Is This the Year When Texas' Gerrymander Finally Breaks?

For the better part of two decades now, Texas has been Lucy with the football and Democrats have been Charlie Brown, thinking, "If we just target these voters, moderate on these issues or raise this much money, maybe we'll have a chance." It hasn't happened. However much hype a candidate generates — hello, Beto O'Rourke — or money he or she pours into his or her own campaign — looking at you, Tony Sanchez — the results have been the same statewide. Republicans win and everybody gets to bed at a reasonable hour on election night.

November's midterm election brought similar results but different takeaways. Republicans swept the statewide contests, but O'Rourke, Mike Collier and Justin Nelson finished closer to Sen. Ted Cruz, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton than anyone could've predicted a few months prior. There were signs, too, that the gerrymander Texas Republicans have fought so hard to keep since the state's most recent round of redistricting was threatening to give way.

Democrats picked up a dozen seats in the Texas House in 2018, tightening their grip on the state's biggest urban areas. They also knocked off two Republican congressional incumbents, one each in the Dallas and Houston areas, after voting gains in the suburbs. After 2018, Dallas County has just two Republican state House members. Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Austin are dominated by Democrats, too. O'Rourke beat Cruz in Tarrant County, previously the state's most reliable urban county for the GOP. And Collin County, blood red for decades, only went for Cruz by six points. Democrats are finding votes where they didn't, or couldn't, before.


Dallas County's Texas House map txredistricting.org


Texas' U.S. House and legislative districts, drawn with the intent of wedging as many Republicans into office as possible, now threaten the GOP's hold on the state. That's the good news for Democrats. The bad news is that they may have only one election to capitalize on the shift.

Read more: https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-democrats-about-to-get-their-last-best-shot-at-power-11729997