2003 Texas Redistricting - Redistricting Targeted Democrats

Redistricting Targeted Democrats

The 2003 redistricting targeted ten districts with white Democratic incumbents, avoiding the seven districts with minority Democratic incumbents.

• Max Sandlin (TX-1) was defeated in 2004 by Republican Louie Gohmert.
• Jim Turner (TX-2) did not seek reelection in 2004. His seat was won by Republican Ted Poe.
• Ralph Hall (TX-4) changed his party affiliation to Republican and was reelected in 2004.
• Nick Lampson (TX-9) was moved to the 2nd District as a result of the redistricting and was defeated by Ted Poe. He relocated to the Sugar Land area in 2006 and ran for the seat being vacated by Tom DeLay (who had resigned due to pending conspiracy and money laundering charges). He won election to the historically Republican 22nd district that year, but in 2008 he was defeated by the Republican Pete Olson.
• Lloyd Doggett (TX-10) was moved to the 25th district, created as a narrow strip running from Austin southwest to the Mexican border, and derisively called the "fajita strip" for containing a majority of Hispanics. Doggett won election in the new district. After a Supreme Court ruling found the district boundaries violated the Voting Rights Act, it had to be redrawn for the 2006 election.
• Chet Edwards (TX-11) was moved into the 17th district, which had been made considerably more Republican in its new form. Despite this, the Democrat Edwards was re-elected in 2004, 2006 and 2008. In 2010 he was defeated by the Republican Bill Flores.
• Charlie Stenholm (TX-17) was shifted into the heavily Republican 19th district, and he unsuccessfully ran against that district's Republican incumbent, Randy Neugebauer.
• Martin Frost (TX-24) saw his district split off into several newly drawn Dallas-area districts intended to elect Republicans. He changed his residency to run in the 32nd district and lost to the district's Republican incumbent, Pete Sessions. Frost's old district, in its redrawn form, was won by Kenny Marchant, a Republican state legislator from Carrollton.
• Chris Bell (TX-25) had his district renumbered as the 9th district, which was gerrymandered into a minority-majority district. Bell lost the Democratic primary to the NAACP president Al Green, who easily won the general election.
• Gene Green (TX-29) was reelected in 2004. Of the Democrats affected by redistricting, Green is the only one who won reelection without being shifted to another district or changing parties. He was the only white Democrat left among representatives from the Houston area.

In addition, the redistricting appeared intended to protect the Hispanic Republican, Henry Bonilla of TX-23, who had faced a stiff challenge from conservative Democrat Henry Cuellar in 2002, and to neutralize liberal Democrat Ciro Rodriguez. This was done by putting the two Democrats in the same district and forcing them to run against each other for the Democratic nomination (Cuellar won).

In 2006, however, the Supreme Court ruling required redrawing the boundaries for TX-23. It resulted in a special election, in which Bonilla faced six Democratic candidates and an independent in a jungle primary. He was defeated by the Democrat Ciro Rodriguez in the run-off.