Gerrymandering not just a Republican thing

In part two of the interview with Congressman Roger Williams (Sept. 2nd View), editor Dalton Sweat repeatedly took the congressman to task on the question of whether he was against partisan gerrymandering in the upcoming redistricting session of the Texas Legislature. The point of the questions seemed to be whether the republican-controlled Legislature would take the high moral road or succumb to the idea of “To the victor go the spoils” approach. Mr. Williams refused to be pinned down to one side or the other of the question stating that what one side would call gerrymandering the other side would “redistricting”.

Then in the Sept. 9th View, an over-the-top response to the interview was submitted by Guy Rollins in which he castigates Congressman Williams for representing a gerrymandered district and then goes on to vilify the entire Trump presidency to boot, ending with the assertion that election results in all Republican districts are predetermined, presumably because of gerrymandering.

Well, I’m a Republican and I hate gerrymandering. And yes, the 25th district held by Roger Williams is gerrymandered; and I wish it were not so. I wish it would be abolished by an amendment to the Constitution along with an amendment for term limits for senators and congressmen and an amendment to fix the Supreme Court at nine members. I feel all these things would be good for the country.

So with that background I did a little investigation into which Texas US congressional districts were indeed gerrymandered. I found this web site to be informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ congressional_delegations_from_Texas

This web page lists all 36 districts along with the incumbents, their party, and a district map. Any district map that seemed overly convoluted, stretched out, or made jumps from one area to another were deemed gerrymandered. By this process a list of gerrymandered districts was compiled for Republicans and Democrats. The results were that of 23 Republican districts 10 were gerrymandered, and of 13 Democrat districts 9 were gerrymandered. That’s 43% of Republican districts and 69% of Democrat districts.

Clearly this a bipartisan issue in Texas and the Democrats seem to benefit the most from it. Then I narrowed down the list to the most egregious districts. Republicans have 3 and Democrats have 7.

Here is the list:

Republicans

Dan Crenshaw, District 2

Randy Weber, District 14

Troy Nehls, District 22

Democrats

Lizzie Fletcher, District 7

Vincente Gonzalez,

District 15

Sheila Jackson Lee,

District 18

Silvia Garcia, District 29

Marc Veasey, District 33

Filemon Vela, District 34

And then there is the grand-daddy of them all; District 35 held by Lloyd Doggett which snakes from Austin to San Antonio, and for most of that distance is only a few miles wide.

So, if we are really serious about ending gerrymandering it should be done by the legislature this fall for all districts with no grandfathering. Then all congressmen would have to compete for votes in politically diverse districts, Roger Williams included.

Les Harwell