demography

First round of cuts for Board of Managers wannabes

And then there were two hundred and twenty-five.

Fewer than half of the people who applied for the Houston ISD board of managers completed a weekend governance training required to move forward in the application process, according to the Texas Education Agency.

The agency said 225 people completed a mandatory two-day Lone Star Governance training that took place over the past two weekends. Those applicants are eligible to advance to the next phase of interviews, while those who did not attend the training, left early or skipped the second day have been eliminated from the process.

With a little more than a month until the agency plans to appoint the board of managers, the TEA is now moving forward with the interview phase of the selection process, which includes virtual and observational interviews, according to the agency.

[…]

Applicants included 199 men and 260 women, according to the TEA. The applicant pool was roughly 39 percent Black, 33 percent white, 11 percent Hispanic, 7.5 percent two or more races, 4.5 percent Asian and 4.3 percent another race.

Nearly 70 percent of the applicants held a master’s or doctorate degree, including 38 people with a doctorate in education, according to the agency.

Candidates were dispersed throughout the school system, according to the TEA, with 53 applicants from HISD district one, 36 from district two, 17 from district three, 73 from district four, 67 from district five, 36 from district six, 54 from district seven, 38 from district eight and 48 from district nine.

See here and here for some background. I don’t have anything new to add, but I guess I’m glad that there’s a decent number of applicants from each district, though we could have done better in District III. Not surprising, given the previous news about the demographic makeup of the applicant pool, that this is one of the more heavily Latino districts. We can and should continue to protest this entire process, but we should also want the selected Board to be as qualified and representative as it can be. No reason to make a bad problem even worse.

House re-passes its redistricting map

Apr 27th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Done and done.

The Texas House on Wednesday reapproved the map of districts for its 150 seats, which was redrawn in 2021 and fortified the Republican majority while diluting the voting strength of Hispanic and Black voters.

The House made no changes to the map that was used for the first time in last year’s elections. Instead, its 85-65 vote on House Bill 1000 was meant to ensure lawmakers met constitutional requirements calling for legislative districts to be redrawn in the first regular legislative session after the results of the decennial census are published.

Pandemic-related delays pushed the release of the 2020 census results past the end of the last regularly scheduled session in May 2021.

[…]

Like the Senate map, the House map drew the ire of Democrats, civil rights groups and Texans from across the state who criticized Republicans for not adequately reflecting the crucial role people of color played in fueling the state’s population gains. Of the nearly 4 million people added to the population count in the 2020 census, 95% were people of color. Nearly 2 million were Hispanic.

Both maps are the subjects of a collection of federal lawsuits challenging the Legislature’s redistricting work as discriminatory against Texans of color. In that litigation, the broad set of plaintiffs suing the state argue the Republican-controlled Legislature used the once-a-decade redistricting process to draw maps solidifying the GOP’s political dominance while weakening the influence of voters of color.

They are joined by the U.S. Department of Justice in their legal challenge, which also includes the Legislature’s redraw of the state’s congressional map that largely protected incumbents in Congress while reducing the number of districts in which Black and Hispanic residents make up the majority of eligible voters.

In court, the state has largely argued plaintiffs do not have enough evidence to show the Legislature discriminated against Texans of color in its mapmaking and that, if anything, the Legislature made decisions based on partisan considerations.

The three-judge panel in charge of the case has yet to reschedule a trial over the new political maps after delaying a September 2022 trial because of disputes over discovery that left both the state and the various plaintiff groups questioning whether they’d have enough time to prepare to make their cases in a federal court in El Paso.

See here for the previous update. Both chambers still have to approve the other’s map, which I expect will be entirely perfunctory. I expect the state lawsuit is now moot (and the plaintiffs were right but never got anything for it), so whatever may happen from here will occur in the federal courts. I’m sure you can guess how optimistic I am about that.

Even more Board of Managers applicants

Apr 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Maybe now they have enough.

When the Texas Education Agency in June appoints a new superintendent and nine managers to govern the Houston Independent School District, longtime educator and mother Anita Wadhwa hopes there will be someone like her sitting on the new board.

“Sometimes on boards, they don’t have people who are on the ground doing the work,” she said. “I just want to make sure that voice is represented — whether it’s with me or someone else, it doesn’t matter.”

Wadhwa is among 462 people, many of them educators, HISD parents or other professionals, who applied to the board of managers through the final deadline on Thursday night, according to the TEA. The extended deadline netted an additional 88 applications. Still, the Hispanic population remains vastly underrepresented with just 52 applicants. Latinos make up roughly 62% of the student body but 11% of the candidate pool.

“The reason for this low response has been a poor recruitment process that does not allow community input, a lack of transparency on qualifications, and a very short window of time,” said Sergio Lira, president of the Greater Houston LULAC Council, in a statement. “We feel that this is a calculated process that is meant to keep Latino numbers down.”

Forty people were disqualified from the process because they live outside district boundaries. A third of the applicants are white, nearly 40% are Black and 4.5% are Asian, according to the TEA. Nearly 70% hold a master’s or doctorate degree, including 38 people with a doctorate in education. There are many HISD teachers and employees in the mix, according a partial list of applicants, but the TEA has said those people must resign from their job if they are selected.

The partial list of names released last week by the TEA includes professionals from all spheres: attorneys, doctors, nurses, coaches, professors and educators. While many applicants have little name recognition, some have put been in the public sphere through civic leadership, prior elections and advocacy work. For example, among the applicants are Catherine Mincberg, who served as an HISD trustee more than a decade ago, and Lawrence Allen Jr., a former member of the state board of education and brother of a current HISD trustee.

When we last looked at the BoM applicants, we noted that the deadline to apply had been extended for two weeks, for unspecified reasons. I looked through the list of names in this story and didn’t see any that I hadn’t recognized from before, so either the Chron’s list wasn’t updated or nobody of sufficient renown to be spotted by the likes of me applied during that extended period. I did see Cathy Mincberg‘s name in there before, and according to her LinkedIn bio, she was a Trustee from 1983 through 1995; that “more than a decade ago” is doing quite a bit of work there. I should note, this is not at all intended as snark about Mincberg, who is also the ex-wife of former HCDP Chair and 2008 Dem candidate for County Judge David Mincberg. It was just that my reaction to the “more than a decade” descriptor was “I’m pretty sure I know the names of every HISD trustee since 2003, and she wasn’t one of them, so how much more than a decade are we talking here”. Well, now you know. Also, she was a previous applicant to the BoM.

Anyway, the same issues as before apply. Not nearly enough Latinos among the applicants. No accountability except via decree from Mike Morath. No clue, at least by me, how they’re going to be able to reach the super high metrics Morath has set. Redistricting of trustee districts still needs to be done, and there hasn’t been a bond issue since 2012; sadly, we’re no longer in a zero-interest economy, so it’s going to cost more to replenish the capital stock. Just remember, the state of Texas is now responsible for all this and more. Every single problem from now till they hand it all back, and then some, is on them.

Our first look at the Board of Managers wannabes

Apr 16th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

An eclectic group, to say the least.

The Chronicle on Friday obtained through a public records request a list of people who applied to the position through the end of March. In total, 374 people applied through the deadline last Thursday, although the agency extended the application window for an additional two weeks. The second round has already netted several dozen more applicants, said TEA deputy commissioner Steve Lecholop.

“We want to make sure all Houstonians have a second chance or more time to deliberate on whether they would be good fits to serve on the board,” Lecholop said. “We wanted to make sure we captured as many Houstonians as were interested and create as deep of a pool as possible.”

So far, the applicant pool is vastly underrepresented by Hispanic community members, raising concerns and questions among some residents. The Hispanic population makes up 10% of the applicants but nearly 62% of the HISD student body, according to the TEA.

Meanwhile, 40% of the applicants are Black, 33% white, 12% other and 5% Asian, according to the state agency. The group includes many teachers or educators, parents and district alumni, according to the TEA, in addition to some community activists and one current trustee, Bridget Wade.

[…]

Meanwhile, somoe trustees at a Thursday night board meeting expressed concerns that the applicant pool included people who had previously lost in school board elections, vendors in the district and people who say they have already been chosen for the position despite an ongoing selection process.

“If you’ve already selected three to four people, and those people are stating they’re selected, then that would be disingenuous to the community,” said trustee Myrna Guidry. “Those names are out there.”

Lecholop, the TEA representative who presented and answered questions at the board meeting, said the agency has selected no one for the board of managers or the superintendent positions.

“Not a soul in Houston or elsewhere has been notified that they will be a member of the board of managers,” he said.

Among the applicants in the first round is Lawrence Allen Jr., a third-generation educator and former member of the State Board of Education. His sister, Dr. Patricia Allen, now sits on the HISD board of trustees. Both siblings and their parents served as principals in the district, Allen said, adding that he is uniquely equipped to serve in the position due to his experience with the district and on the state level.

See here and here for some background. I guess this means they’re hoping for more Latino applicants, though that’s still my inference and not anything that the TEA has explicitly said. Par for the course, us trying to guess what the TEA has in mind to do.

Be that as it may, here are some names I recognized in the applicant list. All have been unsuccessful candidates for at least one office – you can search my archives for them or click on the Tag link below to see where they have been in the past.

Hugo Mojica
Gerry Monroe
Larry McKinzie
Karen Kossie-Chernyshev
Joshua Wallenstein
Youlette McCullough
Rasuali Bray
Georgia Provost

There are also a few names I’m not sure about, because they’re sufficiently common and/or are a variation on a known past political figure. This is how they are listed and who they might be:

Anne Garcia – There was a Dem candidate in the 2020 Senate primary named Annie Garcia.
Gregory Travis – Could possibly be the former District G Council member and failed State House candidate Greg Travis.
Sandra Moore – Possibly the former Democratic candidate for HD133. I’m Facebook friends with her and see that she has a recent post about the BoM, but didn’t say anything about being an applicant herself.
Graciela Saenz – This one seems likely to be the former At Large City Council member Gracie Saenz. I’d have thought that might have been mentioned in the story if so, but who knows.

We’ll see. As for the concern about people who had failed in past runs for the Board of Trustees being appointed as a Manager, I wouldn’t bar anyone like that from the process, but I do think it would be a fair question to ask why they should be appointed when the voting public has previously rejected them. There are a number of ways one could give a satisfactory answer to that question, and a number of ways one could give an answer that ought to brand you as not being a good candidate for any position of power ever. As for why more current Trustees did not apply for the Board, that’s a question I’ll ask those who are running for re-election this fall.

TEA takeover approved by trustees

Apr 15th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

That was a formality and will be noted later in the post, but first there was this.

Members of the Houston ISD board of trustees peppered a Texas Education Agency representative with questions about the upcoming takeover at a public meeting Thursday that lasted late into the night.

More than four hours into the meeting, Steve Lecholop, the TEA’s deputy commissioner of governance, gave a slideshow presentation about the board of managers applications and transition process, while standing before elected trustees in the Hattie Mae White Educational Center.

The TEA has re-opened the window for board of manager applications until April 20 after receiving 374 applicants in the first round, Lecholop said.

Preliminary screening of applicants is now underway and applicants have been invited to attend one of two required Lone Star Governance training sessions, he said.

The presentation included information about the timeline of the takeover, the process and exit criteria for transitioning back to elected control, and the role of the elected trustees after their powers are suspended. Elected officials will be encouraged to remain in place as advisors to the board of managers, Lecholop said.

“It is really important that you guys stay involved,” he told trustees.

Several trustees raised questions about transparency and validity in the application and selection process for the board of managers. They asked about the reasons behind the takeover and the specifics of the conditions for ending state governance. Some board members said they would have preferred to hear from TEA Commissioner Mike Morath to address their questions about the takeover.

“We’d like to see Commissioner Morath to discuss all of the questions,” said trustee Kathy Blueford-Daniels.

Lecholop said the TEA has made no selections for any governance positions. He also said the future board of managers will be bound by the same laws as the elected school board, meaning meetings must be open to the public.

[…]

Later, trustee Patricia Allen asked the state representative about a scenario in which the new leadership fails to achieve the exit criteria and instead contributes to tanking student outcomes.

“What happens when they do a terrible job and we can’t get back in because they keep doing a terrible job?” she said.

Lecholop did not provide an answer, instead pointing to a successful track record in other Texas districts that have been governed by a board of managers.

“We have every expectation that the board will be successful,” he said.

Quite a bit here, but I want to focus in on three things.

1. Mike Morath still can’t be bothered to show up and answer questions in person. This is just plain chickenshit on his part. The biggest school district in the state, being taken over for past behavior that is no longer in operation, vastly unpopular among the stakeholders, and all we get is a string of functionaries. Just straight up cowardly and deeply disrespectful. I had a fair bit of respect for Mike Morath before this. He’s done a lot to shred that.

2. Why are they still taking applications for the Board of Managers? Perhaps to correct for the non-representative nature of the existing pile of applicants. I’m speculating, because Morath’s flunky didn’t say why they were doing it. That would be a valid reason if it’s true, but it sure would be nice to have confirmation. If that’s not the reason, then what is? Were there really not nine semi-decent candidates among the 374 that had applied? What does that tell you if true?

3. Trustee Allen asks a great question, which typically goes unanswered. Move along, nothing to see here. Fears that the Board will fail to meet the aggressive metrics set by the TEA are real and deserve a thoughtful response, which we aren’t going to get, but there’s another scenario to consider. It’s possible the Board of Managers won’t do anything that the existing Board of Trustees already had in place, and with the trajectory HISD is on after two years or so the metrics are met an the TEA can declare victory, claim all the credit despite having done nothing of substance, and get out. That would be both good and annoying as hell. I’m going to have to sit with that for a little while.

In the end, the baton was passed.

