At our Tea Party meeting this past Saturday, we heard from local House Rep. Mike Schofield, who was on the Redistricting Committee, and also Tom Nobis, our SREC (State Republican Executive Committee) Chair, to talk about the outcome of the legislature’s redistricting process.
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| Rep. Mike Schofield at the Cypress Texas Tea Party on October 23, 2021. We meet at a BBQ place, and we work around the stuff they store in that room. |
You may remember back in 2018 they actually beat me by 113
votes. Now, I’m sure I had more actual voters than my opponent did, but after
they stuffed the ballot box in some places, we came up 113 short.
Now, by the way, they tried that again this time [2020].
There were 60 votes a day being cast in a precinct over here [SE Harris
County] during my race. You may recall there was a pandemic. People were
afraid to get out from under their bed. But somehow 60 people a day would drive
from here [west end of Harris County] through the fourth largest city in
America, out the other side, and vote in the same precinct in my race.
What was happening was, they were stuffing the ballot box.
And they knew they had won by 113 votes last time, so they figured the
600-and-some votes they stole this time would be enough to win. What they
didn’t know was that I was trying to beat my opponent so badly that, even with
the 600 votes, we still beat her by 3500.
So, that kind of stuff goes on. And it goes on more now that
the elections are being controlled by the Democratic Party. So, I figured, I’d
better get on Redistricting and defend my district.
House
Districts and General Redistricting Info
I’m assuming similar discussions are going on across the
country.
Rep. Schofield says he refers to redistricting as pushing
the reset button. Populations move around. There’s growth in some places, not
in others. He says,
Now, the very first principle of redistricting, no matter
what part of the country you’re in, no matter what year it is, is population.
That’s why we do it. People—they get so caught up in the partisan, and the
racial and Voting Rights Act and all this, they forget what this is actually
for.
The Constitution requires that we redistrict every 10 years
to more or less make everything equal again. And the reason is, if you’re in a district
like mine, we were the fourth largest district in Texas. And when they started,
ten years ago, they were all roughly—we don’t require exact equality in Texas,
but they were roughly equal. And then growth happens. Right? And some places
shrink in population. Other places grow.
Of the 150 districts in Texas, in the House, the first
largest growth and the fourth largest growth were both in Katy [west of Houston,
west end of Harris County, and some in Ft. Bend County; Schofield’s was fourth]
We’re supposed to have grown from about 167,000 people at the beginning of the
decade to about 194,303. Exactly…. That’s supposed to be what we’re all
supposed to get to: 194,303. My district had 282,000 people. So, if you lived
in my district, your vote counted less, because you’re a lower percentage, than
in someplace where they had 187,000 people in their district. Your vote counts
on a proportional basis for less than theirs does.
Redistricting has to happen before primary elections, which
happen early in the year of even-numbered years. Getting the numbers into the
hands of legislators was delayed, so it couldn’t be done during the regular
legislative session last January-through-May (in Texas, during odd-numbered
years). It couldn’t even be handled during our first two 30-day special
sessions.
We were concerned it wouldn’t get done in this third session
either. The Dems had walked out of the first special session, saying they were preserving voting rights from the horrendous new legislation
designed to make it easier to vote but harder to cheat. They ran out the clock
while they were getting Covid and otherwise hanging out in DC. And they have fled
the state before during redistricting legislation. This year, I guess they gauged,
accurately, that people were already annoyed with them enough over their
shenanigans, so they stayed in Austin during the third special session, which
was dedicated to redistricting.
Even though the redistricting legislation has now passed,
there’s always the possibility that someone will challenge it in court and
delay our primary. But for now, we think our primary will happen on the first
Tuesday of March, as scheduled.
Redistricting didn’t start from scratch at the beginning of
this special session a month ago. Rep. Schofield, along with the committee, was
working on map redrawing all through the legislative session, based on
estimated numbers.
The numbers come from a snapshot in time: April 1, 2020. However
many people, and wherever they were living on that date, that’s what counts. Schofield’s
district, HD 132, grew by 30,000 in just one year, and may have grown another
20,000 in the time since the census date. That meant he needed to lose about
88,000 out of his district based on growth since the last census. Controlling
how that went was why he wanted to be on the committee that got to decide. He’s
puzzled by representatives who called him the last couple of weeks, worried
about what was happening to their district. They could have called him any time
since February, rather than waiting until it was being voted on.
