Redistricting could bring bloodletting

[last_texas_dem]

(Article from the Amarillo paper about redistricting)

>>>AUSTIN - Hardly anyone in Austin noticed it but last weekend three legislative panels, which combined have held more than two dozen redistricting hearings across the state - including one in Amarillo - held a joint meeting in Houston, apparently the last one for this year.

With rare exceptions, this year's hearings of the House Redistricting and Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence subcommittees, as well as the Senate Select Committee on Redistricting, went smoothly because they just heard from experts, advocacy groups and the public.

The nasty phase of redistricting is next year when the Legislature starts redrawing the boundaries of the state's political districts. This process is contentious because, as it happens every 10 years when statehouses take on redistricting, it is the ultimate fight for political survival in which even some winners feel like losers. And no area in Texas is expected to fare worse than the Panhandle/South Plains region because of declining population in nearly two dozen rural counties.

"All of rural Texas is going to lose because we have 150 members (in the Texas House) and the population increase has all occurred along I-35 and in the (Rio Grande) Valley," said lame-duck Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock, chairman of the House Redistricting Committee, the parent panel of the namesake subcommittee.>>>

http://amarillo.com/opinion/opinion-columnist/weekly-columnists/2010-11-28/redistricting-could-bring-bloodletting

I'm not really sure what to make of this particular situation. It may just be a case of Republicans losing their seats to other Republicans, so I guess it's more a question of which ones tend to be more offensive: rural Panhandle Repubs or central TX Repubs? Not sure if there's a solid trend. I guess Repub infighting is at least good for entertainment value, though.

[Hangingon]

1. Texas is due to get 3 or 4 new Congressional seats.

Pretty serious.

[last_texas_dem]

2. Yeah. My hope, though, is that, at least

concerning the U. S. House seats, redistricting will just be a wash, party-wise. Starting with the next Congress, the R's will control 23 seats to the D's 9; it doesn't seem like the R's can do much more gerrymandering beyond that, even with "new" seats to mess around with (although I wouldn't put anything past them.)

It looks pretty similar with their overwhelming margins in the statehouse, which is why I figure there's a good chance that the main thing we'll be seeing in the redistricting process is Republican infighting- not as good as Democratic gains, but better than nothing.