Despite pleas from speakers earlier in the meeting that the TEA action be abandoned and pointed questions from some of the board members following the address from TEA Deputy Commissioner for Governance Steve Lecholop, any but the most dedicated true believers had to know it was over.

Despite all the objections raised by board members, in the end they acquiesced in a 7-1-1 vote with trustee Sue Deigaard voting against and Bridget Wade abstaining (?). The HISD board of education gave their formal OK to the transition of the district from locally elected leadership to a board of managers and a new superintendent that will all be appointed by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.

I said the Board vote was a formality, in that after all this it cannot possibly be the case that a Board vote against approving the takeover would have had any effect. Maybe it would have had caused some minor bit of chaos, I have no idea. But this train is leaving the station, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it at this point. Now we wait to see who the new Board is and who gets named as the new Superintendent.

So many Board of Managers applicants

Apr 10th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

I sure wonder what the process to sort through all of these will be.

More than 370 people applied for nine spots on the board that will govern Houston ISD, wrapping up the first step in the Texas Education Agency’s intervention of Texas’ largest school system.

Education Commissioner Mike Morath will oust elected trustees and appoint a new superintendent and a nine-person board of managers by June 1, according to the agency, a process that some critics say has been marred by distrust from the beginning.

“Everything that has happened so far has been done in the dark,” said Dr. Audrey Nath, an HISD parent who did not apply for the position. “They have been dodging questions or not showing up to our meetings.”

Applicants for the board of managers include 232 current or former HISD parents, 136 former students and 238 teachers, according to the state agency, which released the numbers on Friday afternoon. The racial breakdown includes 40 percent Black, 33 percent white, 10 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian applicants.

The agency said it will now screen applicants with background checks, community reference checks, training and interviews. Candidates must live within the school district boundaries, according to officials.

“I am looking for Houstonians with wisdom and integrity who can be laser-focused on what is best for students,” Morath said in a written statement. “It is exciting to see so many Houstonians express a willingness to help move the school system forward in service of students.”

After getting appointed, the board of managers should improve student outcomes by “representing the vision and values of the community,” according to a job description posted online by the state agency. Roles include monitoring and supporting the superintendent, engaging with community members and creating governance systems that will ensure a smooth transition back to local control, according to the state agency.

According to the TEA, the ideal board of managers will reflect the ethnic, racial and economic diversity of the school district and include some HISD parents, community leaders and people with backgrounds in public education, social work, counseling, business, finance or law. The board members will ideally live throughout the nine existing trustee districts.

In 2019, when the state agency first attempted to take over HISD, there were 243 applicants for the board of managers, including several elected trustees.

Current board members did not respond to inquiries about whether they had submitted applications this time.

Emphasis mine. Just for yuks, the actual racial and ethic demographics of HISD are 62% Hispanic, 22% Black, 10% White, and 4% Asian. Just a wee bit off in the applicant pool there. The story doesn’t mention the economic breakdown, but I’m going to step way out on a limb here and guess that the applicant pool is considerably wealthier than the average HISD parent is. As that same page notes, 78.5% of HISD students are “economically disadvantaged”. Just putting it out there. None of this means that the Board itself will necessarily be un-representative. But they’re not off to a great start.

Also not mentioned in the story: What the process is for picking those “ideal board members”, how long it will take, and what recourse if any the public will have if they find a particular Board member to be objectionable. Oh, and are these people expected to serve the entire two-to-six years of HISD’s sentence, or are there term limits? If so, what is the process for replacing a Board member? Do they just go back to the original applicant pool, or can someone new apply? So many unanswered questions.

Thirty million Texans

Jan 1st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

We reach another milestone.

Fueled by migration to the state from other parts of the country, Texas crossed a new population threshold this year: It is now home to 30 million people.

New estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau put the state’s population as of July 1 at 30,029,572 following years of steady growth. This makes Texas the only state, other than California, with a population of more than 30 million.

The state’s population has been on an upward trajectory for decades, accompanied by demographic shifts that have reshaped everything from its politics to its classrooms as people of color have powered its growth.

Texas’ population increased by 470,708 people since July 2021, the largest gain in the nation. Texas regularly holds that top spot on the bureau’s annual population updates. Roughly half of that growth came from net domestic migration — the number of people coming to Texas from other states — while the other half was split almost evenly between net international migration and natural increase, which is the difference between births and deaths.

The state’s source of population gains often fluctuates year to year. The bureau’s estimates from 2010-19 showed Texas’ growth based on natural increase and net migration, including both domestic and international, were close to even over the decade.

I imagine that between the pandemic and Trump-instituted restrictions, the numbers for international migration have trended down. We’ll see how that affects the next decade.

On a related note, looking at the historic Census figures for Texas, thirty years ago the average State House member in Texas represented about 120K people. Twenty years ago that would have still been less than 150K people. Now that State Rep has 200K constituents, and rising. A State Senator now represents nearly one million people. We’re not going to do anything about that, but we really ought to think about it. Just putting it out there.

LULAC files that lawsuit to end Houston City Council At Large districts

Dec 6th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

We’ve been waiting for this.

The League of United Latin American Citizens on Monday filed its long-anticipated lawsuit against the city of Houston, seeking to get rid of at-large City Council seats that it says leave Hispanic residents with insufficient representation at City Hall.

The group, one of the largest Hispanic civil rights organizations in the country, first announced plans to take legal action against the city in January.

While 45 percent of Houston residents are Hispanic, Robert Gallegos of District I is the only Hispanic person holding a seat on the 16-member body, even though the city previously created two other Hispanic-opportunity districts, H and J.

The federal lawsuit aims to replace the city’s five at-large seats, which represent voters citywide, with single-member seats dedicated to certain geographic areas. Houston’s current election system has created barriers to Hispanic representation and deprived hundreds of thousands of minority Houstonians of their voting rights guaranteed by law, the complaint says.

“The Latino voters of Houston have waited for fair redistricting plans. They have waited for years for the city of Houston to end its long relationship with ‘at-large’ districts that dilute the electoral strength of Hispanics,” the lawsuit says. “The time has come to replace this old election system that functions solely to dilute the power of Houston’s Latino voters.”

Houston City Council was comprised of all at-large positions until 1980, when it switched to a mix of district seats and five at-large seats. The change led to more diverse council bodies and better representation of minority voters, according to the complaint. Still, only four with Spanish surnames have been elected to one of the five at-large districts since then because Latino-preferred candidates rarely do well in citywide races, it says.

While many local Latino candidates also face other challenges, such as a lack of resources, the council structure remains a major hurdle for them, according to Jeronimo Cortina, an associate professor in political science at University of Houston.

“When you look into political science literature, you’ll find that at-large seats tend to decrease the likelihood for minority candidates to win an election,” he said.

It is, however, not sufficient to simply look at the absence of Latino city council members, Cortina said. To substantiate LULAC’s claim that Houston is in violation of the Voting Rights Act, the organization would have to prove that Latino Houstonians have been acting as a cohesive voting bloc but unable to elect a candidate of their choice.

“It would take a lot of time and a lot of data,” Cortina said. “But the fact is that Latinos have been running and Latinos are not winning these elections.”

See here, here, and here for the background, and here for a copy of the lawsuit. I’ve said all I have to say in that first link. Whatever happens with this lawsuit happens, and I’ll be fine with it. Courts have ordered cities like Pasadena and Farmers Branch to incorporate City Council districts in recent years, but those places began with all-At Large systems, and they were much more clearly discriminatory in my opinion. They were also decided in a time before SCOTUS went all in on destroying the Voting Rights Act. This could go either way, and I’ll be surprised if there is a temporary restraining order in place to block the use of the current Council map for the 2023 election. After that, we’ll see. The Trib has more.

The case for redrawing Constable/JP precincts

Nov 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

A Twitter thread of interest:

Harris County hasn’t redrawn its civil court boundaries since 1973, leading to lopsided caseloads.

Here’s 1,000 new maps that would reduce lines at the courthouse, give judges more time in eviction & debt cases, and restore “one person one vote.”

— David McClendon (@DMcClendonPhD) 3:39 PM – 11 November 2022

And here’s the best one for eviction cases.

— David McClendon (@DMcClendonPhD) 3:39 PM – 11 November 2022

Note that he means the Justice of the Peace courts. Current maps for those precincts are here. Note that the Constable and Justice of the Peace precincts are the same. Note also how large geographically precincts 4 and 5 are. I’m sure they were quite empty in the 70s, but that was a long time ago. That’s one of the main theses in the accompanying article, which focuses on population growth and caseloads, and how they affect people facing evictions, which are handled by the JP courts.

Every Monday morning, Judge Israel Garcia, Jr., who serves as Harris County Justice of the Peace for Precinct 5, stares down a punishing docket of eviction, debt collection, and traffic cases for the week. His courtroom has a line out the door of parents and children, desperate to resolve a dispute with their landlord or settle a longstanding debt. But the law can be unfriendly to these defendants, and Judge Garcia must know that relief will never come.

All Justice of the Peace Courts in Harris County deal with large caseloads, but the number of cases in Precinct 5 is seemingly endless. If you visit our Harris County Evictions Dashboard, you’ll see how imbalanced the caseload really is – there are 10 times as many cases in Precinct 5 compared to Precinct 6.

What’s going on here? Do renters in Precinct 5 have a much higher risk of eviction than renters in other areas? Are its residents that much more likely to fall behind on their credit card payments or speed through a school zone? No. The reason why Precinct 5 has more cases is because it has more people – a lot more people. And it has more people because Harris County hasn’t redrawn the boundaries of JP courts since 1973.

For this blog post, I explore just how lopsided the caseloads in Harris County’s JP Courts have become due to a lack of redistricting over the past 50 years. I also show the results from a simulation I ran of 1,000 new maps for the courts that account for population change. Every single one is better than what we have today.

I discussed the political case for redistricting the Constables in an earlier post. That’s a separate matter from what David McClendon is advocating. The two goals, if they are indeed goals for Commissioners Court, would be in some tension here. My first thought is whether McClendon took the Voting Rights Act into account in this exercise, because Precinct 6 – one of two precinct with Hispanic Constables and (with the election of Dolores Lozano in Precinct 2) all Hispanic JPs – would be first in line to be made larger. Precinct 2, the other of those two precincts, is right next to it. Precincts 3 and 7 have Black Constables and JPs. Any potential redrawing of these precincts needs to ensure that Black and Hispanic voters aren’t losing representation.

The Constables are currently five Dems and three Republicans, with Precincts 4 and 8 being all-GOP, while Precinct 5 has one JP from each party following Israel Garcia’s win in 2020. As a practical political matter, Commissioners Court is not going to draw a new set of maps that will make it harder for Democrats to win. Again, as far as I can tell, McClendon didn’t take that into account.

And that’s fine. That wasn’t his idea, and his goal was to even out the caseloads to enable a better process and hopefully better outcomes for tenants facing eviction. The good news here is that McClendon ran a thousand maps, each of which were better than the existing one for his purposes. That strongly suggests to me that the political purpose of not making it harder for Dems to get elected – while also at the least not making it easier for a few specific Constables to get re-elected – can be achieved at the same time as making the courts function better for everyone. Maybe there’s not an optimal solution for each in the same map, but surely improvements can be made. I would absolutely advocate for Commissioners Court to take a long look at this.

The imminent Latino plurality

Sep 24th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It may already be here, but it’s not quite officially official just yet.

A closely watched estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday indicates that Texas may have passed a long-awaited milestone: the point where Hispanic residents make up more of the state’s population than white residents.

The new population figures, derived from the bureau’s American Community Survey, showed Hispanic Texans made up 40.2% of the state’s population in 2021 while non-Hispanic white Texans made up 39.4%. The estimates — based on comprehensive data collected over the 2021 calendar year — are not considered official.

The bureau’s official population estimates as of July 2021 showed the Hispanic and white populations virtually even in size. But in designating Hispanics as the state’s largest population group, the new estimates are the first to reflect the foreseeable culmination of decades of demographic shifts steadily transforming the state.

The incremental trend demographers have been tracking for years reflects the state’s profound cultural and demographic evolution. The state lost its white majority in 2004. However, the Hispanic population’s relative growth, through both migration and births, has not been reflected in many facets of the state’s economic and political landscape.

The 2020 census captured how close the state’s Hispanic and white populations had come, with just half a percentage point separating them at the time. By then, Texas had gained nearly 11 Hispanic residents for every additional white resident over the previous decade. And Hispanics had powered nearly half of the state’s overall growth of roughly 4 million residents since 2010.

Hispanic Texans are expected to make up a flat-out majority of the state’s population in the decades to come, but they are already on the precipice of a majority among children. The latest census estimates showed that 49.3% of Texans under the age of 18 are Hispanic.

Without corresponding political and economic gains, Hispanic residents’ economic and political reality is captured in the persistent disparities also reflected in the latest census data. Hispanic people living in Texas are disproportionately poor. They are also less likely to have reached the higher levels of education that often serve as pathways to social mobility and greater economic prosperity.

It was sometime during my first decade of blogging, maybe 2004 or 2005, when Anglos ceased to be the majority in Texas. The trends have kept on trending since then. As far as political representation goes, maybe we’ll get a shot at that in 2031 redistricting cycle – it ain’t happening this time around, not with this SCOTUS. But as Campos notes, we can at least do something about that locally this year. The Chron has more.

There’s no cheap housing in Houston any more

Jul 18th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

What are we going to do about that?

In the sprawling Houston region, those who could not afford homeownership in the city’s urban core always had options. They could trade proximity for affordability.

But as rising home prices and mortgage rates push homeownership further out of reach for the average renter, the suburbs within Harris County are losing their reputation as an affordable haven, said Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research — just one example of how access to homeownership and quality housing has grown more difficult over the past decade, with challenges accelerating during the pandemic.

