Republicans could continue to control Congress for a generation if Democrat Gina Hinojosa can\u2019t pull off one of the biggest upsets in Texas history.<\/p>\n
That was Hinojosa’s campaign message during a stop in Houston on the 61st\u00a0anniversary of\u00a0the signing of the Voting Rights Act by President Lyndon B. Johnson.\u00a0Hinojosa said that as bad as Texas Republicans carved up the state for redistricting last year<\/a>, it is about to get a lot worse unless she can beat Gov. Greg Abbott this fall.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have already said they are coming back to redraw maps next year,\u201d Hinojosa said.<\/p>\n Republicans\u00a0completed a rare mid-decade redistricting last summer to eliminate five Democratic seats from Texas, giving them a leg up ahead of this year’s midterms. And that was before the Supreme Court this spring essentially allowed southern states to dismantle districts drawn to assure Black and Hispanic representation in Congress. The\u00a0April ruling<\/a>,\u00a0which said using race-conscious data to create majority-minority congressional districts is unconstitutional, could open the door for more GOP-friendly changes in Texas.<\/p>\n The party could further dismantle the 18th Congressional District in Houston, which has roots back to former U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan. They could also target the 29th Congressional District, which resulted in U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, in 2018 becoming the first Hispanic to represent the area\u2019s nearly 3 million Hispanics in Congress.<\/p>\n Worst-case scenario for Democrats, Hinojosa said, is that Republicans flip five more seats through creative gerrymandering next year, and five more in 2031, when the next Census is conducted. Because the state is expected to continue growing in population, Texas could end up with four or five more seats that would give Republicans another shot to bolster their numbers in Congress.<\/p>\n As of now, Democrats don\u2019t have enough members in the Texas Legislature to stop the maps, and their chances of picking up 14 House seats to take control of that chamber are remote at best.<\/p>\n That leaves the governor’s office. If Hinojosa were to become the first Democrat to hold the office since Ann Richards left on Jan. 17, 1995, it could throw a wrench in any future redistricting.<\/p>\n \u201cThose are the stakes in this race,\u201d Hinojosa said. \u201cWe need a governor who will veto rigged maps. I will be that governor.\u201d<\/p>\n Abbott has not said if he will push for another round of redistricting in light of the Supreme Court ruling. When the decision was issued he called it a \u201cvictory for state sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n But other House members have said they want another crack at redistricting to further increase GOP dominance in the state capitol.<\/p>\n Hinojosa said voters need to be ready for even more extreme redistricting \u2013 and make her the next governor to stop it.
\u00a0
\u201cThis is the last line standing,\u201d Hinojosa said on the latest episode of the Texas Take Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republicans could continue to control Congress for a generation if Democrat Gina Hinojosa can\u2019t pull off one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-403505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}