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In 2020, Democrat Candace Valenzuela,who was running to become the first Black Latina member of Congress, lost the closest congressional race in Texas to Republican Beth Van Duyne.

She was considering running again in 2022 for Texas 24th congressional district, once a stronghold of suburban Republicanism between Dallas and Fort Worth, but when she saw the redistricting maps for the US House released by state Republicans last week, it was viscerally shocking to me, she said.

Biden carried the 24th by five points in 2020, as the population of people of color surged in the suburbs and moderate white voters turned away from Donald Trump, but Republicans had transformed the district into a bastion of white Trumpism.

The DallasFort Worth area has grown faster than any part of Texas, with more Latinos living there than in the entire state of Colorado, notes Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice. Yet instead of creating a new majority-Latino congressional district, Republicans chopped up diverse cities like Carrollton, which is 60 percent nonwhite and where Valenzuela became the first Black woman to win a school board seat in 2017, into five different congressional districts to undermine minority voting power. She used to describe her district as a donut circling DallasFort Worth International Airport. Now she calls it a butterfly shrimp, with its body in suburban red areas by the airport and its tail weaving in and out of the most conservative parts of Dallas.

They werent just trying to extract people of color who are trending Democratic in order to protect Beth Van Duyne or other Republicans, Valenzuela said. They were trying to completely and totally neutralize their voting power. This is something that is happening across the state.

Through the redistricting process, Texas Republicans are building a sea wall against demographic changean early indicator of how the Republican Party nationally is responding to momentous population changes not by reaching out to growing communities of color but by diluting their voting power. At a time when Texas is becoming more diverse and Democratic, the new maps drawn by Republicans for congress and the state legislature would make the states political representation far whiter and more Republican, all but ending competition at the very moment when ascendant Democrats are finally making the state competitive.

White voters have been a minority in Texas since 2004 and over the past decade 95 percent of the states growth came from communities of color, but the GOPs proposed congressional map increases the number of white Republican districts and decreases the number of majority-Latino and majority-Black districts. It packs minority voters into as few urban areas as possible in cities like Austin, Dallas, and Houston to limit their representation, while spreading out the rest among deeply red exurban and rural areas to nullify their influence. Despite gaining nearly 2 million Hispanic residents and more than 500,000 Black residents since 2010, Republicans didnt draw a single new majority-Latino or majority-Black congressional district. Instead, the two new House seats the state gained due to population growth were given to majority-white areas in Austin and Houston.

Republican House candidates won 53 percent of the statewide vote in 2020 but would hold a projected 65 percent of seats under the new lines, which were approved by the state Senate redistricting committee on Monday. The number of safe GOP seats would double, from 11 to 22, while the number of competitive districts would fall from 12 to just one. Nine Texas House Republicans, including Van Duyne, currently hold seats in districts won by Biden or where Trump won by five points or less, but theyre all drawn into districts that Trump would have carried by double digits. This will push state and national politics even further to the right, as Republicans worry more about primary challengers than Democratic opponents.

Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country but you wouldnt know it by looking at this map, said Li. It totally tries to kick the can down the road on the growth in the states minority population.

Texas 24th Congressional district in current form vs proposed GOP plan. The GOP map removed diverse Democratic areas and adds in whiter Republican ones.

Mother Jones illustration; District Viewer; Congress.gov

The 2020 race in the 24th was a battle between two candidates representing very different visions of the state: its diverse, Democratic, progressive future against its white, Republican, reactionary present and past. While Valenzuela rallied voters of color and appealed to disaffected Republicans, Van Duyne was best known as a former mayor of Irving who rose to prominence in tea party circles after falsely accusing local Muslim imams of trying to implement Shariah and urging the Texas legislature to pass an anti-Shariah bill. She befriended Michael Flynn in 2016 and joined the Trump administration as an official with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Valenzuela lost by just 4,500 votes, a heartbreaking defeat for Democrats, but said we got closer than we had been in a long time.

Van Duyne called her victory Nancy Pelosis most bitter loss and styled herself as part of a conservative squad to take on progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Once in Congress, she voted against certifying the election results in Pennsylvania, was fined for twice violating the Houses mask mandate, and during a recent debate over abortion held a baby doll in the shape of a fetus while speaking on the House floor. The Atlantic called her the new face of Trumpism in Texas.

Van Duynes extreme voting record should have made her vulnerable in a fast-changing swing district, but Republicans protected her by increasing the percentage of white voters in the district by 15 points, from 59 percent to 74 percent. The district has gone from favoring Biden by 5 points to favoring Trump by 12 points. The partisan lean of the district has shifted to the right by nearly 20 points, more than any district in the state.