The Kinder Institute and Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies released Tuesday morning their annual reports on the state of housing in the Houston area and the nation. Together, they painted a picture of a deepening divide between the prospects of current homeowners, whose equity has been buoyed by record-breaking home price appreciation, and renters, who have seen the monthly costs of buying a home rise far more quickly than wages.

The median-priced home in the suburbs of Clear Lake and Jersey Village, for example, were priced between $162,000 and $175,000 in 2011, according to the Houston Association of Realtors. They now go for $300,000 to $317,000.

“You have to go farther and farther out until you find a home that’s affordable,” explained Stephen Sherman, a researcher at the Kinder Institute. “The whole saying is drive until you qualify. We’re finding that people will have to drive even more” — a development which will have rippling implications on traffic and the way floodwaters drain.

And no matter how far out you look, it’s difficult to find a home priced below $200,000 in Harris County these days, where the median home price is on track to soon surpass that in Houston, according to the Kinder report.

Nationwide, four million renters in the past year have been priced out from buying homes, the Joint Center for Housing Studies report found. That’s a concern, said Daniel T. McCue, senior research associate at the center, because “if the door is closing on homeownership, it would lock in some significant inequities in housing.”

[…]

Home prices have outpaced incomes because of a confluence of issues including the chronic underbuilding of homes (the building of which has failed to keep up with population growth for years), the increased demand for homes as millennials enter the homebuying market, surging construction costs as the pandemic interrupted supply chains around the country and the fact that most new construction is focused on the high end of the market.

“Suburban Houston — and new homes in suburban Houston — used to be extremely affordable,” said Lawrence Dean, the Houston regional director for Zonda, which does market research related to new home construction. Since then, the costs of land, materials and labor have all shot up. These days, it’s near impossible to build a home for less than $200,000, he explained.

Wood, fiber-cement siding and even land that’s ready for new homes became harder to come by and labor became scarce during the pandemic. According to the federal government’s producer price index, which measures the average change in selling prices, residential construction materials saw costs rise more than 30 percent in January 2022 from March 2020, when the pandemic began to disrupt businesses in the United States.

The Kinder report is here. This is a regional problem, but it’s also a national problem. It’s partly pandemic-induced, and so may ease up a bit over time, but it’s also driven by other factors, including some lasting effects of the pandemic such as working from home. The point about housing within the city of Houston now being generally less expensive than in the non-Houston parts of Harris County is interesting, as a lot of the population growth in the unincorporated areas has been driven by affordable housing. We’re still cheaper than many other parts of the country (though not by as much now) so some of that will continue, but some of it will be pushed into other counties, and perhaps some of it will come back within the city of Houston. I’d like to see what the demographers think about that.

In the meantime, this is a real problem for a lot of people, and it’s going to take some big ideas to fix. Which, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t exactly fill me with hope. The abundance of available land, the lack of restrictions on building, and the general attractiveness of Texas as a place to live has been a huge driver of growth in the area. What do we do when the first two aren’t making a difference and the third is no longer true?

Chron story on the proposed new City Council map

Jul 11th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Remember, you heard it here first.

Houston’s proposed City Council maps for 2023 elections make only minor changes to district boundaries near Rice University, Freedmen’s Town and parts of downtown.

Overall, less than 3% of Houston’s 2.3 million residents will change districts under the proposal, which is designed to balance district populations based on 2020 Census data, while complying with city requirements and the Voting Rights Act, according to City Demographer Jerry Wood.

By law, none of the 11 districts should vary by more than 10 percent from the average district population of approximately 209,000 residents. This means that Houston’s three most populous districts – Districts C, D and G – will lose some of their lands. Meanwhile, Districts H, I and J will need to expand.

“Unlike redistricting for legislative districts, there’s a lot more identification with a neighborhood that the civic leaders have and also the relationship that they establish with their council members,” Wood said. “So the desire is to create as little disruption as possible.”

[…]

In recent months, the public has repeatedly requested the city to keep super neighborhoods together, Wood said, something that demographers did not have in mind when initially dividing up the population.

The proposal managed to move Braeburn, a super neighborhood on the southwest side, into a single district and bring together most of Eastex – Jensen, one in north Houston. But Wood said he was not able to unite Greater Heights in north central or South Belt on the southeast side.

“Sometimes there are requests that simply are impossible,” Wood said.

The city has hired a law firm in anticipation of legal challenges. For one, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the largest Hispanic civil rights organizations in the country, has promised to sue the city over what its advocates characterize as a gross underrepresentation of Latinos on the City Council.

The lawsuit hopes to replace the city’s five at-large seats, which represent voters citywide, with single-member seats, which cover a certain geographical area. Sergio Lira, a Houston-based leader with LULAC, said his team is on track to file the lawsuit later this month.

“We anticipated that there would not be any major changes to the maps this time and that the city was not going to disrupt things too much,” Lira said. “It’s going to take a lawsuit in order to change the system.”

See here for my post on the new map, along with the schedule for public hearings, and here for my post about the promise of a lawsuit to ditch the At Large Council seats. Several cities have moved partly or fully away from At Large Council systems to all-district or hybrid systems in recent years, some with more of a fuss about it than others – Austin, Pasadena, Irving, Farmers Branch. It’s hard to say how litigation on this matter might go in this current climate, but on the other hand if the city lost in a federal district court it’s not clear to me that they’d pursue an appeal. This is an excellent place to get caught making dumb predictions, so I’ll stop myself before I go too far. I’ll wait and see what happens when LULAC files their complaint. In the meantime, attend one of those hearings if this interests you.

Afro-Latinos

Jun 5th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Very interesting.

A Pew Research Center survey has found that 6 million adults in the United States identify as Afro-Latino, noting that this population experiences higher levels of discrimination than Hispanic people who do not identify as Afro-descendant.

The nonpartisan think tank said in a report released this week that 12 percent of the adult Latino population in the country identifies as Afro-Latino, a distinct identity with deep roots in Latin America that can often exist alongside a person’s Hispanic, racial or national origin identities.

The demographic portrait of Afro-Latino adults, who represent 2 percent of the U.S. population, indicates that 49 percent were born in the U.S. when Puerto Rico is included. The report is based on a survey conducted from November 2019 to June 2020 and an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, and incorporates data from another survey, from March 2021.

Among Afro-Latinos, 29 percent come from Mexico; 23 percent from Puerto Rico; 18 percent from the Dominican Republic; 7 percent from Cuba and 5 percent from El Salvador, the survey found. An additional 14 percent belong to other non-identified Hispanic or Latino origins.

“The most interesting thing we found in our research was the fact that when you ask about Afro-Latino identity of the overall adult population in the U.S., you get a small share of those who identify as Afro-Latino who actually do not check the box of being Latino or Hispanic in a typical race and ethnicity question like the one asked by the Census and others,” said Gonzalez-Barrera.

“We did not ask why about 1 in 7 Afro-Latinos do not identify as Hispanic or Latino,” added Gonzalez-Barrera. “But our results point to the fact that Afro-Latino identity is unique and encompasses more than just a race or ethnic label.”

You can find the full Pew survey here. I wish they had broken the data down by state, I’d love to know how Texas compares to the rest of the country. I don’t have any insights, just thought this was worth passing along. Go read the rest of the story.

We really missed counting a lot of people in Texas

May 21st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Over half a million, by the latest estimate.

Tripped up by politics and the pandemic — and with only a last-minute investment in promotion by the state — the 2020 census likely undercounted the Texas population by roughly 2%, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday.

The once-a-decade national count put Texas’ official population at 29,145,505 after it gained the most residents of any state in the last decade, earning two additional congressional seats. In a post-count analysis using survey results from households, the bureau estimated that the count for people living in Texas households — a slightly smaller population than the total population — failed to find more than half a million residents. That’s the equivalent of missing the entire populations of Lubbock, Laredo and then some.

The undercount means that many residents were missing from the data used by state lawmakers last year to redraw congressional and legislative districts to distribute political power. For the next decade, the undercount will also be baked into the data used by governments and industry to plan and provide for communities.

Texas is just one of six states that the bureau determined had a statistically significant undercount. The others were Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi and Tennessee.

[…]

Even as other states poured millions of dollars into census campaigns, Texas left local governments, nonprofits and even churches to try to reach the millions of Texans who fall into the categories of people that have been historically missed by the count — immigrants, people living in poverty and non-English speakers, to name a few.

Already without state funds, the local canvassing and outreach efforts relying on in-person contact were shut down by the coronavirus pandemic just as they were ramping up in the spring of 2020. The bureau extended time for counting by a few months, but the Trump administration later accelerated the deadline.

As Texas fell behind in the counting compared to other states, organizers struggled to reach groups at the highest risk of being missed as the pandemic continued to ravage their communities. It wasn’t until the 11th hour that Texas quietly launched a sudden pursuit of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to promote the count using federal COVID relief dollars.

By then, with just a month of counting to go, the self-response rate for Texas households had barely topped 60%. As census workers followed up in person with households that hadn’t responded, the share of households accounted rose, but Texas remained far behind several other states and several percentage points behind the national average.

[…]

Because it’s based on comparing the 2020 census to a followup population survey, the Texas undercount is more of a statistical guess and carries a margin of error. In the case of Texas, the bureau estimates the undercount could have been as large as 3.27% or as small as .57%. By limiting its analysis to people living in households, it leaves off people living in college dorms, prisons and other group quarters.

The bureau did not report any statistically significant undercounts after the 2010 census.

The bureau will not be providing more detailed undercount figures to determine which areas of the state or residents were missed in the census. But earlier this year, it reported the communities were not equally left off. Nationally, the census significantly undercounted communities of color, missing Hispanic residents at a rate of 4.99% — more than triple the rate from the 2010 census. Black residents were undercounted at a rate of 3.3% and Native Americans at a rate of 5.64%.

The 2020 Census also had a larger undercount of children under the age of 5 than every other census since 1970.

A previous estimate had the undercount at around 377K. That could still be accurate – note that this is a range, not a single number – but it is likely that it was higher. We certainly could have added one more Congressional district if the Republicans had given a damn, but since the undercount was mostly people of color, what did they care? Cities can still file a challenge to their official tally, but so far none have. It is what it is at this point. The Chron has more.

2022 Kinder Houston Area Survey

May 19th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Lots of optimism in here.

Dr. Stephen Klineberg’s final survey of the Houston area leaves him with hope. Yes, residents are concerned about the economy and crime, and their mental health has not improved even as the COVID-19 pandemic has begun to wane, but it’s not all doom and gloom, according to the 2022 Kinder Houston Area Survey released Tuesday.

Shifting attitudes toward public education, diversity and Houston’s place in America’s growth, in particular, give Klineberg reason for optimism — and if there’s anyone here who can claim to be an expert on Houston’s population, it’s the man who has annually written the most comprehensive report on the city’s residents since the survey’s inception in 1981.

“It’s hard to be pessimistic over the long haul in Houston because there’s just so many things happening in Houston. Whatever you’re passionate about or whatever you care about, there’s wonderful things happening in the city, and a population that really cares about Houston and wants it to succeed,” Klineberg said.

Still, there’s no denying that Houstonians have real concerns about the state of the city. Twenty-eight percent of the survey’s 1,958 randomly selected respondents said that the economy was their biggest concern, and crime closely followed with 25 percent.

The pandemic also left lasting scars on residents’ mental health. Seventy-six percent of respondents said that their stress and anxiety have increased, and 57 percent reported feeling increasingly lonely and isolated since the pandemic started over two years ago.

[…]

Nearly two-thirds of Houston-area residents said they support a person’s right to an abortion for any reason, and more than 90 percent said they support it if the person’s health is endangered by the pregnancy.

Klineberg was glad to see, for the first time since the survey began, that a majority of non-Hispanic white people, 51 percent, agree that people of color don’t have the same opportunities as them — a 15 percent rise since 2020. Fifty-seven percent of Hispanic people now agree with that statement, and 17 percent of Black people.

“For the first time over the years of the surveys, majorities in all three of Houston’s largest ethnic communities now agree in acknowledging the racial inequities in access to economic opportunity in American society today,” the report states.

The survey later adds that “area residents of all ethnicities have been giving increasingly positive evaluations to relations among the ethnic communities, and they are more likely than ever before to say that they have close personal friends across the ethnic divides.”

That’s especially important in Houston, says Klineberg, because U.S. census projections show that the rest of the country will mirror Harris County’s racially diverse demographic in the coming decades, according to the report.

“Houston is called upon to be a model for the rest of the nation, to take the lead in building something that has never existed before in human history—a truly successful, inclusive, equitable, and united multiethnic society, comprising virtually all the peoples, all the ethnicities, all the religions of the world, gathered here, in this one remarkable place,” the report states.

Among its most notable finds, for Klineberg, was a big jump in the percentage of people who support “significantly more money” for public schools, up to 67 percent from 55 percent in 2020. In 1995, that number was just 41 percent.

The steady rise in support for education funding signals to Klineberg that Houstonians may be moving away from the industrial mindset during the oil and gas boom of the 1960s and 1970s — when loose regulations, free enterprise and low taxes helped wealthy businessmen flourish, but left many others behind.

“Area residents, who have traditionally been opposed to government intervention of almost any sort, appear to be rethinking their basic assumptions about the nature and causes of poverty in America,” the report states.

See here for what I had on the 2020 Survey. I must have missed the 2021 Survey but I’ve blogged about several others in the past: 2013, 2016, 2017, and 2019. The Kinder HAS page is here, and I recommend you peruse it when you get a minute. As the story notes, Dr. Stephen Klineberg is retiring from Rice after doing this survey work for 40 years, which has been a huge boon for all of us. There’s a nice retrospective of his work here. Enjoy!

