AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Senate is gearing up for another round of redistricting, but the map isn’t expected to change much.
Lines were redrawn during a special session in 2021. Republicans gained one seat.
Senators voted unanimously to redistrict once again because action is to be taken during the first regular session after federal census data is released, not in a special session. The pandemic delayed release of the data.
“This is really almost an unfortunate coincidence of history. When the constitutional provision was drafted, no one anticipated that the census would be published late,” said Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas.
The Texas House has the same issue but hasn’t taken it up yet, and this does not apply to congressional districts.
Dr. Jim Riddlesperger with Texas Christian University said revisiting redistricting in the Senate will keep them in line with constitutional and federal requirements.
“It's about trying to make sure that the districts are equal in size,” said the political science professor. “So it's largely, at least at this point, still just a kind of procedural process.”
Republicans and Democrats agree that there’s not much of a desire to go through the redrawing process all over again.
“All 31 senators, both Republicans and Democrats, did win with those maps. And so I'm not sure that there's a big desire to see a change in those,” said Sen. Drew Springer, R-Muenster.
“We went through a thorough redistricting process,” said Sen. Johnson. “Those maps have been debated [and] carefully drawn. It's exhausting. It's acrimonious. It makes people angry at each other within the parties. It distracts us from the work that we're trying to do, consuming enormous amounts of time and political capital. I don't think there's much appetite for us to voluntarily descend once again into the map-drawing process. In addition, there's not much more to be gained by the party in power from playing with the maps one more time.”
Civil rights organizations claimed the 2021 map didn’t provide adequate representation for voters of color.
"We made sure that we didn't violate any laws, as far as race goes, on drawing the maps," Sen. Springer said. "Yes, we had one district that was fairly close; it's probably a more of a safe Republican district now. And so we picked up one seat in redrawing. I think we could have probably — if we wanted to be very aggressive — we probably could have drawn two or three more."
Sens. Roland Gutierrez and Sarah Eckhardt filed a lawsuit in September 2021 alleging that the existing maps were “malapportioned” and that the Texas Constitution “prohibits the enactment of new maps until 2023,” according to Texas’ redistricting website.
“Certainly, there are a lot of people that would like to see the maps redrawn, to see them redrawn more fairly,” Sen. Johnson said. “There is litigation, in fact, multiple lawsuits that say the way the lines were drawn is unfair. So from that perspective, yes, we should take another look at them. But this process is typically done once every 10 years. And the result is what the result is. I don't think there's a rational expectation that we'll see a different result this time around.”
The Senate will hear public testimony about redistricting from Wednesday through Saturday. Matthew Wilson, an associate professor of political science with Southern Methodist University, thinks these issues will come up again.
“These are points that Democrats in the legislature have tried to make for some time. I don't think they will find a receptive ear among Republicans though,” he said. “And of course, Republicans ultimately control this process. So those arguments were made last time and were ultimately unpersuasive to the majority. I think they will be made again and will continue to be unpersuasive to the majority.”
While district lines aren’t expected to change much, Sen. Johnson said he’s been surprised before.