Texas goes back to future with controversial congressional redistricting

It’s easy to forget these days, given the more than three-decade dominance of Republicans in Texas, that Democrats began 2004 with a majority of the state’s delegation to the U.S. House.

Holding just 15 of the state’s 32 seats in the House, Republicans then kick-started one of the most important strategic moves to help determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill. Republicans in the state legislature worked hand in hand with their congressional delegation to launch a mid-decade redrawing of House district lines.

This being Texas, it was a political soap opera that involved a criminal investigation into money laundering, a Democratic decampment from Austin to Oklahoma, and a Supreme Court case argued by a young Texas lawyer named Ted Cruz.

After the dust settled in 2004, the GOP had secured a dominant 21-11 advantage in their Texas delegation, even as the state turned into a “majority-minority” state.

“It was a classic power play,” recalled Martin Frost, a 13-term veteran who was Texas’s most prominent House Democrat. Frost lost by more than 10 percentage points in the new district.

“When you have the votes, you can do whatever you want,” Frost, 83, said in an interview Thursday.

Today’s Texans provide a crucial bloc for determining power in the House: 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats. That Lone Star State margin essentially provides the buffer that allows Republicans to cling to the narrow 220-212 majority in the House.

Three vacancies, including one from the Houston area, will be filled later this year from heavily Democratic districts, further narrowing the GOP edge and feeding fears that next year’s midterm elections will follow the recent trend of handing the opposing party control of the House.

Now, without much planning, Republicans in Washington have essentially ordered Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) and his allies to start a special session in the next few days to draw a new map with a goal similar to the one in 2003: gerrymander the districts in hopes of a net gain of about five seats.

Some politically safe incumbents voice optimism about shoring up the majority, but also express worries that they would have to give up so many of their solidly Republican voters to other districts that they would draw themselves into competitive seats.

“I’m a team player. I’m willing to give. I won by 20-something, 20 points, more than that last November. I’m willing to give up some of that for the good of the order,” Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Texas), who won with 62 percent of the vote in 2024, said Thursday.

A Texas trooper keeps watch from an upper level of the Rotunda at the Capitol on Thursday as the current session nears an end.

In 2021, during the redistricting that happens after every 10-year census, Abbott and legislators decided to fortify the existing Republican seats rather than get ambitious and try to win more.

The result was nearly perfect: All 25 Republicans won last year by double-digit margins, with more than 20 winning by at least 25 points.

It may not work out so well this time. Democrats believe that any aggressive redrawing of the map, combined with Trump not being on the ballot, would create new chances for them. They cite 2018 data showing that in competitive Texas races, Democratic candidates gained an average of 7 points compared with 2016.

“It’s basic math. For them to try to break up existing Democrat-held districts, they will have to weaken existing Republican districts,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told reporters Tuesday.

For decades, the census determined the makeup of House districts. Every 10 years, officials at the U.S. Census Bureau divvy 435 seats based on state population. Then, legislators draw up the lines that would be in play for the next 10 years.

That concept is long gone. Ohio is now in the midst of another redistricting battle, after the traditional once-a-decade reapportionment and new maps produced legal standoffs that went through the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Five states drew new lines ahead of the 2024 election, including New York’s maps that helped give Democrats a three-seat boost last November.

Texas started this all more than 20 years ago.

In 2001, the Texas legislature deadlocked on new congressional maps.

Courts settled the issue by allotting two new districts to Republicans but leaving the other 30 relatively untouched. The world of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), then the House majority whip, erupted over the continuation of what was considered “the Frost map,” mostly following the 1991 districts.

So DeLay began focusing on winning state House seats, dispatching advisers to Austin and raising money for the goal of total GOP control of the state capitol.

In the 2002 midterm election, with Texas’s popular native son, President George W. Bush, in the White House, Gov. Rick Perry (R) won a full term as governor in a blowout. John Cornyn, the GOP attorney general, won a Senate seat by about a dozen points.

Abbott won the race to become attorney general by more than 15 points, leading him to appoint Cruz, 32 at the time, to serve as solicitor general.

And DeLay helped flip the state House to Republicans — yet Democrats still won 17 of the state’s 32 seats in the U.S. House.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) in 2001. He led the charge over Texas's last mid-decade redistricting.

Early in 2003, Republicans in Austin began to conceive of new congressional maps, prompting Democratic legislators at one point to boycott the proceedings to deny the mandatory quorum to approve legislation. DeLay, who was promoted to majority leader in 2003, even called in federal authorities to try to track down the missing Texas Democrats, who had fled to Oklahoma.

Eventually, despite the protests, the legislature passed the new maps. “They divided my district into five different pieces,” said Frost, who had run the DCCC in the 1990s and served as a leadership lieutenant.

Veteran Democratic Reps. Max Sandlin and Charlie Stenholm lost by more than 18 percentage points each. Chris Bell, in his first term, ran in a heavily Democratic district and lost to Rep. Al Green (D) in the primary, rather than run in the portion of his old district that got pushed into heavily conservative terrain.

Jim Turner (D) retired after four terms rather than try for a hopeless reelection bid.

Also, in early 2004, Rep. Ralph Hall, after more than 50 years as a conservative Democrat, joined the Republican Party. Then-Rep. Chet Edwards was the only targeted Democrat to survive, lasting six more years until the 2010 wave crushed the few remaining rural Democrats.

Frost went up against Rep. Pete Sessions (R), who would go on to serve a decade in GOP leadership circles.

The Democrat wasn’t going to go down without a fight, turning the race into a virtual proxy campaign against DeLay. He and Sessions were the two most important Texans in the House. Frost raised and spent more than $4.7 million, an enormous sum for that time, and more than Sessions raised and spent.

But Sessions won handily.

Still, DeLay’s victory was short-lived. His fundraising for the state races prompted a criminal indictment for raising corporate money improperly, helping lead to his eventual resignation from leadership in 2005 and then the House in 2006.

“Both generals died,” Frost said of their battle.

A state appeals court overturned a conviction against DeLay, who argued it was a politically motivated prosecution. “A little justice may still exist in the Texas judicial system,” he told reporters outside the Austin courthouse 11 years ago.

Now, some Republicans worry about the unintended consequences of rushing a new redistricting plan through a new special session and the legal challenges likely to follow.

The filing deadline for next year’s races is 4½ months away, and no one has seen the proposed maps.

“We’ve talked among our delegation, but we don’t know the details of it yet, I promise you,” Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas) said Wednesday.

She won with 60 percent of the vote last year. She believes her 2020 race, which she won in a tougher district with less than 49 percent, has steeled her for a potentially tough race next year.

“I outperformed Trump by 25,000 [votes]. So, can I run in a competitive district? I would hope so,” she said.

The other key difference between 2003 and 2025 was the starting point: Back then, Republicans were underrepresented at 15 of 32 seats; now, with 25 of 38, that represents a much bigger chunk of the Texas vote (56 percent) won by Trump last year.

Some GOP leaders in Washington are treading carefully and want to limit potential exposure for safe incumbents in Texas.

“I have no role, but I certainly hope they’re taking that into consideration,” Rep. Richard Hudson (North Carolina), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told reporters.

One thing is certain: Feuds in Texas politics can live a long time.

Frost and DeLay, now 78, never talked about redistricting and never buried the hatchet.

“No,” Frost said, “absolutely not.”