Precinct analysis: The new Senate map

Mar 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Previously: New State House map, New Congressional map, new SBOE map.

The good news is that all 31 Senate seats will be on the ballot this year, as it is a post-redistricting year. The bad news is that the only seat likely to flip is the maybe-illegal-but-still-in-effect SD10; the second most likely is SD27, the one now held by Sen. Eddie Lucio. That will be a gain if the Dems hold it, which I think they probably will, but will put the Senate back at 20-11 for the Republicans otherwise. There are some potential opportunities for Dems going forward, but nothing likely to happen this year.

As before, I’m tracking how things changed over the course of the past decade, this time using the new data. You can find the 2012 election results for the new map here and the 2020 results here. I didn’t use the 2016 results in my analysis below, but that data is here if you want to see it.


Dist   Obama   Romney Obama%Romney%     Biden    Trump Biden% Trump%
====================================================================
06   105,626   52,984  65.8%  33.0%   145,880   72,715  66.1%  32.7%
13   187,437   43,220  80.5%  18.6%   226,746   60,286  78.1%  20.8%
14   191,555  103,810  62.4%  33.8%   345,920  108,857  74.4%  23.4%
15   142,022  106,550  56.2%  42.2%   230,947  119,685  64.9%  33.6%
16   119,834   97,550  54.4%  44.2%   187,870   99,542  64.4%  34.1%
19   109,976   83,451  56.1%  42.5%   175,552  134,463  55.8%  42.7%
20   110,074   71,399  59.9%  38.9%   144,904  118,940  54.3%  44.6%
21   117,376   71,625  60.8%  37.1%   174,822  123,149  57.7%  40.7%
23   204,165   61,090  76.3%  22.8%   264,146   72,143  77.5%  21.2%
26   139,600   92,037  59.2%  39.1%   212,130  109,171  64.9%  33.4%
27   111,764   70,555  60.6%  38.3%   136,710  124,352  51.7%  47.1%
29   120,466   64,673  64.1%  34.4%   185,726   94,771  65.2%  33.3%


Dist   Obama   Romney Obama%Romney%     Biden    Trump Biden% Trump%
====================================================================
02    94,149  177,976  34.1%  64.5%   161,107  220,682  41.6%  57.0%
05    82,888  160,877  33.3%  64.6%   156,179  228,271  39.8%  58.2%
07    79,567  188,133  29.3%  69.4%   168,148  233,850  41.2%  57.4%
08    88,143  185,954  31.6%  66.7%   191,671  245,415  43.1%  55.1%
09    90,737  172,539  33.9%  64.5%   165,645  216,751  42.6%  55.7%
10   110,253  175,089  38.1%  60.6%   155,339  214,676  41.4%  57.2%
11    93,575  181,599  33.5%  65.1%   159,989  228,246  40.6%  57.9%
12   100,021  216,120  31.2%  67.3%   199,086  253,764  43.3%  55.2%
17    86,387  190,448  30.8%  67.9%   159,728  227,577  40.7%  57.9%
18    92,022  166,546  35.2%  63.7%   154,983  232,105  39.5%  59.2%
22    95,398  182,516  33.8%  64.7%   147,821  232,500  38.3%  60.2%
24    91,044  176,436  33.4%  64.7%   156,584  233,635  39.4%  58.7%
25    93,417  215,045  29.7%  68.5%   199,751  290,020  40.1%  58.3%


Dist   Obama   Romney Obama%Romney%     Biden    Trump Biden% Trump%
====================================================================
01    87,651  239,661  26.5%  72.5%    98,697  292,767  24.9%  73.9%
03    96,180  229,714  29.2%  69.7%   102,401  286,961  26.0%  72.9%
04    75,007  202,881  26.7%  72.1%   136,167  260,866  33.8%  64.8%
28    69,681  214,055  24.2%  74.4%    90,616  255,182  25.8%  72.7%
30    73,532  181,183  28.4%  69.9%   159,983  258,982  37.6%  60.8%
31    48,092  193,082  19.7%  79.0%    62,274  239,238  20.4%  78.2%

My analysis for the 2020 election under the old map is here, and my look at the decade shift under the old map is here. You can see the new map in the District viewer, and you might find the District population by county useful.

I split the districts into three groups: Dem seats, which is to say the seats that I’d expect Dems to win in 2022 (in other words, not counting the likely doomed SD10), seats Dems could reasonably think about targeting in a future cycle, and Republican seats. For the first group, SD27 is as discussed a potential problem, in future elections if the trend in 2020 holds, though as previously noted it was more Democratic downballot. I’m actually a little surprised the Republicans didn’t go after SD19, but at least by the numbers they left it more or less as it was. SD20 is mostly Hidalgo and Nueces counties, so I don’t expect too much more movement based on past history, but we’ll keep an eye on it anyway.

The middle group contains a few districts that are mostly optical illusions, where the net voter deficit hasn’t really changed but the percentages have shifted towards the mean, because that’s how math works. It also contains some districts that legitimately moved quite a bit in the Dem direction over the past decade – SDs 02, 07, 08, 09, 12, and 17, with 08 and 12 being on the far outer fringes of competitiveness now. These are all mostly urban/suburban districts, so one would expect the trends to continue, though whether that can happen fast enough to matter is the key. I grouped these together because it’s kind of impressive to see how tightly they cluster in that 55-60% range. We talked several times pre-redistricting about what level of risk the Republicans were willing to tolerate this time around, as they were now dealing with a state that had far fewer surplus Republican voters to slosh around. All of the maps we’ve looked at have had similar clusters, of similar sizes, so I guess we have an answer to that question now.

That leaves a small number of deep red districts, and even that is a tiny bit of a misnomer, as SD30 had a modest net gain in Dem voters. Obviously, Republicans needed to have more not-so-dark-red districts to maximize their membership, but some places are just geographically inclined to be that intensely crimson. I note that SD30 went from being about one-third comprised of pieces of Denton and Collin counties to a bit more than half made up of Denton and Collin. Unlikely to be enough to make it long-term competitive, but it won’t shock me if its topline Republican percentage falls below 60 at some point.

That’s all there is for this series. The next step is to see how the 2022 numbers stack up against 2018 and 2020, and see what trends emerge, continue, and end. The single most likely outcome of this new map is that SD10 flips as it is designed to do, but what to expect after that is up in the air.

Why the business response to the state’s right wing assault has been so muted

Mar 17th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

A really good in depth article on the subject from the tech press, which is a source I hadn’t thought about for this before.

When Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in February directed state agencies to investigate anyone who provides gender-affirming treatment to transgender children for alleged “child abuse,” he drew a swift and vocal backlash from civil rights groups, medical organizations and the White House.

Tech companies also spoke up, signing pledges or reiterating offers to help employees affected by the order. South by Southwest, the world-renowned tech, music and film festival slated to start in Austin on Friday, condemned Abbott’s order. “The governor’s latest directive puts trans children in harm’s way once again and we unequivocally condemn this action,” SXSW told local newspaper The Austin American-Statesman.

But that’s done nothing to budge Abbott or his supporters from accelerating the shift further to the right in Texas politics.

Indeed, the governor’s directive about trans youth was just the latest in a series of laws and orders targeting social issues, including voting, reproductive and gun rights. But for a state that has seen such an influx of new voices — Texas has the ninth-largest economy in the world, is the third-fastest growing state and has added more people than any other state in the past decade — the overall public response to this slew of laws and orders affecting individual rights has not been as resounding as political observers expected. That’s especially the case when it comes to the booming tech community, which has played a key role in the state’s expansion in recent years.

That dynamic underscores the tradeoff that tech companies — and the liberal employees who have moved to Texas — must reconcile as their values collide with their wallets.

Tech and Texas have become intrinsically linked. It’s no coincidence that the so-called Texas Miracle, which refers to a decade-long period of economic expansion after the Great Recession, has continued as technology companies relocate or expand in the Lone Star State. The companies include the likes of Tesla, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Apple, Google and Amazon.

“Businesses are having a really difficult time deciding how to position themselves on these issues of social justice and public policy,” Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said over Zoom.

The reason? Taking a stand on social issues is hard when you are benefiting from a fiscal and regulatory agenda that makes Texas a business haven, according to several experts. Compared with other states, especially California, doing business in Texas is much less expensive. Texas has no state income tax or capital-gains tax on individuals and has fewer business regulations. By moving to Texas, tech companies are “escaping high taxes and a regulatory environment,” Bill Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Houston’s Rice University, said over Zoom.

[…]

Indeed, the hard turn right in Texas politics hasn’t taken a toll on the state’s economic growth prospects or even on recruitment efforts of tech companies located in the state, especially those in the ever-expanding and liberal-leaning metropolitan areas of Austin, Dallas and Houston.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the radicalization of Texas social policies won’t have an impact on the state’s economic or social future. Political experts, academics and business leaders interviewed by CNET expressed concern that the trend — assuming it continues — will eventually tarnish the Texas brand and make it increasingly difficult for companies to attract and retain top talent.

But also at stake is the role that corporate America can play in society at a time when consumers and employees expect business leaders to advocate for social responsibility.

“Texas will become a textbook example of what happens when social policy and marginalized, underserved, underrepresented communities become the collateral damage of corporate political giving,” Jen Stark, senior director of corporate strategy at Tara Health Foundation, a nonprofit focused on engaging private companies to advance gender and racial equity, said over Zoom. “Companies have been complicit in setting up an extremist government in Texas and other states.”

I found this article in a completely serendipitous fashion. The Sunday print edition of the Chron carried an excerpt from the New York Times story about how the 2030 Census might be done, and when I did a Google search for it I also got this story among the results. You never know.

The story goes into demography, the fact that some actions companies had taken in the past had little effect even among their own employees, data about people not wanting to move here because of our wingnut politics is more anecdotal than anything else, and because living in mostly Democratic urban areas provides some illusion of comfort. The somewhat ironic good news is that if these current trends continue, which have among other things contributed greatly to the fast growth in Democratic and Dem-trending urban and suburban areas, we really will turn the state blue in a few more years. Of course, a lot of damage can be done in the meantime, and as we well know by now, waiting for demography to do your work for you is at best a deeply frustrating experience. My takeaway from all this is that nothing will beat good old fashioned organizing, the kind we’ve been getting better at lately. Lord knows, there’s no time to spare. Read the rest and see what you think.

How the 2030 Census could be different

Mar 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

A very early preview of some possibilities, which may or may not come to fruition.

Beyond the reports of undercounts and overcounts in population totals, there is another takeaway from the post-mortem of 2020 census data issued on Thursday: This could be the last census of its kind.

The next census will be taken in a nation where Amazon may have a better handle on where many people live than the Census Bureau itself. For some advocates of a more accurate count, the era in which census-takers knock on millions of doors to persuade people to fill out forms should give way in 2030 to a sleeker approach: data mining, surveys, sophisticated statistical projections and, if politics allows, even help from the nation’s tech giants and their endless petabytes of personal information.

The Census Bureau itself has yet to leap very far into that new era. But it has hinted recently at a “blended” approach in which official census figures could be supplemented with reliable data from government records and other sources.

[…]

It is an article of faith among data experts and the Census Bureau itself that data obtained directly from people are more reliable than secondhand or thirdhand data from other sources. And experts are wary that other data can raise privacy issues or allegations that it was cherry picked to fit an agenda.

The bureau itself considered tapping secondhand sources like state records to fine-tune its 2020 portraits of the population, but it often shied away unless it could find corroborating information elsewhere, according to Amy O’Hara, a former Census Bureau official who is now the executive director of the Federal Statistical Research Data Center at Georgetown University.

Professor O’Hara said the gusher of public and available data opens new avenues to a far more accurate census, but only if the numbers can be proven accurate and the Census Bureau can navigate the tricky boundary between tapping private research and issuing public statistics.

“There is no significant buy-in yet” to major changes in the census, Terri Ann Lowenthal, a longtime census expert and consultant to governments, businesses and other census “customers,” said in an email. “Too early without research, testing and transparency on those sorts of questions. And there probably will be even greater caution about using third-party commercial data.”

That said, she added, many users of census data agree that better use of outside records, conducted in a way that preserves privacy and credibility, could increase the accuracy of the head count and reduce its staggering cost — $14.2 billion, or about $117 per household counted in the 2020 census.

[…]

Mr. Prewitt and other experts say some solutions are obvious. For decades, the Census Bureau has undercounted some groups, including poorer residents and children, in part because they can be harder to find — they move more frequently, for example — and because census forms can be more confusing to people with less education or poorer language skills.

But state governments maintain accurate birth and death records and manage a range of federal programs aimed at the poor and children, such as Medicaid; the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC; and the SNAP program once known as food stamps. None shares data with the bureau, but an agreement to do so “could probably put a bigger dent in the problem than putting more enumerators on the street,” Mr. Jost said.

There are countless other ways to improve census results. Public and private utility records, for example, assiduously track which residences are occupied or vacant, potentially making it easier for the Census Bureau to compile a more complete and accurate list of households to survey.

Consider this to be a response to the issues raised here. One thing I hadn’t realized in reading this story is that the Census first mailed forms to households in 1960, and first did online forms in 2020, and yet the non-response rate has remained at about one third over the decades. That’s what the Census workers knocking on doors are there to deal with. Obstacles to this kind of data mining plan include the questions about accuracy as noted above, questions about legality considering the 1999 SCOTUS ruling, and of course the political blowback from the revanchist wingnuts who are perfectly happy to undercount communities of color. I fully expect we’ll still be having these fights in 2030, so we may as well know what they’re going to be about.

Of course the Census undercounted people of color

Mar 14th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This was the Trump administration’s goal from the beginning.

