Texas Political Update 9/30/2021

Posted September 30, 2021

Accounting for population growth in Texas, our State appears to be poised to gain two new Congressional seats in Washington, D.C. The Republican mapmakers charged with drawing the new maps released a draft creating a new U.S. House district based in Austin, a likely safe Democratic seat. The other new district is based in Houston and would favor Republican candidates.

Republicans took the safer route of drawing district lines that would shore up Republican-held districts that had become battlegrounds in recent elections as Texas’ suburbs have become more diverse and more Democratic — instead of trying to draw both new districts as favoring Republican candidates.
“While this is still a pretty extreme gerrymander, it’s not the partisan maximization gerrymander a lot of us thought Texas lawmakers might enact,” said David Daley, a redistricting expert and fellow at FairVote. “It’s certainly an aggressive incumbent protection gerrymander, and it certainly looks as if what lawmakers are trying to do is shore up Republican seats for the long haul.”

Activists with groups representing Hispanic people have argued that the maps should be drawn to reflect the state’s fast growing Latino population.

Shannon Meroney

Shannon Meroney brings ten years experience as a multi-state lobbyist based primarily at the Texas Capitol and ten years of courtroom legal expertise to her dynamic government affairs consulting practice. Prior to creating Meroney Public Affairs LLC, Shannon spent six years as a Senior Government Relations Manager for Aetna, a Fortune 100 health insurance corporation with multi-state responsibility. Previous to that, she was a Partner at the Texas law firm Thompson, Coe, Cousins & Irons representing multiple corporate clients and large trade associations at the Capitol, in the courtroom and providing legal drafting and analysis expertise.