Maps show partisan redistricting games by both parties
Redrawing political lines is never easy, even if maps are adopted without too many challenges and court fights.
Take Harris County. We have new maps for Commissioners Court precincts, adopted in October on a 3-2 vote. The Texas Supreme Court earlier this month rejected a Republican-led challenge to the plans.
But when I called Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle’s office Thursday, I found the staff in the midst of dealing with their implementation. The precinct has been heavily redrawn, to cover most of west Harris County, including Katy, Cinco Ranch and Bellaire, as well as half of Tomball, where he lives .
“It almost looks like a crawdad, with the tail on there,” Cagle mused.
And Precinct 4 now looks an awful lot like the old Precinct 3, represented by the court’s other Republican, Tom Ramsey. Ramsey now represents a Precinct 3 that includes Spring, Jersey Village, the other half of Tomball.
It’s a Precinct 3 that looks a fair amount like the old Precinct 4.
Confusing, right?
“A lot of this was gratuitous viciousness,” Cagle continued, explaining that their offices have had to work closely together to avoid service disruptions, as people are now calling their offices about potholes technically in the other precinct.
The two Republicans have been jokingly referencing “Precinct 7,” an amalgamated district composed of both Precincts 3 and 4. As part of the once-adecade process, the new maps were put forward by Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Democrat whose precinct remains largely, serenely unchanged.
At first glance it may look like a simple partisan gerrymander. The new Precinct 3, which will be on the ballot in 2024, is more
safely Republican than its previous iteration, but Precinct 4 has become a “majority-minority” district, and more Democratic.
It was practically inevitable that Cagle or Ramsey, or both, would be targeted in this round of redistricting. They are Republicans, serving on a Commissioners Court with a Democratic majority — in a state where Republicans are usually able to steamroll Democrats with impunity and glee. And Precinct 3 was bound to lose some voters, given its population growth over the past decade. An overarching goal of redistricting is to ensure roughly equivalent populations in each precinct, in keeping with the “one person, one vote” principle.
Still, Cagle sees the new maps as more aggressive than necessary.
“To be compliant we needed to move 200,000 people,” he said. “Instead of moving 200,000 people, they voted to move 2.3 million people.”
Seven Democratic Precinct 4 candidates officially filed for the March 2 primary. Several are currently in office or otherwise well-known to Houston Democrats, including Harris County Civil Court at Law No. 4 Judge Lesley Briones, Alief ISD board president Ann Williams, former state Rep. Gina Calanni and attorney Ben Chou, who served as director of innovation for the Harris County Clerk’s Office in 2020.
Chou, for his part, agrees with Cagle that many voters have been left confused by the change. In knocking on doors, he told me, he’s had to explain to a number of people why they’re voting in a Commissioners Court race at all this year, since they just voted in the Precinct 3 race in 2020.
“I don’t think what we did at the county level was good,” said Chou, explaining he had favored the maps put forward by Houston in Action, a coalition focused on civic participation in the region.
If elected, Chou said, he would like to see Harris County adopt an independent redistricting process, but he can understand why Democrats might be wary of the idea. Such a change at the county level would be “going high,” to paraphrase former first lady Michelle Obama’s resonant advice. But it would also mean Democrats in Harris County putting themselves at a political disadvantage, given that the Republicans who control the Legislaprovides. ture flatly refuse to do the same.
“Do I think the Republicans crying foul is something that is hypocritical? Absolutely,” Chou said.
“I’d love to live in an ideal world but unfortunately we don’t live in one right now.”
That these maps were informed by national politics is hard to deny.
“I am concerned that your party’s on a race to the bottom,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said to Cagle at the October court meeting at which the new maps were adopted.
Many voters share that concern. But this year’s Precinct 4 race may well hinge on local issues, including the question of where the Commissioners Court should focus its energies. Hidalgo has made no secret of her desire for the county to be more ambitious in terms of its scope and services it Cagle, who was first elected in 2010, hews to a more traditional “roads-and-bridges” role.
“My view is that a county commissioner’s job is very unglamorous,” he said. “It’s my job to make sure that the bathrooms in your parks are clean.”
He’ll be working overtime, he says, to make that case to his new constituents in Precinct 4 — many of whom don’t even realize yet that they are his constituents.
Democratic voters in Harris County may be happy with the new maps, but it’s episodes like this that give voters the impression the redistricting process is about partisan gain, rather than equitable representation.
Consider, for example, that many of Cagle’s constituents have just lost their longtime county commissioner, as well as their chance of reelecting or sacking him. Progressive voters in the district formerly known as Precinct 4, who might have been hoping for change this year, are likely stuck with a Republican commissioner for the time being, because most of them are now in Precinct 3.
Ironically, a defense of the process came from Cagle.
“The bottom line is that redistricting is a good thing,” he told me, as he prepared for the first of his two campaign-related dinner events that evening. “And it is required underneath our Constitution and laws so we can have one person, one vote.”
That’s a worthwhile reminder, and here’s another for Democratic leaders in Harris County: Just because something’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s right.