We're taking a tour of the most outrageous Republican gerrymanders in the nation. Read why in our introductory post, and click here for the full series.
Republicans aggressively gerrymandered Texas again after the 2010 Census, taking what had previously been the Austin-based 25th District and creating a new seat that packed in Democrats in both Austin and San Antonio in order to make the surrounding seats strongly Republican. The current 35th masquerades as a Latino-majority Voting Rights Act-mandated district, but Republicans used this as a façade to pack in as many white Democrats as possible into a seat that backed President Obama by 63-35. The redrawn district didn’t even elect another Latino, since white Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett has been in office since 2005 and last won by 63-32 in 2016.
This district is part of a larger gerrymander that gave Republicans 25 districts to just 11 for Democrats, even when Donald Trump only won Texas by 52-43. We proposed a series of nonpartisan maps for every state, and our map dismantled this district and replaced it with more compact 25th and 35th districts in the Austin area. Our 35th was still dark blue, but the neighboring 25th backed Romney just 51-48 and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. We used the real 35th’s San Antonio portions to raise the Latino vote share in the South Texas-based 23rd and even created a new Latino-majority 27th District in the Rio Grande Valley, turning both Republican-held seats into safely Democratic ones.
That means that this one gerrymandered district alone might have cost Democrats a whopping two to three extra seats in 2016, and helped deprive Texas of two additional Latino members of Congress.
Tell us what you think the district looks like in the comments!