The 2020 census continued a longstanding trend of undercounting Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, while overcounting people who identified as white and not Latino, according to estimates from a report the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.

Latinos — with a net undercount rate of 4.99% — were left out of the 2020 census at more than three times the rate of a decade earlier.

Among Native Americans living on reservations (5.64%) and Black people (3.30%), the net undercount rates were numerically higher but not statistically different from the 2010 rates.

People who identified as white and not Latino were overcounted at a net rate of 1.64%, almost double the rate in 2010. Asian Americans were also overcounted (2.62%). The bureau said based on its estimates, it’s unclear how well the 2020 tally counted Pacific Islanders.

The long-awaited findings came from a follow-up survey the bureau conducted to measure the accuracy of the latest head count of people living in the U.S., which is used to redistribute political representation and federal funding across the country for the next 10 years.

Other estimates the bureau released on Thursday revealed that the most recent census followed another long-running trend of undercounting young children under age 5.

While the bureau’s stated goal is to “count everyone once, only once, and in the right place,” miscounts have come with every census. Some people are counted more than once at different addresses, driving overcounts, while U.S. residents missing from the census fuel undercounting.

Disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic and interference by former President Donald Trump’s administration raised alarms about the increased risk of the once-a-decade tally missing swaths of the country’s population. COVID-19 also caused multiple delays to the bureau’s Post-Enumeration Survey that’s used to determine how accurate the census results are and inform planning for the next national count in 2030.

During the news conference announcing the follow-up survey results, Census Bureau Director Robert Santos — who, before becoming the agency’s head, told Bloomberg CityLab that he believed the census was “being sabotaged” during the Trump administration to produce results that benefit Republicans — acknowledged “an unprecedented set of challenges” facing the bureau over the last couple of years.

“Many of you, including myself, voiced concerns. How could anyone not be concerned? These findings will put some of those concerns to rest and leave others for further exploration,” Santos, a Biden administration appointee, said during the news conference announcing the follow-up survey results.

The bureau said previously that it believes the census results are “fit to use” for reallocating each state’s share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes, as well as redrawing voting districts.

[…]

In response to the bureau reporting that American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations continued to have the highest net undercount rate among racial and ethnic groups, Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said the results “confirm our worst fears.”

“Every undercounted household and individual in our communities means lost funding and resources that are desperately needed to address the significant disparities we face,” added Sharp, who is also the vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah, Wash., in a statement.

Marc Morial, the president and CEO of the National Urban League, which led a federal lawsuit in 2020 to try to stop Trump officials from cutting counting efforts short, said the group’s lawyers are considering returning to court to try to secure a remedy.

“We’ve talked about voter suppression. Now we see population suppression,” Morial said on a call with reporters. “And when you tie them together, it is the poisonous tree of seeking to diminish the distribution of power in this nation on a fair and equitable basis.”

Other longtime census watchers see this moment as a chance to reimagine what the next count in 2030 could look like.

We’ve talked about this before, and we’ve noted that Texas Republicans did their part to help suppress the count, even at the cost of adding more Congressional districts to the state. Obviously the 2020 Census had a couple of unprecedented obstacles, from the pandemic to the extremely racist presidential administration, but there are ways to do this better next time. A more functional Congress could update federal law to allow statistical sampling in the Census process, to address the 1999 SCOTUS ruling that prevented it from being used, though I would not count on the current SCOTUS being warm to the idea. Throwing more money at it is also an option. All I know is we did worse in 2020 than we did in 2010, and that cannot be allowed to continue. MOther Jones and TPM have more.

Is it time to ditch At Large seats on Houston City Council?

Jan 26th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

17 comments

Here’s one argument for it.

The lack of Latinos on the City Council undermines the legitimacy of Houston’s government, experts say, and is something that a prominent Hispanic organization is pushing to change with a lawsuit and ballot proposition.

The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the largest Hispanic civil rights organizations in the country, is tackling what they characterize as a gross underrepresentation of Latinos in one of the most diverse cities in the U.S. by proposing that the five at-large positions on council elected citywide be replaced with four seats in heavily Hispanic districts.

Currently, just one Hispanic — Robert Gallegos — holds a seat on the 16-member body. By contrast, 45 percent of Houston residents are Hispanic.

“The most serious threat to the legitimacy of Houston city government is this idea that you can have half of the population of the city represented by 6 percent of the council,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. “Imagine if we flipped things around and there’s only one African American on the Houston City Council, or there’s only one Anglo, or there’s only one woman … It would be seen as a national travesty of democracy; it would be the subject of constant outcry.”

The city is expected to look at redistricting prior to its 2023 election, and could redraw the 11 districts if they are deemed unbalanced at that point. But LULAC said replacing at-large seats with more single-district seats would reduce barriers that undercut Latino representation.

“If we had parity, half of this council would be Latino,” said local LULAC leader Sergio Lira, co-chair of a new Houston taskforce created under the direction of the organization’s national President, Domingo García, who launched the effort in a meeting with local leaders last week.

García, a lawyer with offices statewide, said the effort includes a push to bring a charter amendment with the proposition to citizens to vote on and to file a lawsuit against the city.

Houston has the worst Hispanic representation in city councils among all Texas cities with populations over 500,000, all of which have eliminated at-large positions in their governments, according to census and government data.

“Houston is the outlier in Texas when it comes to Latino representation and is the only large city with at-large seats,” García said.

Those cities — San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, and El Paso — all have councils that look much more similar to their cities’ Hispanic populations. Dallas, which is 42 percent Hispanic, has the next-lowest Hispanic representation on council with 29 percent Hispanics.

It’s tough to get elected to Houston’s at-large seats, García said.

“They are very difficult for Latinos to win because of the amount of money, coalitions and logistics it takes to win,” he said. “It’s like running for mayor.”

There’s a lot to say here, and I’ll try to get to the main points, but let me start by saying it’s a little more complex than what Garcia and Lira are arguing. There are multiple districts that have are at least plurality Latino – H, J, F, and A. H, currently held by CM Karla Cisneros, had reliably elected Latinos before Cisneros and likely will again; none of the others have elected Latinos. There is of course a big difference between “population”, “voting-age population” and “citizen voting-age population”, and that’s before we take into account voter registration and who generally turns out to vote in our odd-year elections, where 20% turnout is on the higher end. We could elect more Latinos with the map we have now, at least in theory. It very much hasn’t worked out that way in practice, and I doubt you’d find anyone who would argue that the current map is conducive to having more than two Latinos get elected from the current districts.

It’s also true that Latinos have been shut out from the At Large seats since the days of Orlando Sanchez and Gracie Saenz twenty years ago. We also haven’t had a lot of strong Latino contenders for At Large seats lately. In 2015, no Latinos ran for At Large #3 or #5, and the only one in At Large #1 was perennial candidate James Partsch-Galvan. There were Latinos in all the At Large races in 2019, but none of them raised any money. That’s what Garcia and Lira are saying, and others have said it before them, but it just doesn’t take as much money to run a credible At Large campaign as it does to run for Mayor. Mayoral candidates need well over a million bucks, but the big money candidates for At Large raise in the $200-400K range. Not nothing, but not a huge pile of money either. It’s a bit of a vicious circle – people who might want to run are discouraged because it’s hard for them to raise money and the recent record of citywide Latino candidates is brutal, which leads to a paucity of such candidates for anyone to support.

I can’t leave this point without bringing up, once again, the 2007 At Large #5 runoff, in which Jolanda Jones defeated Joe Trevino in a race where about 25K total votes were cast. Jones had run citywide before (in At Large #3) and was better known, and the other runoffs on the ballot were City Council District D and HISD District II, both of which favored Jones’ candidacy. Trevino was a longshot no matter how you looked at it, but still. This was the clearest shot to get a Latino elected citywide, and he got bupkus in terms of financial support, including from the folks who had been threatening to sue to force City Council redistricting prior to the 2010 Census. Public support of campaigns and candidates is a complicated and nuanced thing that is more often solicited than given, I get that. I’m just saying, none of the folks who were lamenting the lack of Latino representation on Houston City Council were moved to write Joe Trevino a $100 check. Make of that what you will.

(There was also the Michael Kubosh-Roy Morales runoff of 2013. The politics of that one are different, for obvious reasons. I went back and looked, and Roy Morales actually raised about $50K for that runoff, which isn’t too shabby. There were only a couple of Latino names among his donors, though. Again, make of that what you will.)

Moving on. I have generally been supportive of having the hybrid district/At Large Council that we have. At least if you have a sub-par Council person in your district, you still have five At Large members you can turn to for support if you need it, and I think there’s value in having people who need to have a broader perspective. That said, I’d bet that most of the At Large members we have had over the past 20 or so years have come from a limited geographical distribution – this was very much the problem with Austin’s at large system, where nearly everyone on their Council came from the same part of town – and let’s just say that some of our At Large members are better than others and leave it at that. All in all, I don’t think it would be a great loss to change to an all-district system, and I would be inclined to support it if and when it comes to a vote. I’d like to see the proposal first – there are, as we well know, good and not-so-good ways to draw maps – but as a concept, I support it.

Knowing it is a long shot, LULAC decided to initiate a drive to collect 20,000 signatures in February in favor of their proposition, as the early voting for the state primaries begins. The number is the minimum needed to force the inclusion of a charter amendment in the ballot, bypassing the approval of City Council, which would only decide when it should be put for a citizens’ vote.

LULAC is simultaneously preparing a lawsuit it plans to file in court by March to eliminate all at-large positions in favor of single districts.

We’ll see how that goes. Petition drives have been pretty successful in recent years, even if they don’t always get their referenda on the next available ballot. There are already two items scheduled for the ballot in 2023, and with an open seat Mayoral race that will make it a very busy cycle. An item like this could get a bit lost in the noise, or it could be a big issue, as surely the various Mayoral candidates will need to weigh in on it. I’ll be very interested to see how the petition drive and the litigation go.

Law firm representing Spring Branch ISD withdraws from redistricting lawsuit

Dec 31st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Interesting.

The law firm Thompson & Horton LLP has represented Spring Branch ISD in multiple legal matters since 2005.

While Thompson & Horton were originally representing SBISD in the Voting Rights Act lawsuit that Virginia Elizondo filed against the district and its trustees, the firm announced earlier this month that it would be withdrawing as counsel on the case.

“All I can really say is that Thompson & Horton requested to withdraw because we believe it to be in the best interest of the school district,” said lead attorney Chris Gilbert. “And that we believe the issues in the lawsuit are too important for the focus to be on who is legal counsel as opposed to the lawsuit itself.”

Gilbert would not give more details, citing attorney-client privilege.

The only statement from the district expressed similar ideas, saying, “On December 3, 2021, Thompson & Horton informed the Spring Branch ISD Board of Trustees of their desire to withdraw as counsel in Elizondo v. SBISD. Thompson & Horton believes this request is in the district’s best interests. The firm also believes the issues surrounding this lawsuit are very important and should be the focus of the community rather than who is legal counsel. SBISD is grateful to Thompson & Horton for their legal representation and their integrity in ensuring SBISD’s interests are best represented.”

As of Dec. 22, the district had not announced new counsel.

See here and here for some background. As the story notes, attorney Gilbert filed a response to the lawsuit on August 20, so whatever has come up to cause this change likely happened after that. I don’t want to speculate because I have no basis for it, but this feels a little weird to me. Maybe it’s nothing, maybe it has no practical effect even if it’s not nothing. Maybe we’ll find out more at a later date. For now, noting it for the record.

Justice Department sues Texas over redistricting maps

Dec 7th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Add it to the queue.

The Department of Justice is suing Texas over its new redistricting maps, alleging that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against Latino and Black voters while redrawing the state’s political districts this year.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in El Paso, takes aim at Texas’ new maps for Congress and the state House of Representatives. The Biden administration alleges that several of the districts were drawn “with discriminatory intent” to increase the electoral power of the state’s white voters despite massive population growth among racial minorities.

“Our complaint today alleges that the redistricting plans approved by the Texas State Legislature and signed into law by the governor will deny Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to participate in the voting process and to elect representatives of their choice, in violation of the Voting Rights Act,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a news conference.

Texas’ new maps, redrawn this year to reflect the state’s population increases since 2010, are already facing seven legal challenges in state courts. Critics have assailed them as attacks on Texas’ minority voters, noting that the state’s GOP-led Legislature declined to add any new majority-minority districts even as people of color drove 95 percent of the state’s 4 million-person population growth. Hispanic Texans comprised roughly half of that total.

“Our investigation determined that Texas’ redistricting plans will dilute the increased minority voting strength that should have developed from these significant demographic shifts,” Gupta said.

She added that the new maps were adopted through a “rushed process” that allowed for “minimum” public participation. The department is asking the court to prevent any elections from taking place using the new maps; the state’s primaries are scheduled for March 1.

Politico adds some details.

The suit notes that Texas’ past redistricting maps have repeatedly been smacked down by courts over the last several decades. But [Attorney General Merrick] Garland acknowledged during the press conference that this case presents more challenges than past decades because the so-called preclearance requirement, which mandated that jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory election laws get changes approved by either the Department of Justice or a D.C.-based federal court, was gutted by a mid-2010s Supreme Court decision.

“There are two problems: One, it means that we don’t get a chance to look at these things before they go into effect, which is a very significant aspect of our tools, and instead requires that we challenge every case individually,” Garland said. “And second, it flips the burden of proof.”

[…]

The suit takes particular issue with the 23rd Congressional District — a sprawling West Texas seat now held by GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales — accusing Texas Republicans of intentionally eliminating its status as a district where Latinos could elect their candidate of choice.

More than 50 percent of the voting age population in the new 23rd District is Latino, but the Department of Justice claims — as it has in previous litigation against other iterations of this seat — that GOP mapmakers swapped out Latinos who vote regularly with low-propensity Latino voters.

