New Texas Map Starts Game of Political Musical Chairs

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/politics/texas-map-redistricting-congressional-elections-2026/


Texas Legislative Council

After two weeks spent outside state lines—marked by a surge of national media attention and, then, a struggle to keep their fight in the limelight—Texas House Democrats ended their quorum break as abruptly as a second special session began. Within a few days, the Republicans’ scheme to engineer a rare mid-decade redistricting of the state’s congressional maps had been rammed through the Texas House and Senate.

What began as a demand from on high (i.e., the Trump administration) and sparked a national partisan gerrymandering arms race, has become the new political reality now that Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 4 into law on Friday. Democrats knew there was nothing they really could do to stop passage of the new maps upon their return, and they thus claimed their walkout to be victorious because it had successfully spurred Texas’s rival mega-blue state, California, to advance a new map of its own that would nuke its already-marginal number of Republican seats.

In essence, Republicans’ new congressional maps revert to the strategy that reigned in the 2010s. Texas’s blue urban cores in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth were sliced and diced into a handful of uber-blue seats while the rest were annexed into Republican strongholds in the rural hinterlands. The power of liberal voters and predominantly Black and Latino communities was diluted while conservative, largely white voters’ power was maximized. The new maps also have the GOP making a risky bet that significant gains that Trump enjoyed among Latino voters in 2024, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border, were more than a flash in the pan.

These changes have overhauled the electoral playing field in Texas for the 2026 midterms and could deliver the GOP as many as five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and provide enough political cushion for the party to maintain control of the chamber and shield Donald Trump’s administration from electoral accountability and Democratic-led oversight. In doing so, the new maps have also thrown some chaos and opportunity into both parties. Ambitious Republican pols now have a handful of additional seats to compete for, and Democratic pols have fewer seats to fight over. With redistricting inevitably comes bitter and contested intra-party disputes between various incumbents and would-be elected officials.

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[LeftInTX]

1. I thought Jasmine was gonna run in another district? Darn. She needs to stay in Congress.

Can she compete statewide and in what race would it be?

We already have someone for Lt Gov. We have a bunch of rumors about people running for governor and senate. Everyone wants Talarico to run for something, whether it is senate or governor. I want him to run for governor. I think Jasmine would be a great senate candidate. But whenever, someone runs for statewide in Texas we lose them in another seat. Unfortunately, that's the facts.

The potential candidates for statewide seats, need to get together and huddle and come up with a plan. It seems like good candidates are gonna be pitted against good candidates and some seats won't have any. If top tier James Talarico and Jasmine both run for US senate, who's gonna run for governor? It seems right now, no one wants to run for governor. In 2018, we finally drafted a retired sheriff to run for governor. (hmmm). We need a good statewide slate. Not top tier all vying for one slot.

Apparently, Jasmine can run for her old district. She won't reside in it, but she can run. It hasn't been moved far from her house.


They also did that to Joaquin Castro. I'm pretty sure he's running again, even though his residence is now in another district. (About a mile).

Will Hurd never resided in his district. He resided in Castro's district.