TEXAS REDISTRICTING: Texas Dems Just As Sleazy as Tom DeLay? [View All]

A lot has been made about Tom DeLay's attempt to interfere with Texas redistricting in an attempt to pick up more GOP seats.

Yet... the screams of moral indignation ring kind of hollow when we see that the Texas Democrats did the same thing to the GOP back in the 1990s. I first heard about this in Robert Dahl's book How Democratic Is The American Constitution. When I posted this elsewhere some Texan was indignant saying:

"You know nothing about Texas politics. To equate what was legitimately drawn districts overseen by a federal court to what Tom DeLay did with Texas Redistricting is repulsive. Why did Texas Democrats win a majority of Congressional seats in the 1990s. It was simple. We had superior candidates who got out and met with conservative constituents and served their interests as well....

Unless you are from Texas you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about in regards to Texas Redistricting.

If you want to promote your Naderites pablum that they are all the same, take it elsewhere."

Could I have been that wrong? Not being able to find the Dahl quote I decided to start from scratch. I made a spreadsheet using 1992 election data from
http://www.polidata.us/pub/reports/489292a.pdf which gave me these results

Final Numbers of 1992 Texas Congressional vote:

Party----Votes-------------Seats Won
DEM-----2806044 (50.2%)---- 21 (70%)
GOP-----2685970 (48%)------- 9 (30%)
OTHER-----97157 (1.7%)

70% of the seats with only 50% of the vote? Sounds like Texas Dems were begging for payback.

Here's the spreadsheet: http://members.tripod.com/romcache/TEXAS_1992_ELECTION.xlr
It should open with any similar program. You may have to save it to disk to open it.