The end result, the suit says, is “an effort to strengthen the voting power of Anglo citizens while preserving the superficial appearance of Latino control.”

The suit also noted the lack of a new Latino opportunity seat in Houston’s Harris County and accused the legislature of having “surgically excised minority communities from the core of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (DFW) by attaching them to heavily Anglo rural counties, some more than a hundred miles away.”

The suit also singles out the new 24th Congressional District, held by freshman GOP Rep. Beth Van Duyne. By reducing the district’s swath of northwest Dallas County, the mapmakers dropped the Latino citizen voting age population from 40 percent to 23 percent. The suit says the map again strengthens the Anglo voting bloc.

GOP mapmakers created three new deep blue seats — in Austin, Houston and Dallas — to accommodate a growing number of left-leaning voters and keep them from overwhelming the red-leaning districts surrounding them. None of those seats have a Latino-majority. Republicans will likely control at least two dozen of the state’s 38 seats under this new map.

In the Houston area, the suit notes that the new 38th Congressional District was drawn “to give Harris County’s shrinking Anglo population control of yet another Congressional seat” even though “most of that population growth occurred within the Latino community.” That seat leans heavily Republican, and the current frontrunner in the GOP primary, Wesley Hunt, is Black.

Garland also urged Congress to restore those preclearance requirements that were effectively stripped out of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, which was decided in 2013.

As noted before, there are multiple lawsuits that have already been filed, and with the exception of the Gutierrez/Eckhardt suit, which raises different questions, have been combined into one action. Michael Li expects this lawsuit to be assigned to the same three-judge panel as the others as well. He also says this:

.
The lawyers litigating cases like the Texas case will do their best – and they will have great, compelling facts – but they still will be hamstrung by the fact that Congress can’t find a way to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

— Michael Li (@mcpli) 4:52 PM – 6 December 2021

Not really much else to say here – if the Senate can ever get around to passing one of the voting rights bills that the House has sent them, it could make the plaintiffs’ case even stronger, but unless that happens it’s hard for me to have a lot of optimism, despite the glimmer that Michael provides. It’s barely possible that the panel could put the March primary on hold, but to say the least I don’t expect that. A copy of the lawsuit is here, and the Trib and the Texas Signal have more.

Cracking Asian-American communities

Nov 28th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

The Trib explores what the new Congressional maps did to Asian-American communities, mostly but not exclusively in the Houston area.

When Texas lawmakers redrew congressional maps following the 2020 census, they split up Asian American populations in both Harris and Fort Bend counties.

One district line, winding between a local car wash and bar, severs most of the Korean neighborhoods, grocery stores, restaurants and a senior center from the community center itself, which now hangs on the edge of one congressional district while most of its members reside in the next district over.

“It’s like (lawmakers) don’t even know we are here,” said Hyunja Norman, president of the Korean American Voters League, who works out of the center. “If they were thoughtful, they could’ve included the Korean Community Center in (our district). But it’s like they are ignorant of us, or they just don’t care.”

As the Asian American and Pacific Islander population has grown and continued to mobilize politically, especially in the midst of rising hostility and targeted attacks, the community’s desire for representation in Texas and U.S. politics has become stronger. But many now feel their political aspirations became collateral damage in Republican efforts to draw political districts designed to preserve partisan power.

Although they make up only about 5% of Texas’ total population, Asian Texans accounted for a sizable portion of the state’s tremendous growth over the past decade. Nearly one in five new Texans since 2010 are Asian American, according to the census. They were the fastest-growing racial or ethnic voting group in the state, increasing from a population of about 950,000 in 2010 to nearly 1.6 million in 2020.

[…]

In Fort Bend County — which has ranked as the most diverse county in the country multiple times — Lily Trieu’s parents grew scared of even routine errands like grocery shopping or filling their gas tanks. They were afraid to wear masks in public.

And when Asian Americans in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a resolution condemning the Atlanta shootings, almost every Texas Republican voted against it, including Fort Bend County’s U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls.

“This is why representation matters,” Trieu told Texas lawmakers when she testified at redistricting hearings. “This is why splitting our community to dilute our votes is directly denying our opportunity to receive that representation.”

[…]

Previously, more than 9% and 11% of the eligible voter populations in CD-7 and CD-9, respectively, were Asian American. But under the approved plans, CD-7 would increase to 17% Asian American population, covering Houston suburbs, while CD-9 would decrease to 9% Asian population — shifting the majority into one district and lessening its power in another.

A majority of the Asian American population in the suburbs also got redrawn into CD-22, a mostly rural district, decreasing its percentage of the Asian population from more than 15% to 10%.

CD-22 also now includes all of Sugar Land, which is the most Asian town in Texas.

Similar manipulations took place around Dallas. In Collin County, lawmakers approved a map for CD-4 that takes most of the Asian community across Frisco and Plano and attaches it to a district stretching north to the Oklahoma border.

Asian American voters, who would have made up 10.8% of the vote in their old district, comprise just 5.6% of their new one.

Chanda Parbhoo, president of South Asian American Voter Empowerment of Texas, said she had organizations members — mostly from Collin County — submit almost 50 written testimonies against the proposed maps during redistricting hearings.

It still didn’t feel like it was enough, Parbhoo said.

“It makes it really difficult for the (South Asian) community, an emerging political entity, that we haven’t had years of experience (with redistricting),” Parbhoo said. “As soon as a map comes out, then I’ll have to try to explain it to my community, like, ‘This is what’s not fair. These are the numbers.’ Everything moves so fast that the process doesn’t really allow for people to absorb it and to be able to ask questions.”

Ashley Cheng, lead organizer of the Texas AAPI Redistricting Coalition, also testified multiple times as lawmakers redrew voting districts and said the community has various issues at stake that a continued loss of representation will exacerbate.

Cheng said translating documents for Asian American voters is vital for the community to participate in voting. She said during the winter storm, many emergency alerts were only in English and Cheng’s mother, who does not fluently speak English, was left without information at her house.

“We are in a time of history where we’re really rising up as a community and making sure that our political voices are heard,” Cheng said. “Part of that is because our lives are being threatened. There’s been a heightened sense of Islamophobia in the last few years, heightened anti-Asian hate because of all of the political rhetoric around COVID. We have so much in common in a need for representation.”

Those Asian-American communities that are now stuck in CD04 had previously been in CD03, which even after redistricting is becoming more Democratic but which has been moved backwards in the process. The most recent lawsuit filed against the redistricting plans, which has now been combined with most of the other lawsuits, had a focus on Asian-American communities and concerns, though as this story notes the courts have not previously recognized Asian-Americans as a minority population in need of protection at the voting booth. I doubt that will change now, but all you can do is try.

Fort Bend County Commissioners Court finishes its redistricting

Nov 15th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Things were unsurprisingly partisan, as is the nature of redistricting as we do it.

After much confusion, heated discussion, and repeated delays, the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 on Friday to adopt new precinct boundaries.

The redistricting map was proposed by Fort Bend County Judge KP George. The map moves Needville and Fairchilds out of Precinct 1, Katy and Simonton out of Precinct 3, and extends Precinct 4 from Houston to Kendleton, dividing the county.

The map calls for Precinct 1 to include Simonton, Katy, Cinco Ranch, and part of Richmond and Rosenberg.

“After several weeks of discussions by Fort Bend County Commissioner’s, a clear majority adopted a progressive redistricting map that reflects the historic growth and change of the most diverse county in the nation, that will carry into the next decade,” said George, who voted in favor of his map along with fellow Democrats Grady Prestage, who represents Precinct 2, and Ken DeMerchant, who represents Precinct 4.

Precinct 1 Commissioners Vincent Morales Jr. and Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers voted against the map.

Fort Bend County began the redistricting process in September and has worked tirelessly to meet the Nov. 13 deadline set by the state to submit redistricting maps, George said.

“We listened to the concerns of the public over these past several weeks and the desire for more equitable representation,” he said. “The map I presented best represents the county and is reflective of the growth and changes in our community. This is historic, we set out to achieve proportional, fair, and equitable representation for all Fort Bend County residents. The approved map is the consensus of all voices and brings everyone together.”

[…]

Morales proposed substituting George’s map with the Precinct 4 map submitted by Commissioner DeMerchant.

He and Meyers both believed DeMerchant’s map was fairer than George’s and provided for two Republican precincts and two Democrat precincts as present precinct boundaries call for. George and all four commissioners presented redistricting maps for consideration.

Members of the public also provided maps for consideration but they were not discussed at Friday’s meeting because the presenters were not available to explain the maps. George and all four commissioners said their maps were fairer than the others.

Meyers said his map would have kept communities of interest together in the same precinct, as well as subdivisions, neighborhoods, municipal utility districts, and levee improvement districts.

See here and here for some background. The county’s redistricting page hasn’t been updated since I first looked at it, but Dave’s Redistricting App confirms that the map should end up with three Democratic Commissioners. The twist here is that it won’t happen until the 2024 election, because the two current Republicans were on the ballot last year. Better make sure County Judge KP George wins re-election, so as to avoid another new map being drawn. Commissioner Meyers said there would be litigation over this map, though it’s hard to see on what grounds it would be challenged, given the current state of play.

As for this year, there will be a Commissioner’s race of interest as former HCC Trustee Neeta Sane has announced her intent to run in Precinct 4, against first-term Commissioner Ken DeMerchant. I don’t know yet what my primary interview schedule is going to look like, but I might try to cover that one. Filing season has begun, so I at least will have a better idea of how busy I’m going to be over the next couple of months soon. The Fort Bend Star and the Fort bend Independent have more.

An estimate of the Census undercount

Nov 6th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

It could have been worse.

According to new analysis of the 2020 Census, Texas had the highest undercount of any US state in raw numbers. It’s estimated some 377,000 in the state weren’t included in the count.

Nationally, the 2020 census missed an estimated 1.6 million people, but given hurdles posed by the pandemic and natural disasters, the undercount was smaller than expected, according to the data reviewed by a think tank that did computer simulations of the nation’s head count.

The analysis, done by the Urban Institute and released Tuesday, found that people of color, renters, noncitizens, children and people living in Texas — the state that saw the nation’s largest growth — were most likely to be missed, though by smaller margins than some had projected. Still, those shortfalls could affect the drawing of political districts and distribution of federal spending.

The analysis estimates there was a 0.5% undercount of the nation’s population during the 2020 census. If that modeled estimate holds true, it would be greater than the 0.01% undercount in the 2010 census but in the same range as the 0.49% undercount in the 2000 census.

Texas and Mississippi were undercounted by 1.28% and 1.3%, respectively, in the simulated count. Minnesota, Iowa, New Hampshire and Wisconsin also registered overcounts in the simulation, an unsurprising conclusion since they had among the highest self-response rates in the nation during the actual count.

About a fifth of the U.S. residents not counted in the Urban Institute’s simulations lived in Texas, and that could have real-life consequences. According to the Urban Institute analysis, Texas stands to miss out on $247 million in 2021 federal Medicaid reimbursements for being undercounted.

[…]

“The fact that the undercount wasn’t larger is surprising and certainly a good news story,” said Diana Elliott, principal research associate at the Urban Institute. “This undercount suggests the 2020 census may not be as close in accuracy as 2010, but it may not be as dire as some had feared.”

The official undercount or overcount of the census won’t be known until next year when the Census Bureau releases a report card on its accuracy. The bureau’s post-enumeration survey measures the accuracy of the census by independently surveying a sample of the population and estimating how many people and housing units were missed or counted erroneously

Indeed, it could have been a lot worse. The Republicans did everything they could to make it as hard as possible to get an accurate count, so kudos to the Census Department for overcoming as well as they did. For more on the Urban Institute’s research and results, see here for an overview, here for a state-by-state guide, and here for the specifics about Texas. Daily Kos has more.

A brief update on the Gutierrez/Eckhardt redistricting lawsuit

Oct 31st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

First news we’ve had in awhile.

Plaintiff: Democratic state Sens. Roland Gutierrez and Sarah Eckhardt

What the lawsuit argues: Ahead of lawmakers’ third special session, two Democratic state senators sued to block the Legislature from redistricting in a special session this year. The senators argued the Texas Constitution requires that redistricting be done in a regular session that won’t happen until 2023.

If successful, the federal lawsuit by Sens. Eckhardt of Austin and Gutierrez of San Antonio, with political organization Tejano Democrats, would require judges to create interim redistricting plans for the Legislature to use in the 2022 election cycle.

What’s next: The case, filed Sept. 1 in federal court in Austin, has been assigned to a three-judge panel of Reagan appointee Jerry Smith, Obama appointee Robert Pitman and Trump appointee Jeffrey Brown.

State lawyers have asked the court to consolidate the LULAC case with the senators’ case, and asked the court to abstain from a state matter. The officials also argued the plaintiffs misinterpreted the state constitution and cannot challenge the old maps.

On Tuesday, both sides indicated that the plaintiffs intend to pursue similar claims in state court. The three-judge panel then ordered the parties to file a joint status report “when they have determined the impact of the litigation in state court on this case.”

See here for the background on this lawsuit. The LULAC case is the one filed in mid-October after the maps were passed but before they were signed into law, with LULAC and several other groups as plaintiffs, and with MALDEF doing the filing. That lawsuit challenged all of the maps, including the Congressional map – the Gutierrez/Eckhardt lawsuit only challenged the legislative maps, as they are the ones that are covered by the state constitution.

What this sounds like to me is that the two Senators will file a new lawsuit in a state court, and action on the federal side will be put on pause until there is some kind of ruling there, at which point the three-judge panel will consider what its next steps are. I’ll keep an eye out for any news about that filing.