Valenzuelas home was drawn out of the district, which she suspects was intentional, as was the home of Democratic state Rep. Michelle Beckley, who announced a challenge to Van Duyne in July. Van Duynes home was narrowly kept in the district, but predominantly Latino communities in Irving that she used to represent were excised to make the seat more Republican.

If I were to run in the current iteration of TX-24, Id be surprised if I made it to the high 40s, Valenzuela said. The way that 24 looks now, I dont think Id want to put my family through it.

The same level of gerrymandering is a defining feature of the maps drawn for the state legislature, where Republicans are desperately trying to insulate themselves from accountability after passing a flurry of extreme laws this year, such as a six-week abortion ban, permission for residents to carry guns without a permit, and a sweeping voter suppression law.

Republicans are in a position to let lines and laws overwhelm demographics and ultimately the will of Texans, Valenzuela said.

Under the GOPs proposed map for the state Senate, 20 of 31 districts would have white majorities, even though white people make up just under 40 percent of the states population. The number of pro-Trump districts increases from 16 to 19.

The proposed state House map, like the congressional map, would also create more white districts and fewer districts where Black and Hispanic people make up a majority of eligible voters. The number of majority white districts would rise from 83 to 89 out of 150, while the number of Latino districts shrinks from 33 to 30, and the number of Black districts falls from seven to four. The map creates 10 more pro-Trump districts, giving the GOP close to 60 percent of seats after Democrats came close to retaking the chamber in recent elections.

Overall, white voters would control a majority in 60 percent of districts for the US House and state legislaturefar above their numbers in the state.

The same strategy could soon be replicated in other Southern battleground states. Republicans need just five seats to take back the House and could accomplish this through gerrymandering in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina.

Similar to Texas, all of Georgias growth in the last decade came from communities of color. The state gained 1 million residentsincluding 350,000 Black residents, 270,000 Latino residents, and 160,000 Asian American residents, while the white population shrankbut redistricting maps released for Congress on September 27 by Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and the chair of the state Senate redistricting committee targets Black political representation.

The draft map takes aim at Rep. Lucy McBath, a Black Democrat who represents Newt Gingrichs former congressional district. McBath, who became a crusader against gun violence after her teenage son Jordan Davis was murdered by a white man in 2012, would see her suburban Atlanta district go from one that Biden carried by 11 points to one Trump won by six. The most diverse and Democratic parts of DeKalb County, which Biden won with 83 percent of the vote, would be removed, and Forsyth County, a hotbed of white Republicanism one hour north of Atlanta where Trump won 66 percent of the vote, would be added in.

Forsyth County has a particularly ugly racial historyin 1912, following the lynching of a Black man, white residents forced all 1,000 Black residents to leave the county. When thousands of civil rights activists led a march in 1987 to expose what had happened, white residents, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, shouted, Nigger, go home! at them and held signs that said Keep Forsyth white.

The proposed congressional map also targets Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop in southwest and middle Georgia. The Black voting age population in his district would drop from 50 percent to 47 percent, which could be enough to defeat him, given how few rural white residents vote for Democrats anymore.

The map released by Duncan, a prominent critic of Trump, could be replaced by a more extreme pro-Republican gerrymander when the Georgia legislature convenes in early November to take up redistricting. Its telling that the moderate plan drawn by an anti-Trump Republican still potentially eliminates two seats held by Black Democrats.

The squabbling on Capitol Hill over the Democrats infrastructure and spending plans has overshadowed how theFreedom to Vote Actintroduced by Senate Democrats last month would ban the kind of racial and partisan gerrymandering pushed by Republicans in states like Texas and Georgia.

If the Freedom to Vote Act was there, this map would be instantly blocked, Li said of the Texas congressional plan.

Yet Democrats are running out of time to pass it or devise a strategy for overcoming a GOP filibusterand could soon be powerless to stop the GOPs takeover of the US House and state Capitols for the next decade.

See the article here:
Texas Republicans Are Pulling Out All the Stops to Dilute the Voting Power of People of Color Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Adam Kincaid, head of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, joined Bloomberg Governments Kyle Trygstad and Greg Giroux on the latest episode of Downballot Counts to discuss his partys strategy for shaping congressional districts for the next decade.

States have begun drafting and in some cases have finalized their maps in the weeks since the 2020 census results were released.

Kincaids organization helps coordinate GOP data sharing across states and is preparing for what he expects to be an extensive and aggressive stretch of litigation between the two parties over the new maps.

