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Redistricting Texas, Hope Springs Voter Contact & Democrats Planning Ahead [1]
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Date: 2025-07-22
It’s interesting to watch how the new leadership in the Democratic Party is looking ahead. On the ground, Hope Springs from Field PAC [dated website] volunteers listen to voters tell us to “Fight like Hell” against the machinations of a corrupt, criminal regime — but they also tell us they don’t see much evidence of that from Washington. I live just outside Washington, so i can’t say i share that conclusion, but from the Hope Springs perspective, i’ve been involved for more than a month with Democratic planning for redistricting in Texas and how we are expected to respond.
This is what happens when you have a history. Almost exactly 4 years ago, Hope Springs volunteers started canvassing in the state legislative districts of Democrats deemed vulnerable because Democratic legislators had come to Washington DC to prevent Republicans from weakening voter protection laws in the state. I can remember meeting with Texas legislators weekly then as we poured over the findings from each week’s Issues Survey on how voters back home where responding to their walkout.
As Democrats are contemplating taking that approach again, we’ve been asked — can you do that again? There’s been special interest in our canvassing with the staff of Democratic legislators, something we did a couple of times in 2021 because we put out robocalls to constituents where the staffers canvassed. I’m not surprised that these Texas Democrats remembered, but i was surprised to be asked about it by staff from Texas Congressmen and the DCCC. Seems to have made an impression.
Of course the Hope Springs volunteers want to help! We are, of course, limited by how many organizers we have in Texas (and where they are located), but as this discussion has evolved there seems to be hope that other organizers can be involved, should this come to pass.
But as i am thinking about this, i am struck by how different the perception from other activists is from the reality of the preparations being made here. I can’t speak, of course, to the work going on outside of our planning, but i know Hope Springs is just a small part in the plan. No doubt other outside groups are being utilized to maximize their skillsets, as well.
I hasn’t been much of a secret, at least in the DC Metro area, where every tidbit is dissected like a new discovery:
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.
The fact that Republicans are being specific about the number of seats expected out of a remap from the ongoing special session in interesting, indeed.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps to create more House seats favorable to his party, part of a broader effort to help the GOP retain control of the chamber in next year’s midterm elections. The president’s directive signals part of the strategy Trump is likely to take to avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House just two years into his presidency. It comes shortly before the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature is scheduled to begin a special session next week during which it will consider new congressional maps to further marginalize Democrats in the state.
Of course, president felon is afraid if Democrats take over the house, as might be expected in midterms for the non-presidential party, he’ll be impeached a (historic) third time. He’s already trying to position himself of a Nobel Peace Prize so that his leadership of the insurrection won’t be the first thing mentioned in the histories of his presidency.
Trump’s team believes Republican voters could be more efficiently distributed throughout the state, given that every House Republican in Texas won in 2024 by double-digit margins or did not have a Democratic opponent. The closest GOP win was Edinburg Rep. Monica De La Cruz's 14-point victory.
Right now
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is leaning on the state Legislature to redraw the maps in a summer special session. The effort bears a striking resemblance to 2003, when Texas Republicans — enjoying unified control in state government after decades in the minority — redrew the state’s congressional districts, resulting in big gains in the 2004 elections.
Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors in Texas on March 1st. We target Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans. The voters we talk to continue to tell us they come away more invested in governance and feel more favorably towards Democrats in general because of our approach.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
At least 100 members must be present for the 150-member Texas House to take action on legislation, so Democrats would need 51 of their 62 members to sign onto the walkout. Each member who walks out would face a fine of $500 a day under rules adopted by the Republican-dominated Texas House after Democrats broke quorum with a walkout in 2021, during the last regular redistricting. That would equal $15,000 per member if Democrats broke quorum for the entire 30-day special session, which begins on July 21. Under the rules, the fines must be paid out of a member’s personal funds and not from campaign money. Democrats in the State Legislature have a long history of using quorum breaks in what have been ultimately unsuccessful attempts to stop congressional gerrymandering by Texas Republicans. Before the 2021 walkout, they fled the state in 2003 to try to thwart a mid-decade redistricting pushed by Representative Tom DeLay, a Texan who was then at the top of Republican leadership in Washington.
Hope Springs volunteers have been down in the (Rio Grande) Valley for the last 3 years — because that’s where the vulnerable seat was (and is). This is exactly where Trump’s political operatives are looking to find 3 of the 5 seats.
Gonzalez’s district — and what happens to the neighboring GOP-held ones — is at the crux of President Donald Trump’s high-risk, high-reward push to get Texas Republicans to redraw their political map. Trump is seeking to avoid the traditional midterm letdown that most incumbent presidents endure and hold onto the House, which the GOP narrowly controls. [...] One region of the state where Republican gains have been steady is the Rio Grande Valley, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico along much of the state’s southern border. The heavily Hispanic region, where many Border Patrol officers live, has rallied around Trump’s tough-on-immigration, populist message. As a result, Gonzalez and the area’s other Democratic congressman, Henry Cuellar, have seen their reelection campaigns get steadily tighter. They are widely speculated to be the two top targets of the new map. The GOP is expected to look to the state’s three biggest cities to find its other Democratic targets. If mapmakers scatter Democratic voters from districts in the Houston, Dallas and Austin areas, they could get to five additional seats.
We’ve been knocking on doors in TX-15 and TX-34 for awhile, and the data we are collecting offers more hope than, perhaps, Republicans understand. Our 2025 questionnaire results look a lot different that they did last year. A LOT, as you compare the table from 2025 to the one from 2024 SMM = Threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid As i’ve walked people through this data, you can begin to see the advantage of almost continuous voter contact. There are issues that are the same from both years, but do those issues favor the incumbent? Hard to see how. Texans aren’t applauding the Reconciliation Bill (which cut Medicare and Medicaid, and threaten the financial stability of Rural Hospitals), or Trump’s Tariffs (iow Taxes) or the fact that Prices haven’t come down, as promised. In fact, i’ve suggested that it doesn’t seem like Trump’s team has even polled Texans down in the Valley. They have looked at the 2024 election results with a blind eye to the future. Then there is this bit of wishful thinking: The current map — drawn in 2021 — has been in litigation for four years, with a federal trial in El Paso concluding in May and a verdict yet to be reached. Whatever map emerges from the special session figures to be no different Like i said above, our participation in whatever comes in the special session is to continue reaching out and listening to voters, walking with Democratic legislative staff and helping constituents connect with them if their legislators have to leave the state. But here’s the thing (which i never thought would have been that important), we continue to register new voters as we canvass. So far, in Texas, we have registered 995 voters while canvassing. And we work very hard at turning out the voters we register in the next election. But i didn’t truly understand the threat this (including voter registration as part of our knocking on doors) represented until the Uncommitted people in Michigan asked us to stop. Finally, Republicans overlook another problem to their scheme:
But in doing so, Republicans face a legal risk on top of their electoral one: that they break up districts required by the Voting Rights Act to have a critical amount of certain minority groups. The goal of the federal law is to enable those communities to elect representatives of their choosing.
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[1] Url:
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