On a side note, this story also had a brief update about the Voto Latino lawsuit. That one was also assigned to a three-judge panel, and it too had an Obama appointee, a Trump appointee…and Jerry Smith. Who was involved in (I believe) the consolidated redistricting cases from the last decade. Do they keep him on ice just for these situations, or is is the luck of the draw? I am mystified. Reform Austin has more.

Fort Bend Commissioners Court redistricting update

Oct 30th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Was supposed to be done this week, but has been delayed.

Fort Bend County Judge KP George has thrown a wrench in the Commissioners Court’s posted agenda to hold public hearings and adopt a final redistricting map on Oct. 26.

On Friday, George posted a letter on his Facebook page and later posted a video message suggesting that due to public demand for more time to consider the maps, he would recommend to commissioners court to postpone the adoption of the map until Nov. 2.

In “The letter to the Community Regarding Community Input in the redistricting process,” George said “I have received numerous communications from the public about the timeline the Commissioners Court has adopted to receive feedback on proposed maps and to allow the public to submit maps for consideration. While the timeline for when our maps must be adopted was unclear when the Commissioners Court originally adopted a timeline, we now have a clearer idea and are elated to learn that we have more rime than originally anticipated.

“I am confident that my colleagues on the Court share my belief that the most important voices in this decision, that will have an impact on the future of our county for the next decade, are the voices of our residents. As a result, I have instructed our Information Technology Department to continue to receive map options from the public and will ask the Commissioners Court to ratify this amended time line for public feedback.

“To allow every member of the Commissioners Court to analyze and continue to receive feedback from residents. I will also recommend that Commissioner’s Court members take no action to adopt commissioner precinct maps until at least Tuesday November 2, during the regularly scheduled Commissioners Court meeting.

“Feedback from the public is an important part of the redistricting process and the time is now for every resident to make their voices heard about what they expect the future of our county to look like. I commit to you to do everything that I can to ensure you have the opportunity to participate and meaningfully engage in this historic process.”

[…]

Precinct 1 is now 49 percent Republican and 49 percent Democrat. The future maps can keep the same percentage, or increase the Republican numbers slightly.

In Precinct 2, the Democrats are 74 percent to 24 percent Republicans. Here the Democrats can be slightly reduced, keeping the Democrats margin still high, in double digits.

Similar will be the status of Precinct 3, where Republicans are 57 percent to 41 percent Democrats. Voters can be moved to Pct. 1 and Pct. 4, still keeping it a Republican dominant precinct.

Precinct 4, now 53 percent Democrat and 45 percent Republican is likely to increase its Democratic voters’ margin.

Fort Bend County’s total population per 2020 census is 29.60 percent White, 24.1 percent Hispanic, 23.60 percent Asian and 22.30 percent Black.

See here for the background, and here for the seemingly out of date county redistricting page. The business will be done next week, assuming there is a consensus about what map to adopt.

Fort Bend County Commissioners Court will meet in a special session on Nov. 4 at 10 a.m. to adopt a new redistricting map, but there is no consensus on which map will be adopted.

The county judge and four commissioners have proposed their own redistricting map. A few maps from the public have also been submitted.

[…]

Fort Bend County Democratic Party Chair Cynthia Ginyard made a honest and pertinent demand that three of the four new precincts should be having a Democratic majority.

County Judge KP George has already accomplished that in his map by making three precincts with Democrat majority. His map converts Commissioner Andy Meyers’ precinct from Republican majority to Democratic majority, by moving all Republicans to Commissioner Vincent Morales’ precinct.

George’s map may be a non-starter because none of the commissioners in their respective maps make three precincts with a Democratic majority. All of them maintain the status quo, namely two Republican precincts and two Democratic precincts. They have managed to move the population within this parameter.

I don’t know what any of the maps look like right now. The author suggests that Commissioner Grady Prestage’s map, or a variation of it, is most likely to be adopted. Based on the numbers that I was able to find for the previous post, that map may not be 3-1 Dem right away, but it would be headed in that direction. I don’t know enough to say what the outcome may be, but if you have some knowledge of the situation, please leave a comment.

Redistricting lawsuit #2 filed

Oct 28th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

This one focuses on just the Congressional map.

An organization affiliated with Eric Holder, who was attorney general in the Obama administration, has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the state’s GOP-drawn redistricting map for Congress on behalf of a Latino rights group and 13 Texas voters.

Filed Monday in an Austin federal court, the lawsuit claims mapmakers in the Texas Legislature improperly drew political districts in Senate Bill 6 that increased the power of white voters even though 95% of the state’s growth last decade was fueled by people of color.

That population growth made Texas the only state to gain two congressional seats after the 2020 census.

“Yet Senate Bill 6 appropriates those additional districts — and more — for white Texans,” the lawsuit argued. “Senate Bill 6 does so by packing and cracking communities of color along racial lines to ensure that those groups’ growing populations will not translate to increased political influence.”

Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said the congressional districts drawn by Republican lawmakers and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott violate the Voting Rights Act.

[…]

The new lawsuit, filed Monday on behalf of Voto Latino and 13 voters, asks U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman to overturn the congressional districts and order a new map to be drawn that:

• Adds two majority Latino districts in South and West Texas, from the border region north to Bexar County and south to the Gulf of Mexico.

• Improves the voting strength of Latinos in Congressional District 23, which stretches along the border with Mexico from San Antonio to just east of El Paso.

• Adds a majority Latino or majority Black-Latino district in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

• Creates another majority Latino or majority Black-Latino district in the Houston area.

The lawsuit also complained that Congressional District 35, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio along a narrow strip of Interstate 35, improperly combines far-flung Latino communities into a district with a Latino voting-age population of just under 48%.

A statement from Voto Latino is here, and a copy of the lawsuit is here. The National Redistricting Action Fund, a non-profit affiliate of the NDRC, did the filing. As noted, there is a separate lawsuit filed by MALDEF that challenges the legislative and SBOE maps in addition to the Congressional map. I assume that the NRDC and NRAF focused on the Congressional map because the NDRC’s mission is more of a national one. You know the drill here – the plaintiffs will have tons of evidence on their side, but unless there’s a new federal law to address this, SCOTUS ain’t gonna care. There’s also a chance this could delay the 2022 primaries, though again I would not bet on it. We’ll see what happens. Spectrum News has more.

Fort Bend County Commissioners Court redistricting

Oct 24th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

From last week.

Fort Bend County commissioners has formally called for the redistricting process to begin this week.

The Commissioners Court will have to prepare maps of new precincts, following the 2020 census, to ensure that the boundaries retain “one-person-one-vote” balance.

Following this, new maps have to be offered for public hearing, before finally adopting a plan.

On Tuesday, Commissioners Court set public hearing on redistricting to be held on Oct. 26, at 1 p.m. and at 6 p.m. in the Commissioners Court.

The maps will be available for the public to view on Oct. 19 by 5 p.m. on the county website.

The primary task of reapportionment of voters will concentrate on the issue of numerical balance and minority representation in the formation of commissioners’ court precincts, according to the Fort Bend County’s redistricting consultant, ALLISON, BASS & MAGEE who gave an evaluation of the census numbers to commissioners court last week.

Fort Bend County has a total population of 822,799, so the ideal precinct size would be 205,695, i.e. divide the total population by four (4), the number of single member districts, i.e. Commissioner’s Court Precincts.

[…]

Currently, the political configuration yields two Republican precincts and two Democratic precincts.

It is likely that the status quo will be maintained, and the ratio of Democratic voters in Democratic precincts may be increased.

In another scenario of gerrymandering, one Republican precinct may be overloaded with more Republican voters, diluting the other Republican precinct, resulting in three Democrat and one Republican precinct.

Currently, Commissioner Grady Prestage and Commissioner Andy Meyers appear to be preparing their own maps.

As with Harris County, Dems in Fort Bend have a 3-2 majority on Commissioners Court after capturing a Commissioner’s seat plus the County Judge slot in 2018. The County’s redistricting page is here and it currently shows three proposed maps, with statistical information about them. There are other maps that have been drawn, however, and they produce a range of outcomes:

.
Here’s a simplified table for anyone looking solely at partisan data

— matt (@mattmxhn) 10:46 PM – 21 October 2021

Commissioner Prestage’s map would likely keep things at 3-2 but with Precinct 1 more competitive and potentially flippable by Dems. The map proposed by County Judge KP George would make the Court 3-1 Dems, much as Commissioner Rodney Ellis’ proposed map would do in Harris County. The County’s redistricting page doesn’t say which map was proposed by whom, so I have no idea what to look for, but hopefully we’ll learn more soon. This is very much worth keeping an eye on.

More on the Spring Branch ISD single member district lawsuit

Oct 19th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

Good story from KTRK.

The unofficial dividing line for the two sides: I-10 running through the district.

With two boys in the district, Carla Cooper-Molano has seen the battle scars, and she wants someone on the school board who represents her family living north of I-10.

“If I communicate to the board, these are my needs, this is what I need, this is what my community at school needs, they are drowned by a much larger vested interest from the south,” said Cooper-Molano.

Cooper-Molano said the majority of SBISD students come from lower-income, working-class families, whose struggles range from paying rent to buying school supplies, to putting food on the table every night.

The disconnect comes when you look at the makeup of the current SBISD school board. According to a recently filed federal civil rights lawsuit, the majority of SBISD’s board members live south of I-10, in more affluent and less diverse neighborhoods. In fact, a person of color has never won a seat on the school board. According to the district’s own data, SBISD’s student body is 59% Hispanic, and 27% white.

The lawsuit alleges that having every school board member elected “at-large,” meaning they represent the entire district instead of neighborhoods, violates the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it dilutes the voting power of minorities. The plaintiff who filed the suit is Virginia Elizondo, a former teacher at SBISD with a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership. Elizondo ran twice for the school board, most recently in 2021. This time, she came up short against Chris Earnest, a Memorial area consultant.

Elizondo and supporters of the lawsuit are asking for single-member districts to be drawn. Under this scenario, board members will be elected to represent specific areas of the district, not the entire district. It’s similar to how the House of Representatives elects its members, and how Houston ISD elects its school board members. Houston City Council, for example, has a hybrid model. There are five at-large seats in addition to the district seats.

Nina Perales, the vice president of the Latino legal rights organization Legal Services for MALDEF, has fought similar battles in other cities across Texas. She explains that the plaintiff will need to show the courts there is no opportunity for minorities to elect a candidate of their choice.

“If the majority of voters consistently prefer one candidate, and minority voters consistently prefer another candidate, it’s simple math. The majority is always going to outvote the minority in every single seat,” said Perales.

See here for some background, and here for some demographic data about SBISD. The fight is contentious in part because a loud contingent of SBISD parents from the wealthy part of the district don’t think that the SBISD board is opposing it strongly enough, and they want to have one of them added as a defendant in the lawsuit. If the plaintiffs win, past history suggests they will be able to elect someone to the Board; a recent example cited in the story is Richardson ISD, in the Dallas area. I don’t know what the litigation schedule is – these things can take years to resolve – but I’ll keep an eye on it.

The Lege is now 3/4 done with redistricting

Oct 17th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

All but the Congressional maps are done. They’re just plowing through it.

The Texas Legislature is nearing the end of its work to incorporate a decade’s worth of population growth into new political maps — pressing forward with efforts to cement GOP dominance of the statehouse and deny voters of color a greater say in who gets elected.

In the final stretch of a 30-day special legislative session, the Republican majorities in the House and Senate on Friday almost simultaneously signed off on new political maps for the opposite chamber, sending them to Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, for his signature. The votes were largely procedural as neither chamber made any changes. It’s customary for each chamber to defer to the other in drawing up maps for its own members, but both must give them a vote.

By a vote of 81-60, the House granted approval to a Senate map that would draw safe seats for Republican incumbents who were facing competitive races as their districts diversified over the last 10 years.

The Senate gave an 18-13 vote to a House map that would fortify the Republican majority of the 150 districts, bolstering those that had grown competitive over the last decade and devising new battleground districts.

The House also signed off on a new map for the Republican-controlled State Board of Education, which sets standards for Texas public schools. Still left on the docket is a House vote on a redraw of the state’s congressional map that would largely protect incumbents in Congress while reducing the number of districts in which Black and Hispanic residents make up the majority of eligible voters. That vote is expected Saturday.

If adopted, the maps could remain in place for the next 10 years, though it’s all but certain that they will face legal challenges that could result in changes.

[…]

Sixteen Republican incumbents will be drawn into safe districts for reelection, while two Senate seats being vacated by Republicans would almost certainly go to new GOP candidates over Democrats next year based on the percentage of voters in the district who voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in last year’s presidential race.

Democrats would also likely lose Senate District 10 in North Texas, represented by Sen. Beverly Powell of Fort Worth. That would shift the Senate’s partisan makeup from the current 18 Republicans and 13 Democrats to 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats under the proposed map.

Voters of color in the district, which sits entirely in Tarrant County, have banded together with white voters over the last decade to elect their candidates of choice. Its eligible voters are 21% Black, 20% Hispanic and 54% white.

But under the proposed map, SD 10’s Black and Hispanic populations are split into two other districts with majority-white electorates.

The voters who remain in the newly drawn District 10 would also see major changes. Black and Hispanic voters in urban areas of south Fort Worth would be lumped in with seven rural counties to the south and west that would drive up the district’s population of white eligible voters to 62% while diminishing its population of voters of color.

Tarrant County House Democrats warned that federal courts had ruled that a similar attempt to redraw the district last decade was discriminatory. They offered multiple amendments to keep District 10 entirely in the county.

[…]

The House’s new map also pulls back on Hispanic and Black voters’ potential influence in electing their representatives.

