 The courts have drawn the redistricting map. There will be an open primary on November 7th, with a December run-off for anyone who doesn't get a full 50% of the vote. Deadline to file in the new districts will be August 25th.
From the Statesman:
The panel reunited Webb County, which includes the majority-Hispanic city of Laredo, and placed it entirely in the 28th Congressional District, which is adjacent to the 23rd District. It added portions of Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, to the 23rd District.
The district stretches from Laredo to El Paso County and north to San Antonio. The high court ruled that the district boundaries drawn by Republican state legislators in 2003 diminish Hispanic voting power because a large cluster of Webb County Hispanics were divided into two different congressional districts.
The new plan also moves Kerr, Kendall, Bandera, and Real counties into the 21st Congressional District, represented by Republican Lamar Smith of San Antonio.
The 23rd District, represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla of San Antonio, under the map the judges issued Friday, has a 61 percent Hispanic voting age population, compared with 51 percent under the Republican-led redistricting. It also now will be more evenly divided between Democratic and Republican voters.
Under the new plan, all incumbents would remain in their current districts.
Check out the interactive map at this site as map 1438 (Court Ordered Districts LULAC v. Perry). Here is a population and general election breakdown of the 5 districts that were changed. For reference, here are the 2002-2003 lines, after the regular redistricting, but before the Delay Redistricing which are the 2004-2005 lines.
Here are closeup maps of Travis County as well as Bexar County. White districts are the unaffected CD-10 (McCaul-R) and CD-20 (Gonzales-D).
District 21 & 23- Lamar Smith (R) & Henry Bonilla (R)
District 25- Lloyd Doggett (D)
District 28 & 15- Henry Cuellar (D) & Ruben Hinojosa
Instant thoughts on all this... Cuellar just became safe in his 28th District as all of his Laredo base is united. Hinojosa gets widened a bit as he picks up the leftovers in South Texas after Doggett was retracted north into Travis but I don't see him being affected much. Smith just became a safe seat in 21 as he shed the liberal precincts in Austin (minus the UT campus, dammit) as he picked up 75% Republican rural counties he used to represent.
Bonilla becomes a target as he picks up huge parts of Democratic South San Antonio as he loses some of the Republican Hill Country. Bexar County most recently was known as Ciro Rodriguez's base when he ran against Cuellar in the primary this spring. So does Ciro run against Bonilla? He's got to be thinking about it, but he's still in dept Bonilla has $2,243,274.54 on hand... There is the current Democratic nominee Rick Bolanos, but he hasn't filed an FEC report to date. |
