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Most Texans probably don’t know about the Legislative Redistricting Board. But it has become increasingly important in deciding who represents them, and which legislators and political parties they favor.
The fact that most of its members will be chosen in the 2010 election has both Democrats and Republicans watching it closely.
A brief history of the origin of this odd board, and its impact:
The Texas Constitution of 1876 required the Legislature to redraw House and Senate districts after the federal census every 10 years, to reflect population shifts.
But from 1921 into the late 1940s, rural legislators did not want to give urban areas more legislative seats at the expense of their own. So no new maps were drawn.
Eventually embarrassed at its inability to do its job, the Legislature in 1947 decided to set up a separate Legislative Redistricting Board to redistrict if the lawmakers didn’t.
A constitutional amendment proposal called for a five-member board, to convene if the Legislature failed to redistrict the House or Senate, or both, during the first regular legislative session after the federal census. On Nov. 2, 1948, 77 percent of voters endorsed it.
The Legislature’s threat to itself worked — at first. It dutifully re-drew its districts in 1951, and again in 1961.
In 1971, the House and Senate were still overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats. But there was a rebellion in the House against Speaker Gus Mutscher, who was implicated in the Sharpstown stock fraud and banking scandal that roiled state government. Mutscher’s team rammed through a House redistricting map designed to punish his critics, but it was thrown out by the Texas Supreme Court.
The Senate simply failed to agree on new boundaries. So the Legislative Redistricting Board — the speaker, lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller and land commissioner, all Democrats — convened for the first time. It drew House and Senate districts for the next decade.
In 1981, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, Bill Clements, vetoed the Senate map. The Texas Supreme Court threw out the House map. So the LRB – still all Democrats — again drew the new House and Senate maps.
In 1991, the Legislature, controlled by Democrats, passed new House and Senate maps that favored their party. Democratic Gov. Ann Richards did not veto either map. Although huge legal turmoil followed. including a federal court throwing out the Senate map and drawing its own late that year, the Legislature at least had drawn maps during the regular session. So the LRB remained on the sidelines.
By 2001, Republicans held a majority in the Senate and close to one in the House, and every statewide office. This time, the redistricting equation favored Republicans.
The House narrowly endorsed a House map, but the Republican-dominated Senate let it die, and couldn’t muster the two-thirds vote necessary to bring up a Senate plan.
This time, four of the LRB’s five members were Republican – acting Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, Atty. Gen. John Cornyn, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Land Commissioner David Dewhurst. The lone Democrat was House Speaker Pete Laney.
By a 3-2 vote, with the two legislative leaders dissenting, the board approved districts, particularly for the House, that heavily favored Republicans and punished Democrats.
That paved the way for Republicans to take over the House in the 2002 elections, and to elect Republican Tom Craddick as speaker. Then in 2003, coached by then-Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Legislature re-drew the congressional districts drawn by a federal court in 2001.
(For a good in-depth account of those maneuverings, see Steve Bickerstaff’s book, “Lines in the Sand,” from UT Press.)
Repeated attempts to set up an independent commission to draw legislative and congressional districts have never achieved enough momentum to pass.
In the 2010 elections, Democrats hope to at least reverse their tiny 76-74 deficit to the Republicans in the House, and elect a Democrat as speaker. But they’re also hoping to capture some of the statewide offices — particularly the four who make up the rest of the LRB.
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And So On. . . . Rep. Mark Homer, D-Paris, and Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, have proposed a constitutional amendment to replace the attorney general on the LRB with the agriculture commissioner. Homer says that’s designed to cure the potential conflict of interest of the attorney general representing the state to defend the map he helped draw as an LRB member.
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