One thing about redistricting that people need to realize is its trench warfare on both sides, Kincaid said.

( Sign up for Ballots & Boundaries, a weekly check-in as states change voting laws and revise political districts.)

Listen to the latest episode of Downballot Counts

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Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg

Republicans are seeking to draw congressional lines that can help them win the House majority next year and hold it in the decade to come.

To contact the hosts: Greg Giroux in Washington at ggiroux@bgov.com; Kyle Trygstad in Washington at ktrygstad@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Loren Duggan at lduggan@bgov.com

Read the original here:
Republican Redistricting Head on His Party's Strategy (Podcast) | Bloomberg Government - Bloomberg Government

The coronavirus pandemic now has a heavy partisan bias.

COVID-19 hasn't disappeared in blue states like California and New York. But places that have managed to surpass 65 percent vaccination are in a better position than red states like West Virginia, Idaho, or Wyoming, where hospitals are overrun with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients. (Idaho's COVID death rate last week, for example, was seven times that of New York state.) Even at the county level,as David Leonhardt shows at The New York Times, there's a marked partisan bias: Republican counties in blue states have vastly more cases and deaths on average, while Democratic counties in red states are faring better than their neighbors.

A primary reason for this disparity is how right-wing media has come out hard against COVID vaccines. From pundits on Fox Newsto the gutters of Trumpist Facebook, anti-vaccine misinformation is everywhere. As a result, vaccination rates are starkly partisan. Many Republicans aren't getting vaccinated, and a lot of them are dying. Rejecting the vaccines is costing the GOP votes it can ill afford to lose.

Tucker Carlson may be the worst offender: He's the top-rated cable news host in the country and a prolific source of anti-vaccine lies. Ever since President Biden was elected, Carlson has spread false stories that the vaccines don't work and the government is covering it up or that they're killing thousands of people and the government is covering it up or that there are folk remedies like ivermectin which are better than vaccines for treating COVIDand, yes, the government is covering it up.

Carlson's goal is obvious: to harm Biden and his party. As Brian Beutler writesat Crooked, Republicans always do this kind of thing when a Democrat is in the White House. After the 2008 financial crisis, they deliberately hurt the economy with austerity measures to tank then-President Barack Obama's approval rating then happily promoted and passed job-creating stimulus bills after GOP President Donald Trump took office. Now the conservative movement is exacerbating the pandemic and blaming it on Biden.

This behavior is only semi-intentional. Right-wing media is always prone to "reflexive, oppositional demagoguery," as Beutler writes, and the Republican mindset is always gleefully irresponsible, paranoid, and mulishly resistant to doing anything liberals propose. It's as much paranoia in the GOP base driving this as it is deliberate cynicism. The big tell on the cynicism, though, is how top Fox News hosts, GOP members of Congress, and conservativeSupreme Court justices have largely admitted to being vaccinated (or refused to say, which implies the same thing). Meanwhile, the dimmer regional radio hosts who aren't in on the con are unvaccinated and dropping like flies.

As a political strategy, the anti-vaccine stance seems to be working for Republicans, at least for the moment. Biden's approval rating has been steadily falling for months it's hard to say why exactly, but the depressing persistence of the pandemic after a spring in which many assumed the vaccines would finally end it (as they have in many European countries) is no doubt involved.

But in the long term as in, from Election Day 2022 onwardthe strategy carries quite a political risk. Thus far, pandemic deaths have been fairly evenly spread, because COVID-19 hit blue states like New York and New Jersey early. Now conservative Mississippi has shot to the top of the state death rankings, with Louisiana and Alabama not far behind. Biden's 2020 margin of victory in the three key states of Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia combined was only about 44,000 votes. Something like 53,000 people have already died in those three states and it seems safe to assume the people dying there and in other swing states are disproportionately Republicans.

Suppose the pandemic finally eases off next year thanks to children becoming eligible for vaccination, various employer mandates, and widespread natural immunity. Suppose the economy then picks up, and Democrats run a successful midterm campaign blaming Republicans for worsening the pandemic on purpose. Carlson's anti-vaccine innuendo won't hurt Biden anymore then. But everyone who died of COVID-19 because they bought into anti-vaccine misinformation will still be dead. The GOP might lose the midterms without their votes.

Occasionally, this possibility becomes apparent even to some on the far-right. Breitbart's John Nolte recently advanced a tortured argument that conservative media turned anti-vaccine because of a liberal conspiracy: "The organized left wants unvaccinated Trump voters to remain unvaccinated. That's what they want," he wrote. In another article, he asked: "In a country where elections are decided on razor-thin margins, does it not benefit one side if their opponents simply drop dead?"

