Democrats in the Texas House, struggling to beat back
an aggressive Republican redistricting effort, traveled on Friday to meet with the Democratic governors of California and Illinois who have suggested
they could redraw their own political maps to counter changes in Texas.
More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers boarded flights early Friday and planned to talk to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois about the potential effects on their states of the redistricting of U.S. House seats in Texas, as well as what steps they might take to respond.
“We want the country to understand what’s going on in Texas is a national battle,” said State Representative Richard Peña Raymond, a Democrat from Laredo who was part of the group heading to Chicago to meet with Mr. Pritzker. Mr. Raymond said he would stress to the Illinois governor that the redistricting is “clearly aimed at affecting the entire country.”
President Trump has been
pushing Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps — a process that usually takes place only after the decennial census — to help preserve the party’s majority in the U.S. House. He has suggested an additional five seats could be created for Republicans in Texas out of the state’s 38 congressional districts. The party already holds 25 seats.
The daylong trip was the most concrete step yet taken by Texas Democrats, who have been debating how to respond to the redistricting plan in a state where Republicans control the Legislature and all statewide offices. Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps after private and public pressure from the White House.
Mr. Raymond said he would not tell Governor Pritzker to take any particular action — but, he said, Mr. Pritzker might be eyeing a White House bid, and “if he wants to run for president, he needs to care about the whole country.”
It remains politically and
practically challenging for Democratic state leaders to redraw their own maps in the same highly partisan fashion that Texas is pursuing, even in states where Democrats control every level of government.
In California, an independent commission has been in charge of drawing maps for congressional districts, a nonpartisan approach approved by voters in 2010. And redrawing the lines in a state like Illinois could present other challenges for Democrats, because
the lines are already crafted to strongly advantage the party.
The two groups of Democrats who flew out were expected to return to Texas late in the day.
While in California, the Texas lawmakers were expected to appear with Mr. Newsom at a news conference in Sacramento and speak about redistricting.
Mr. Newsom also invited some of California’s Democratic members of Congress to attend the meeting, as well as leaders of both chambers of the State Legislature, whose support would be critical to any potential changes to the state’s system for drawing maps.
In Illinois, Mr. Pritzker was expected to appear with the Texas Democrats for a round-table discussion.
The travel was paid for by the Texas House Democratic Caucus, according to a person briefed on the plans. It took place on a day when the Texas House was in recess, and so did not represent a walkout on the special legislative session, which is also addressing the state’s response to devastating flooding on July 4.
National party leaders have been pressing Texas Democrats for a walkout to deny Republicans a quorum and halt the legislative proceedings. Such a move is still among the options that state representatives have.
But doing so would require far more than the number who went to California and Illinois on Friday — at least 51 of the 62 Democrats in the Texas House would have to take part, and each would face a $500-a-day fine under rules imposed by Republican leaders after the last quorum break, in 2021.
So far, Texas Democrats have been hesitant, eager to fight but unsure whether walking out on the legislative session would stop the maps from being adopted. Previous walkouts, during redistricting fights in 2021 and 2003, did not thwart Republican gerrymanders.
Other Democratic governors have also been considering moves to redraw their maps, including Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York.
“Other states are violating the rules,” Ms. Hochul said during a news conference on Thursday. “I’m going to look at it closely with Hakeem Jeffries,” she added, referring to the New York representative who is the Democratic leader in the U.S. House.
Gov. Greg Abbott has defended the redistricting push by pointing to a July 7 letter from the Justice Department to Texas arguing that several majority Black and Hispanic districts in Houston and Dallas needed to be redrawn in light of a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit last year. The department said the districts now constitute “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.”
The letter came well after Republicans in the White House began pushing Mr. Abbott and Texas Republicans to engage in the rare mid-decade redistricting effort for purely political reasons. The White House had been quietly pushing for Texas to be “ruthless” in redrawing the maps since the spring, The Times
first reported in June.
The appellate court decision, Petteway v. Galveston County, found that “coalition districts” — where no single minority group predominates, but together minority groups constitute a majority — are not protected by the federal Voting Rights Act. But constitutional law experts said it did not hold that such districts, which are common throughout the country, must be redrawn.
Texas has been defending the 2021 maps in a federal case in El Paso, arguing that race had not been taken into account. Now, Mr. Abbott appears to be changing that position.
“We are no longer compelled to have coalition districts,” Mr. Abbott said in
an interview with a Fox affiliate in Dallas, adding that he wanted to “make sure that we have maps that don’t impose” such districts.
“We will maximize the ability of Texans to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Mr. Abbott said, repeating the line three times in response to different questions about the redrawing.
