tool to serve the public’s interest. The fact that they didn’t talk about that doesn’t mean that people weren’t aware that redistricting was going to be an issue.
To me, this highlights the stupidity of the Dems move. They’re getting some solid press right now, but Perry has already said that he’s going to call special session after special session until the Legislature passes all the important bills that they need to pass. Although the current economic crunch means he could be talking about any number of bills, I strongly suspect that includes redistricting.
Incidentally, minty, your back and forth with Dewey is one of the funniest and most creative things I’ve ever seen on these boards.
Now that be have gotten off the Oklahoma bashing and we are started to touch on the merits of the thing just a little bit, does anybody have a link to the Delay map that it before the Texas legislature that insures fairness for the GOP, Blacks and 'Mess-cans by making damn sure that another Dem is never elected to Congress.
The 1996 and 2002 redistricting was required by court orders, not by any action of the Legislature. It is entirely ordinary to tweak a district or two when ordered by the courts as a result of violations of the the Voting Rights Act. What is unprecedented about the current power grab is that this is a complete legislative redistricting, and that, to my knowledge, is entirely unprecedented in between censuses.
Which is, of course, their constitutional duty.
Nonsense. No legal authority that I have ever seen says the Legislature should redistrict after the courts have settled the issue. They say that the Lege may redistrict, which is a different kettle of fish entirely.
Your fallacy here is that while the Lege has the primary responsibility for districting the state, there is no requirement that they do so. That is the point of that AG opinion that shot the R’s down in flames when they sought Abbott’s blessing for their power grab.
In fact, Abbott’s opinion quite plainly states:
Huh? Redistricting is an issue in every turn-of-the-decade election. It’s not an I’ll-draw-the-line-at-Highway 5 issue, but it’s darn sure an I’ll-draw-the-line-for-our-party issue.
Hence, Tom DeLay’s complete indifference to whether or not Texas’ congressional districts are changed.
(a) The press looks pretty damn good to me. Nothin’ like Dems standing up to the Pubbies to make Dems turn out at the polls. (b) Big deal on the special sessions. They still ain’t getting redistricting, and the walkout wasn’t aimed at blocking anything else. I’m sure the Dems will be quite happy to let everything else move forward (or not) in the ordinary course.
)