Setting aside the birdbrained idea that timid, milquetoast liberals like Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would conspire to massacre people to win an election, the argument here implies an astounding and belligerent stupidity in the Republican base. And while Nolte's conspiracy theory is ridiculous, his picture of the base is not. People who will refuse to take a free, life-saving treatment simply because people they don't like urged them to take it are the final form of a politics with no more substance than "owning the libs."

Nolte deserves kudos for trying an innovative pro-vaccine argument. Itcould actually work. His audiencewon't take the vaccine to save their own lives, but they just might getvaxxed to crush the Democrats in the midterms.

View original post here:
How right-wing media is killing its own base - The Week Magazine

There are few better examples of political double-talk than a candidate attempting to present himself as a foe of the party establishment. In the North Carolina Senate race, both viable candidates have laid claim to the insurgents mantleand both are hypocritical in doing so. At the same time that Pat McCrory and Ted Budd portray themselves as the scourge of Washington, each man has courted establishment donors and sought endorsements from well known party figures. The conventional wisdom may have been that McCrory fit the NRSCs establishment mold better than his louder competitors, but the failed ex-governor may not even achieve support from the forces he has spent his life attempting to please.

Evidence of Ted Budds viability in the race for an institutional Republican imprimatur came last week with a slate of endorsements. Over 30 current and former legislators endorsed Budd, a stinging rebuke to McCrory given that Ted Budd has never served in state government. More eye-opening were the names on that list. In addition to the predictable fringe-dwellers like Representative Larry Pittman, consummate insiders like John Alexanderthe most moderate Republican in the General Assembly until his retirement last yearand Jeff Tarte signed onto the Budd effort. Tartes support was especially striking; he served from McCrorys home county of Mecklenburg.

What this reveals is that the Raleigh Republican establishment has little regard for Pat McCrory. As powerful former state Senate rules chair Tom Apodaca once deadpanned, the governor doesnt play much of a role in anything. Apodaca endorsed Ted Budd. In addition to these legislators, Raleigh native and ur-country-clubber George Holding lent his support to Budd. And in the donor space, legendary Raleigh developer John Kane has donated to Ted Budds campaign. Outside of Charlotte, McCrory is anything but beloved by North Carolina Republican panjandrums.

Nor are these power brokers necessarily averse to Ted Budd. The best analogy for Budd would be not to a fringe populist like Alabama Representative Mo Brooks, but to former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint. Like DeMint, Budd is far rightbut hes also a well liked member of the establishment GOP. If he continues building support across the state, Budd could easily become the establishment choice over a failed one-term governor who left Raleigh as a pariah. Thats a little amazing, but not to a superlative degree in the minds of anyone who watched Pat McCrory bumble through his term as governor.

In fairness, McCrory has lined up some establishment support of his own. Senator Richard Burr endorsed McCrory, calling him the only candidate who could win the race. McCrory landed GOP mega-consultant Paul Shumaker and seems to have maintained enduring support in Charlotte GOP circles. But none of that is necessarily a plus in a party that is rural, that is populist, and that hates Richard Burr for having the courage to vote for Trumps conviction. My view has long been that if you run a well funded campaign against McCrory, youll beat him. Ted Budd has the tools to do that.

Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.

See original here:
Who Will Be The Establishment Republican in #NCSEN? - PoliticsNC

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Texas House members on Thursday released the first proposal for a new map redrawing the chamber's 150-member districts. The initial draft would both increase Republicans' strength across the state and the number of districts in which white residents make up a majority of eligible voters.

House Bill 1, authored by Corpus Christi Rep. Todd Hunter, the GOP chair of the House Redistricting Committee, is just the first draft, and it will likely change as it makes its way through the legislative process before its signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.

The Texas Legislature is in the midst of its third special session. This one is dedicated to redrawing political maps based on the latest census data that showed people of color fueled 95% of Texas population growth over the past decade. The percent of Hispanics is now nearly equal to white people in Texas.

But, the new map creates fewer districts where Black and Hispanic people make up a majority of eligible voters. Black and Hispanic Texans make up two racial groups that along with Asian Texans outpaced the growth of white residents in the state over the last decade.

Currently 83 of the chambers 150 districts are areas in which white residents make up a majority of eligible voters; 33 are districts where Hispanic voters make up the majority, while Black residents are the majority of eligible voters in seven districts.

Under the new proposal, the map adds six more districts where white residents make up the majority of eligible voters while the number of Hispanic and Black districts would each drop by three.

