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How Section 5 blocked a 
GOP power grab in Texas

By Zachary Roth

AUSTIN, Texas—In 2008, Wendy Davis, a city councilmember in Fort Worth, Texas, narrowly defeated a 20-term incumbent to win a state Senate seat.

Davis, a Democrat, enjoyed strong support from her district’s black and Hispanic voters, who had largely been ignored by her Republican predecessor, and once in office she set about fighting for those who she felt lacked a voice.

She worked to kick-start economic growth in poor neighborhoods, pushed for increased public-school funding, and cracked down on predatory lending practices targeting the poor.

When Fort Worth kids were forced to crawl under idling trains to get to school, Davis won funding to fix the problem.

But Texas Republicans were eager to win back Davis’ seat and increase their Senate majority.

And in 2011, they used their control of the redistricting process to improve their chances.

Redistricting requires state and congressional district lines to be modified each decade to reflect the latest Census data.

The GOP plan radically changed the demographic makeup of Davis’ district, among others, moving tens of thousands of black and Hispanic voters into neighboring districts.

In fact, of the 94 precincts that were over 70% minority, Republicans cut out 48.

In the new map, blacks and Hispanics were placed in separate districts from each other and were outnumbered by the white conservative majority, which tends to vote Republican.

Davis and her constituents had one recourse.

The Voting Rights Act. Under Section 5 of the landmark civil-rights law, election changes made in certain areas with a history of discrimination—including Texas and most other southern states—can be blocked by the federal government if they might reduce the voting power of minorities.

Though Davis is white and non-Hispanic, her background made her a good fit for the district’s minority community.

Raised by a single mother with a sixth-grade education, Davis had herself become a single mother as a teen.

She worked multiple jobs to put herself through college on scholarship.

“I have a story that’s very similar to so many people that I see struggling in the district that I represent,” Davis said in an interview at her office at the state capitol in Austin.

Redistricting would make that story harder to tell.

“They literally just ripped it apart,” Davis said of her district.

The office of Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, who played a key role in the redistricting, did not respond to a request for comment on the process.

The move didn’t just imperil Davis’ re-election.

It took away the ability of minority voters to band together and elect the candidate they wanted—violating a core principle of most redistricting efforts to keep “communities of interest” together.

Minority voters, Davis said, “were being separated very purposely from each other—and therefore from the power to ever express their preference at the ballot box again.”

A federal court sided with Davis and the U.S. Justice Department last August–just months before the 2012 election—striking down Texas’ redistricting plan and ordering it to draw up new lines.

Her district substantially restored, Davis was re-elected last year by a nearly identical margin to her 2008 victory.

But redistricting happens every decade, and next time around, Davis and her constituents might not be able to count on Section 5.

In February, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to the provision which argued that it’s unconstitutional to single out certain areas for special scrutiny.

Many court-watchers predict the justices will strike Section 5 down.

Opponents of the provision say it’s no longer needed, pointing to the racial progress since the civil rights era.

But Texas politics are on a different trajectory.

There, the soaring Hispanic population is threatening to upend the white conservative majority, driving talk that the Lone Star State could turn blue within a decade or two.

In response, Republicans have been going all-out to dilute minorities’ political influence, using the redistricting process as one of their key tools.

And Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has emerged as perhaps the most powerful obstacle standing in their path.

Gaming the System
The recent population explosion meant Texas was assigned four new congressional seats, more than any other state.

By controlling the redistricting process, Republicans ensured that massive Hispanic growth wasn’t reflected in the new map.

UOf course, the tactic was nothing new: Gerrymandering—drawing electoral districts to advantage a particular party or candidate—goes back to the earliest days of the Republic, and in 2011 California Democrats drew attention for manipulating the supposedly independent redistricting process in their state to create the safest possible seats for their party’s incumbents.

“With all that dynamic growth, with all of that history being made right before our eyes, Texas minorities received zero seats for all the wonderful growth they brought to our state,” Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who chairs the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus, which led the fight against the redistricting plan.

For the GOP, this was part of a national strategy.

Using redistricting to boost their number of seats in Congress has been crucial to the party’s ability to hold onto a share of power in Washington, allowing them to largely stymie Obama’s agenda.

The tactic was nothing new--Gerrymandering—drawing electoral districts to advantage a particular party or candidate—goes back to the earliest days of the Republic. In 2011 California Democrats drew attention for manipulating the supposedly independent redistricting process in their state to create the safest possible seats for their party’s incumbents.

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           Restore Sanity--Drop Fox.
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Look folks, it is of the utmost importance that we liberals stand together in the next election, and the next. Wendy Davis should inspire all liberals, even as the Pubs are trying to gerrymander her out of her seat.

It isn't too dramatic to suggest one of the political parties of the United States is out to eat our lunch. If they succeed, there is little doubt our country will become plutocratic.*

*plutocratic -- ruled by the wealthy and the powerful