The map brings the number of districts in which Hispanics make up the majority of eligible voters down from 33 to 30. The number of districts with Black residents as the majority of eligible voters would go from seven to six. Meanwhile, the number of districts with a white majority among eligible voters would increase from 83 to 89.

The map moved through the Senate chamber without any discussion, save for an earlier objection from state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., a Democrat from the Rio Grande Valley, during a Senate Redistricting Committee meeting Friday morning.

Lucio denounced a revision to the map that would carve up predominantly Hispanic communities in the Rio Grande Valley in service of creating a new competitive House district in the typically blue region. The change, forced by a member who does not represent the affected districts, blindsided the House members from the area.

“Members, this is my fourth redistricting session,” Lucio told other members of the committee. “In my time in the Legislature, I have never seen such blatant disregard for the process.”

Meanwhile, Republicans shot down Democratic proposals to create new opportunities for Hispanic or Black Texans to control elections.

State Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican serving as the House’s chief map-drawer, has previously argued the map “achieves fair representation for the citizens of Texas” while complying with federal law.

The redraw will ultimately aid Republicans’ ability to control the chamber for years to come.

The House map creates 85 districts that would have favored Trump at 2020 levels of support and 65 that would have voted for Biden. The current partisan breakdown of the House is 83 Republicans and 67 Democrats, though Trump only won 76 of the current districts in 2020.

See here and here for some background. The speed with which these maps have been approved is I believe one part there being basically no changes proposed in the other chamber, and one part a sense of urgency on the legislators’ part to get the hell out of town already. I can hardly blame them for that, but in the end it’s up to Greg Abbott.

On the subject of litigation over these maps, on claims of racial discrimination and voting rights violations, I remain pessimistic about the likelihood of any redress from the courts. Not because I think the maps are fair and accurately reflect the population, but because I have no expectation that this Supreme Court will countenance any voting rights claims. We could still do something about that at a federal level, but until Senators Manchin and Sinema let go of their bizarre obsession with the filibuster as it is currently defined, that ain’t going anywhere.

That said, I am reasonably optimistic about the potential for gains in the State House, if not in 2022 then in the coming years. The Chron story on the passage of these maps is a reminder of why.

The new Texas House map will protect Republican control by shedding Democratic-leaning areas where the party has lost support and moving those to blue districts while shoring up red ones.

That give-and-take is evident in west Harris County where two red districts, represented by Republican state Reps. Mike Schofield of Katy and Lacey Hull of Houston, are redrawn to include red-leaning precincts from Democratic state Rep. Jon Rosenthal’s nearby district; Rosenthal’s district will get blue-leaning areas now represented by the two Republicans.

As the state’s demographics change, however, there are only so many reliably red areas from which to pull. That meant for some districts, the best Republicans could do was make changes to benefit incumbents.

For example, the Energy Corridor district represented by state Rep. Jim Murphy, a Republican who is not seeking re-election, would give up some GOP precincts to Hull. Former President Donald Trump won Murphy’s district by 4 percentage points in 2020, but under the new map, that margin would drop to 2 points.

You’ve seen me make a version of this argument in previous posts. In the House, unlike the other maps, the Republicans were constrained by the county rule, which did not allow them to extend mostly rural districts into urban and suburban counties to dilute their Democratic communities. That forced them to draw a large number of districts with a relatively modest margin for Donald Trump, and the large majority of them are in counties where the trends have been moving strongly in a Democratic direction. Things can certainly change, and any given election can favor one party or the other, but overall that seems like a highly unstable equilibrium for the GOP.

The fourth map is of course the Congressional map. The Senate approved a map a few days ago, and the House committee approved it with no changes, as House Redistricting Chair Todd Hunter insisted that any amendments be made on the House floor. That puts them in position to be done with the entire business by the time the session ends, though I expect there to be a big fight when this map comes up for debate. The proposed map does some truly outlandish things to break up urban counties and communities of color, which I’m sure will draw a ton of heat and more threats of litigation from Dems. I expect them to get the job done, though if there are changes it will have to go back to the Senate for final approval. If it needs to go to a conference committee, that will almost surely require a fourth special session to finish it off. God help us all. Daily Kos has more.

Senate passes Congressional map

Oct 9th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Start the litigation countdown. Yes, I know, this still has to pass the House, but still.

The Texas Senate approved a map Friday that would largely protect incumbents in Congress while reducing the number of districts in which Black and Hispanic residents make up the majority of eligible voters — stymieing the growth of the state’s Democratic Party representation in Washington, D.C.

The congressional map is focused more on protecting incumbents than on growing the power of the dominant Republican Party in the state by flipping districts from blue to red. But the map, proposed by GOP state Sen. Joan Huffman of Houston, helps Republicans by increasing the number of districts that would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and decreasing those that would have gone for Joe Biden.

In anticipation of federal challenges to the map, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who presides over the Senate, said in a statement Friday that the proposal approved by the chamber was “legal and fair” and represented a “commitment to making sure every Texan’s voice is heard in Washington, D.C.”

[…]

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, proposed a map that would create three additional districts where Hispanics made up the majority, bringing the number of those districts to 10.

But Republicans rejected the proposal, with Huffman saying the amendment had been drafted less than 24 hours before the Senate’s vote on the maps and would result in a “detailed and painstaking racial gerrymander” in North Texas to draw a new Hispanic-majority district in the same area as the current Congressional District 33, represented by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth.

Gutierrez accused Republicans of racially discriminating against voters of color.

“How else do we describe a situation where Texas gains new political power because of the physical presence of millions of Black, Brown, and Asian bodies, and yet the political establishment does not give those very Texans the ability to elect more candidates to represent them?” he said in a statement. “It is an insult to the foundations of our democracy.”

Under the proposed maps, voters of color may end up with less representation in the congressional delegation. The new map drops the number of districts in which Hispanics make up a majority of eligible voters from eight to seven, and the districts in which Black Texans make up a majority of eligible voters from one to zero.

The number of districts where whites make up a majority of eligible voters goes up to 23 although the state’s white population — which increased by just 187,252 — was swamped by the growth of people of color.

See here for more on the initial map, which looks to be largely the same as the final map. Which we know is totally fair and representative because Dan Patrick says it is. The House will likely make some changes, but it seems unlikely to be substantively different. I’ll say this much, they’ve given Harris County Democrats a new district to target, and I feel confident that any Republican who wins the new CD38 is never going to get a free pass. I’ll be interested to see who files for this on the Democratic side.

As for the coming litigation, the arguments are clear, it’s just a matter of what SCOTUS will allow in the post-Voting Rights Act world that it wants. I will say again, it’s not too late for a new Voting Rights Act to be passed. We’re going to need an upgrade in the US Senate to make that happen, I fear.

Speaking of litigation, I would love to know what the status of the Gutierrez/Eckhardt lawsuit is. That had to do with the legislative maps, not the Congressional map, but given the speed with which those maps are moving along, we will be reaching a point of no return soon. Let’s at least have a hearing on this one before events make it moot, OK?

UPDATE: I should have spent more time looking at the District Viewer, because I have just now realized that this map moves me out of CD18, where I’ve been for 30 years, and into CD29. I feel a little weird about that.

Senate approves its map

Oct 6th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

They wasted no time, which is another way of saying that they didn’t bother giving anyone else much time to provide input or feedback.

Definitely protecting herself

The Texas Senate has approved a new political map for its own members that would entrench Republican dominance in the chamber for the next 10 years, even as Democrats argued the changes do not reflect the interests of people of color in the state who have fueled Texas’ growth over the last decade.

The proposal, put forth by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, was approved late Monday by a vote of 20-11 and would draw safe districts for GOP incumbents who were facing competitive races as their districts diversified in recent years and started voting for more Democrats.

Sixteen Republican incumbents would be drawn into safe districts for reelection, while two Senate seats being vacated by Republicans would almost certainly go to new GOP candidates over Democrats next year based on the percentage of voters in the district who voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in last year’s presidential race.

At the same time, Huffman’s proposal added no additional districts where people of color would represent a majority of the district’s eligible voters, even as Black, Hispanic and Asian Texans drove 95% of the state’s growth since the last census. Hispanics, in particular, were responsible for half of the increase of nearly 4 million people in the state’s population and now nearly match the number of white Texans in the state.

The state currently has 21 districts where the majority of eligible voters are white, seven with Hispanic majorities, one where Black residents are in the majority and two where no racial group makes up more than half of the total.

“The maps that are being proposed are not an accurate reflection of the growth of Texas,” said Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, who leads the Senate Hispanic Caucus. “Without any changes to this current map, the state of Texas could potentially go 30 years, think about that, three decades, without having added a Hispanic or Latino opportunity district.”

Menéndez proposed a map that he crafted with civil rights organizations to add one district in North Texas where Hispanics would make up the majority of eligible voters and be poised to select their preferred candidate. Hispanics are now the largest ethnic group in Dallas County. That proposal was rejected.

Upon pushback from Democratic senators, Huffman insisted that she’d drawn the maps “blind to race.”

“I have followed the law, I have drawn blind to race, I believe the maps I’ve drawn are compliant under the Voting Rights Act,” she said.

See here and here for the background. I’m sure Sen. Huffman would like you to believe what she said – she may even believe it herself – but the odds that one could reduce the number of Hispanic opportunity districts after a decade in which half the population growth was driven by that community without having a clear idea of what one was doing and why are just really small. If there’s one thing I trust about the Republicans in this process, it’s that they know what they’re doing. They might be blinkered by longer-term demographic changes – the 2011 map was supposed to be a 20-11 Republican map, as this one is supposed to be 19-12 – but there’s nothing blind about their actions. Their eyes are wide open.

Speaking of 20-11:

.
The Texas Senate doesn’t have the most transparent process in the history of the world, and excluding journalists from the floor makes it worse.

— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) 8:19 PM – 04 October 2021

As Braddock notes elsewhere, redistricting is first and foremost “every person for themselves”, and the votes surely reflect that. There could have been a more aggressive gerrymander that might have made life more difficult for one of those three Democrats, but there wasn’t. And since this was going to pass anyway, this is what happens. The SBOE map was also approved by the Senate, with everyone paying about as much attention to it as I had expected. Both go to the House now, which is working on its own map.

First proposed Congressional map is out

Sep 28th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

9 comments

It’s a thing.

Texas lawmakers on Monday released their first draft of a new congressional map for the next decade that includes two new districts in Austin and Houston — metropolitan areas with diverse populations tht fueled much of the state’s population growth over the past 10 years.

Republicans constructed this map with incumbent protection in mind — a strategy that focused on bolstering Republican seats that Democrats targeted over the last two election cycles rather than aggressively adding new seats that could flip from blue to red. However, the map does in fact strengthen Republican positioning overall, going from 22 to 25 districts that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. The number of districts that voted for Joe Biden would shrink by one, from 14 to 13.

Texas members of the House GOP delegation were closely involved in the drawing process and approved the map last week, according to two sources close to the Texas delegation.

While many incumbents appear safe in these maps, others were drawn into districts that overlap with one another — for example the proposed map pits Houston Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw against Democrat Rep. Sylvia Garcia. It also pits two Houston Democrats — Reps. Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee — against each other.

The maps were proposed by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, who leads the chamber’s redistricting committee.

[…]

Huffman’s first 38-district proposal would widen the gap between the parties, creating 25 districts that voted for Trump in 2020 and 13 that voted for Biden.

The racial makeup of the congressional maps is also expected to change as Texas added two new congressional seats based on last decade’s population growth, which was mostly driven by people of color. Based on eligible voters, the current map includes 22 districts with white majorities, eight with Hispanic majorities, one with a Black majority and five that have no majority. The newly proposed map includes 23 districts with white majorities, seven with Hispanic majorities, none with a Black majority and eight that have no majority.

Available data can be found here. Patrick Svitek has some numbers, which I’ll summarize briefly:

– Of the 14 districts carried by Biden in 2020, 12 were carried by him under this map. The exceptions are Republican-held CD24, which goes from Biden +5 to Trump +12, and Democratic-held CD15, which goes from Biden +2 to Trump +3. That may make CD15 the new CD23, which went from Trump +1 to Trump +7.

– Of the two new districts, CD37 in Travis County is deep, dark blue (Biden +53), while CD38 in Harris County is Trump +18. Let’s just say I don’t think it will remain that red over time.

– Regardless of what the story says, it seems clear to me that Reps. Crenshaw, Green, Jackson Lee, and Garcia would run in and win the same-numbered districts as they have now.

– Reps. Colin Allred and Lizzie Fletcher get much bluer districts. Maybe that makes them vulnerable to primary challenges, I don’t know. Rep. Henry Cuellar in CD28 gets a district that is less favorable for his 2020 primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros.

– Overall I think I agree with Michael Li:

.
One takeaway from both the proposed Texas senate and congressional maps is, man, are Republicans in Texas now scared of suburban voters – both because the suburbs are getting more diverse and because white voters in the suburbs are trending away from Rs. #txlege

— Michael Li (@mcpli) 10:08 AM – 27 September 2021

This map uses the same strategy as the Senate and SBOE maps in that it shores up a Harris County incumbent (in this case Crenshaw) by extending his district into Montgomery County, and shores up some other incumbents (see in particular Reps. Williams in CD25 and Carter in CD31) by making their districts more rural. As the meme says, it’s a bold strategy, we’ll see how it works for them.

The Chron focuses on the Harris County piece of this, with the following observation:

A spokesman for Wesley Hunt, a Republican who ran against Fletcher in 2020, said the former Army helicopter pilot would run for the new District 38 seat if lawmakers were to adopt the initial map proposal.

Hunt had previously announced he was running in 2022 but had yet to settle on a district while awaiting the proposed map.

That sound you hear is me rolling my eyes, and yes I am rolling them hard enough for it to be audible. The Texas Signal has more.

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