Of Cabbages and Kings
by BOB BARTON
Today, if the taxpayers are lucky, the legislature will call it quits and go home. They have done about as much damage as can be done to our public school system and now our Guv is wandering throughout America, hoping to be “discovered” by one of the national networks. He’s finding tough sledding with the attractive Congresswoman Bachmann and the Chinese speaking ex-governor Huntsman grabbing most of the headlines.
When “sine die” is finally proclaimed and some “fat lady” has sung, the serious business of trying to institute the congressional, state senatorial, and legislative mishmash of redistricting will be enacted.
Our Legislature hasn’t done itself proud. Despite the efforts of a handful of thoughtful participants, a few Republican leaders and a sizeable hunk of Democrats, most of the redistricting work was below average, even by the low standards set the last time around in 2001.
They thought big this go-around. Their handiwork provided Hays County, population 157,107, with three different congressional districts. Of course we’ll have little “real power” in three districts, but San Antonio and Austin will make out like bandits if the handiwork holds up. They get two slices of the pie and the third runs all the way up to include big suburbs in Johnson County, within rock chunking distance of mighty Fort Worth.
This three district change is ridiculous. We have just climbed to a highly respectable 157,000 citizens and now we split that number by three. Ulysses Grant believed in massing his forces while Robert E. Lee, partly out of necessity, divided his. Although our governor probably doesn’t think he should have, Grant won.
The biggest reason we are being split has to do with ambition. It dwells in the hearts of a sizeable number of the 181 legislators headquartered in Austin. Congress pays well and it is glamorous, unless you have bad nocturnal habits. Open new seats come around once a decade, and then only if you are in a growing state like Texas.
The other is that the state Republican hierarchy hates Congressman Lloyd Doggett with a passion that knows no bounds.
Once upon powerhouse Congressman Tom DeLay tried to get Doggett a few years back but got himself for various malfeasances. They put Doggett into a supposedly unwinnable Valley District. Against big odds, he won instead.
The latest wrinkle is the creation of a new congressional district that interlocks a big segment of Travis County with a much bigger section of Bexar, giving the edge to a young, energetic and talented Hispanic who wants to take his place. The inclusion of a little more than half of the Hays population is just a by-product of the manipulations of the legislature that has been totally politicized in a presidential year. It might work this time, but Doggett is phoenix-like, so don’t count him out.
More on this and the other two congressional districts down the road a bit, along with data about the emergence of a second majority-minority voting district in the Kyle-Buda area. Another in southern and western San Marcos has been a major political factor for decades. It’s arrival could change the political dynamics in Hays sooner than expected.
