Democratic Texas Rep.: ‘We Have No Idea That the State of Texas is Actually Republican’

The Republican-led Texas state legislature has been stymied in its attempt to redistrict congressional districts since most of the House’s 62 Democrats fled to Illinois, New York and Massachusetts to deny the Republicans from meeting the quorum requirements to conduct business in a special session.

Now, it appears that the Democrats are set to return and vote on the redistricting after attracting national attention and sparking some Democratic-led states to consider doing the same to negate any potential Republican gains from the Texas effort.

Gerrymandering in any form is a bad idea and both parties practice this to the max depending on which party controls a particular statehouse. However, Democrats are also hypocrites on this issue, as they have accused Republicans of taking the U.S. back to the Jim Crow era and being out-and-out racists for trying to create more Republican seats.

One of the more ridiculous claims came from Democratic state representative Linda Garcia who went unchallenged on the Start Here podcast on August 14 when she not only said that this fight wasn’t about the Republican Party or the Democratic Party but about racism. To top it off, she told host Brad Mielke that “we have no idea that the state of Texas is actually Republican.”

Ms. Garcia must be living under a rock, as the state of Texas has turned solidly Republican over the last 30 plus years.

The last Democratic governor in Texas was Ann Richards, who served from 1991-1995 and was defeated for re-election by George W, Bush. The last Democrat to serve as a U.S. Senator was Bob Krueger, who was appointed by Richards when Lloyd Bensten was appointed Treasury Secretary by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Kruger lost his seat in a special election to Kay Bailey Hutchison. Republicans took control of the Texas Senate in 1997 and the Texas House in 2003. Finally, voters in Texas have solidly backed the Republican nominee for president since 1980.

Yet despite these figures, Garcia states that she doesn’t know if Texas is a Republican state.

Texas Democrats know that they will lose the redistricting vote-the numbers are just not there to stop it. On the other hand, Republicans need to tread carefully with this mid-decade scheme as it could easily weaken some currently solidly GOP held districts and make them vulnerable in the future.

The bigger problem for Democrats is that they don’t have an alternative plan that wouldn’t involve gerrymandering, so the hypocrisy runs far and wide.