There are rules determining how redistricting must be done.
The purpose is to make all districts approximately equal in size. When they
work on US Congressional districts, that has to be literally equal, down to the
individual voter, but things aren’t quite that exact in the state House and
Senate. There is a rule for the House that they can’t cross county lines. On at
least two sides of Schofield’s district, that’s a constraint. Then there are
efforts to use natural boundaries, such as highways, waterways, reservoirs,
etc.
When you see contorted, oddly shaped districts, the ones
that people use to describe gerrymandering, those are shaped that way in order
to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, to allow for minority
representation. In Harris County, he pointed out one of these that is Hispanic,
and another that is Black. The assumption, for those who set up those lines, is
that they will vote Democrat, so it’s actually in the law that districts must
be set up in a way to favor Democrats.
Oddly, the reason for the Voting Rights Act is to counter
previous gerrymandering intent on preventing minority representation. That was
done by Democrats. Every time. So, the Democrats gerrymandered to make
districts the way they wanted them—based on race. And that caused a law to be
put into place for the Democrats to make districts the way they want them—based
on race. The solution? Somehow overcome the lie that the Republicans were the
racists. It’s a slow process.
Anyway, while my House district , HD 138, shifted somewhat to the west, I’m still in the same district. I was moved in 2010, so I’m glad I don’t have to deal with another new House district.
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| Current and new House district maps images available at District Viewer, here |
Senate
Districts
The Senate has 31 districts in the state. By comparison,
there are about to be 38 congressional districts. So the state senators have
more constituents than US Congressmen have.
Like the House, they start with the districts they had and
make adjustments from there. They need to each have 940,178 more or less. They don’t get to deviate as much as House
districts do, because they don’t have a county line rule. But they can be off
by a small handful.
Rep. Schofield gave us some behind-the-scenes play in the
legislature. The Senate originates its own map and then sends it to the House,
and vice versa. In most legislation, when a bill passes the originating
chamber, it gets passed on to the other one, where it can undergo a fair amount
of amending before getting back to the originators, who then can either concur
with the amendments or get a reconciliation committee, made up of members of
both chambers, to come to an agreement on what ought to be in the bill.
Redistricting bills, however, are expected to be left alone
by the other chamber. As some Democrat House member once put it, “The Republicans
are the opposition; the real enemy is the Senate.” If they don’t want they
other chamber messing with their map, it behooves them both not to mess with the
other chamber’s maps.
In order to avoid getting each other’s bills messed with, they have an arrangement where they will gavel down at exactly the same moment. If one chamber gaveled down (approved the other chamber’s map with a vote) first, the remaining chamber could then mess with its map at will, and there would be no leverage to stop it. So the two chambers, located at opposite ends of the building, open up all doors between the two, and coordinate so that both can gavel down at the exact same moment. Because, you know, trust is everything—but you can’t trust anybody.
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| Current and new Senate district maps images available at District Viewer, here |
Tom Nobis summarized for us the SD changes in Harris County and affecting Montgomery County, just to the north, with this graphic:
Congressional
Districts
Congress is totally different in many ways. Mainly, they don’t
draw their own districts. The state legislature does it. In Texas, that
originates in the Senate, but it seemed to me they worked together on this map
quite a lot.
Some people suggest putting together a non-partisan commission,
to take politics out of redistricting. In theory that may sound good, but it’s
not possible in reality. Rep. Schofield says,
No such thing as a non-partisan angel gonna drift down from
heaven and make sure everything is fair.
He says, when the legislature goes through their process,
everybody fights for their area. They tug and they pull, and they go, “I want
these guys on the other side of the reservoir,” and so forth. There are a lot
of complicated issues. You deal with the minority areas first—and that’s why
they come out looking so oddly shaped. Then you deal with all the other things
that the constituents and the representatives might care about.
But when you have these nonpartisan groups, say 7 of each of
the two major parties, plus an impartial judge, what you get is, one side wins
8-7 and takes everything. That judge belongs to one of the parties, and may
have been appointed by the governor. So that’s the tie breaker. There’s nothing
non-partisan about it, except the label to fool the people.
Anyway, so you’ve got growth. In Texas, we’ve had growth—and
added congressional seats—every census since statehood, I think he said. Wherever
those new districts go, it’s like dropping two giant boulders in the middle of
existing districts. And they have to have exactly the same number of people in
them as every other district, when everything is said and done. Around 875,000.
