As we all know, the Congressional, State House, and State Senate districts are going to be court-drawn for the decade thanks to the greed of the TX GOP getting the better of them. As it stands now, the San Antonio district court will draw interim districts to be used for the 2012 elections before they get to a conclusive ruling. So far, they have released the TX Senate and TX State House maps that shall be used in the interim (pending some tweaks at the behest of the plaintiffs). WMIV looked at the State House maps already, now I shall do likewise for the State Senate maps.
I traced the State Senate lines from the Texas Legislative Council's website, and got this:
A primary plaintiff in the State Senate case is Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth. She narrowly won District 10 in 2008, which is completely located in bellwether Tarrant County. Fearing her potential as a future statewide candidate, the TX GOP excised some of the Hispanic and black voters that pushed her to victory and gave them to surrounding districts. This was the grounds she used to back up her case against the State Senate map. The court accepted her claims and drew her district to more-or-less the version that it currently is. That appears to be one of the few changes they made to the TX GOP's map.
Currently, Democrats hold 12 Senate seats to the GOP's 19. 12 is considered to be the ceiling for the Dems, but with changing demographics, they might be able to win 1 or 2 more this decade under the court map.
I shall only go through the potentially competitive districts and all others should be considered safe for the incumbent party.
Part 1: DFW Metroplex
District 10: Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth)
She'll still be in a real fight in this district, but she now has the power of incumbency behind her. Of the two-party Presidential vote, Obama got 47.4% here. If she wins re-election, she would be a perfect candidate for a future statewide race. There's a reason why the TX GOP tried to end her career early.
District 9: Chris Harris (R-Arlington)
Since Chris Harris is retiring and his seat is up in 2012, it's a prime time for Dems to run a top-tier race here. Obama got 45% in this new SD-9 and it would be a nice opportunity for the Dallas and Tarrant Democratic Parties to collaborate and show the other county organizations how it's done. This is the most competitive seat that is currently Republican-held.
District 16: John Carona (R-Dallas)
I'd like to see Democrats strongly contest this one too, but it'll be harder. Although Obama got 44.2% here, he strongly overperformed the Dem average performance (which is 36.9%). However, Dallas has swung hard to the Dems in recent years, so it may be doable.
That's it for DFW, now for Harris County (Houston).
Part 2: Harris County
Far fewer competitive seats here. Dems already have three seats in Harris County (6, 15, and 13). Furthermore, I do not know which parts of this region are trending which way, so I cannot extrapolate here.
District 17: Joan Huffman (R-Soutside Place)
In 2008, Obama got 42.2% of the vote here, but that was still a large overperformance because Dem average performance here is 36.4%.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's all for now! There may be some tweaking around with this map before it is enacted, but this is essentially it. And remember, this is the interim map, not the definitive one.
UPDATEx1: Shortly after the interim state legislative maps were released, Senator Wendy Davis filed this response. She also proposed some changes to Tarrant County. I have moved the precincts around as she prescribes in this letter and this is what I got:
What it does to SD-10 is raise it to 48.4% Obama, but it pushed SD-9 further out of reach by decreasing it to 43.8% Obama. It also adds more AA and Hispanic voters to Davis' district and unites Tarrant County's share of Mansfield in her district.