The proposed map would also change the partisan breakdown among the 150 districts, tilting the scale toward Republicans.

Currently, there are 76 districts that went to former President Donald Trump during the 2020 general election while 74 went to President Joe Biden. Among those, 50 districts voted 60% or more for Trump, indicating the district is safely Republican while 40 districts had more than 60% support for Biden indicating strong Democratic support. Under the proposed new map, 86 districts would have gone for Trump, while 64 would have went for Biden. The number of districts that voted 60% or more for Trump or Biden would be tied at 46.

The House draft would also pit several incumbents against one another, including two El Paso Democrats state Reps. Evelina "Lina" Ortega and Claudia Ordaz Perez who would have to vie for the new House District 77.

In statements soon after the initial draft was released, both lawmakers criticized the proposal for pitting two Hispanic incumbents against the other.

Ortega, who referred to the proposal as "a direct attack on our border community," said she was "committed to working for our community to stop this injustice from occurring." Ordaz Perez said she would "refuse to sell out my values or those of the people I represent for political gain," adding that she intends to return to the lower chamber for another term "to fight for the people of El Paso."

In two other cases, state Reps. Jacey Jetton, R-Richmond, and Phil Stephenson, R-Wharton, would have to compete for the proposed House District 26, while state Reps. Kyle Biedermann, R-Fredericksburg, and Terry Wilson, R-Marble Falls, would face off for the new House District 19.

Later Thursday, disagreement emerged between Jetton and Stephenson over whether the latter had been drawn out of his district.

Stephenson's office told the Tribune that Jetton "isn't playing the nicest with this new map" and blamed him for drawing Stephenson out of his district.

Jetton, in a statement to the Tribune, acknowledged that while "there has been some confusion about Representative Stephenson's residence," it was his understanding that Stephenson resides in Wharton County, "so we are not actually paired in HD-26."

As for the other GOP matchup, it appeared later Thursday that the two incumbents could avoid a primary after Biedermann tweeted he may run in another district.

Other incumbent pairings under the House proposal involve a lawmaker who is either running for another office or has already announced their retirement.

In the proposed Dallas-area House District 108, for example, state Rep. John Turner, D-Dallas, who would have to face off against state Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-Dallas, has already announced he will not seek another term to the lower chamber.

And in another North Texas race for House District 63, state Rep. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, who would have to compete against his colleague state Rep. Michelle Beckley, D-Carrollton, is running for a seat in the Senate, while Beckley is vying for a spot in Congress.

Beyond the incumbent pairings, the proposed map offered disappointing news for state Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, who was drawn out of her district and into an adjacent, far more Republican one. She told the Tribune on Thursday afternoon that she is "hoping that there's some space to fix it" in the coming days but was not sure. She said she was unlikely to be able to move to follow the newly proposed version of her current district, which would be solidly Democratic.

One Republican incumbent, state Rep. Jeff Cason of Bedford, got especially bad news as he saw his district get redrawn to be a deep shade of blue on that Biden carried by 27 points. Cason did not have an immediate comment.

At least a few other incumbents are looking at proposed districts that would be notably less favorable to them than they currently are. In South Texas, the district of state Rep. Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City, would go from one that Trump won by 13 points to one he carried by almost double that margin. In suburban Austin, the district of state Rep. James Talarico, D-Round Rock, would transform from that Biden won easily to one that Trump carried by 6 points.

At the same time, several House Republicans whose districts Biden carried last year received redder districts under the proposed map but probably not red enough to avert another competitive contest next year. For example, in suburban Dallas, Biden had a 9-point margin victory in the district of state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, though the map proposal shifts only to a district that Trump carried by 2 points.

Only two seats flipped last year in the lower chamber both in the Houston area and the proposed map makes each more friendly for the incumbent rather than more competitive. The seat of State Rep. Mike Schofield, R-Katy, would become redder, while the seat of state Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, would become bluer.

This is the first time in decades federal law allows Texas to draw and use political maps without first getting federal approval to ensure that theyre not violating the rights people of color. That federal preclearance requirement in the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, Texas has not made it through a single decade without a federal court admonishing it for violating federal protections for voters of color.

The 2021 Texas Tribune Festival, the weeklong celebration of politics and policy featuring big names and bold ideas, wrapped on Sept. 25, but theres still time to tune in. Explore dozens of free, on-demand events before midnight Thursday, Sept. 30, at tribfest.org.

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Texas House proposes map that increases Republican strength and decreases Black and Hispanic majority districts - The Texas Tribune