If you can’t get it right, you have to split up precincts, or blocks, or maybe
just cut a house or two, until you get it exactly right. That is, according to
how it was on April 1, 2020; you could be off by thousands by the time
redistricting goes into effect, but it’s the count on that date that matters.
There were various places around the state that were
suggested for the new districts. The decision finally came down to Harris
County, where Houston is, and the Austin area.
The splat of the Harris County boulder came down on my
district. I was in District 2, with Rep. Dan Crenshaw. He got pushed further
north (not sure he’s actually still living in that district). And I’m now in
the new CD 38. Wesley Hunt has declared as a candidate; he ran against Lizzie
Fletcher in CD 7 two years ago. I imagine others will run as well. But he’s former
special forces, a friend of Crenshaw. He’s conservative. And happens to be black, which makes him
bulletproof against certain criticisms. I’m looking forward to learning more
about him.
What I’ve heard is that both Crenshaw’s district and the new
district are likely to go safely Republican, and CD 7 will be sacrificed to the
Democrats for the foreseeable future.
Rep. Schofield talked about the philosophy behind safe versus
competitive districts. He said people complain when they’re in a district where
their representative doesn’t agree with them on various issues—likely because
they’re in a different party. If you’re in a competitive district, 49% or so of
the district is going to feel like that—dissatisfied, unrepresented. But in a “safe”
district, a higher percentage of constituents will be satisfied with their
representative. So he’s changed his opinion over the years and now favors safe
districts when possible.
That’s great if you’re in agreement with your representative, but what if you’re not? We’ve had sympathy for conservatives in Sheila Jackson Lee’s area for ages (she wins with over 80% of the vote; it’s too much to be attributable to voter fraud). Rep. Schofield says, it’s not that you’re without representation. It’s like, when you’re in a group and order out for pizza, who gets to decide what kind of pizza? The guy who wants only cheese so everyone is OK with it? The one who wants meat lovers? The vegetarian? Whoever wins, the others still get their slice of pizza (the representation); they just may have to pick things off or go without what they would have preferred.
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| Current and new US Congressional district maps images available at District Viewer, here |
Other
Districts
We talked only briefly about SBOE (State Board of Education)
districts. The legislature sets those up as well. There were 15 before
redistricting; there are 15 after. These are the largest in the state. It’s an
unpaid position, without a bunch of constituents financially supporting a
candidate. So getting to visit every part of the district is practically
impossible.
We also talked about the Harris County Commissioner Precinct
redistricting. This isn’t a legislative issue; it’s being done at the county
level. But it’s on our minds. Harris County is, I think, the second largest non-state
government jurisdiction in the US. It’s run by someone on her first job out of
college, since 2018. It’s run badly. And it’s run according to whatever “progressive”
(i.e., Marxist) strategies of the pushiest commissioner (one Rodney Ellis)
wants. There are five commissioners: 3 Dems, 2 Republicans. These two intrepid
Republicans go up against this wall of hypocrisy and graft daily. (The list of
their faults and failings is too long for this late in a post.) The Dems don’t like the opposition, the
calling to account, the occasional public calling them out so the public knows
what they’re up to. What they want to do is get rid of one of the Republican
commissioners. They’ve chosen Tom Ramsey (mine is Jack Cagle). The plan is to
pile as many Republicans into Cagle’s district as they can manage—taking them
out of Ramsey’s. The hope is that they can then oust Ramsey and wreak havoc
with a 4-1 Commissioner’s Court, plus Hidalgo the County Judge (executive). That
would be the setup for a decade.
They may handle the redistricting at their regular
Commissioners’ Court Meeting tomorrow (October 26) at 10:00 AM, hoping to slide
it in before anyone notices. If you live here and would like to take a stand
against local tyranny, you need to sign up by 8:00 AM to speak virtually (sign
up and info here).
If not, they will have a public hearing on Thursday (October
28) of this week, 12:30 PM. The County GOP was sending out announcements today,
calling for a large voice from the people.
So, in summary, statewide we’re doing OK as conservatives.
Locally, in Harris County, some of us are OK and some not. By law, redistricting
has to be done. I’m glad this decade it was done with conservatives in the driver’s
seat.
