Growth will benefit Tarrant County in redistricting battles

Dave Montgomery
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
August 29, 2010

AUSTIN -- Over the past decade, Tarrant County added about 344,000 people, outpacing many counties across the nation and gaining enough new residents to almost fill a city the size of Arlington.

With just over four months before the 2011 Legislature convenes, that enviable population surge is carrying far-reaching implications as lawmakers prepare for their struggle to reshape legislative and congressional seats based on population changes in the 2010 Census.

Tarrant County's 24 percent increase in population could be enough to boost its clout in the Legislature by expanding its delegation from 10 to 11 seats in the state House of Representatives, experts say.

Moreover, the burgeoning Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan region -- now the fourth-largest in the country -- is in line to get one of the three or four new congressional seats experts expect for Texas.

"We've had so much growth in Tarrant County, we're hoping that one of those new congressional districts ends up in our neck of the woods," said Stephanie Klick, chairwoman of the Tarrant County Republican Party.

Like most other parts of the state, Tarrant County and other areas of North Texas will become targets of fierce partisan maneuvering as Republicans and Democrats compete for maximum advantage with new congressional and legislative lines.

A top goal for Democrats will be to break the all-Republican hold on congressional seats in Tarrant, which they say is the largest county in the nation without bipartisan representation. Republicans, among other things, may try to weaken the political base of Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis, who ousted a longtime Republican incumbent in 2008, in an effort to put Senate District 10 back into the GOP fold, according to strategists in both parties.

Tarrant hearing set

The contrasting perspectives will come into focus next month when two legislative panels conduct a joint hearing in Arlington on Tarrant County redistricting. The Sept. 21 hearing will be held in the council chambers at Arlington City Hall by members of the House Redistricting Committee and the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence.

Rep. Todd Smith, R-Euless, a redistricting committee member who will co-chair the hearing, said the panels will use the forum to gather information for the 2011 Legislature and have "no preconceived notions" going into the hearings. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, another member of the redistricting committee, will also serve on the panel.

Republicans have six of Tarrant's 10 state House seats and all four of the U.S. House seats that include the county. Davis, who became a rising Democratic star with her victory over Kim Brimer two years ago, joined Republicans Jane Nelson of Flower Mound and Chris Harris of Arlington in representing Tarrant County in the state Senate.

In contrast to the Democratic gains in neighboring Dallas County, Tarrant, with a population of 1.7 million, has remained a Republican stronghold. But the past decade has seen strong increases in minorities and a notable slowdown in the growth of whites, leading Democrats to predict that demographic changes may be tilting in their favor.

From 2000 to 2009, the Hispanic population in Tarrant County grew by 67 percent, from 285,290 to 477,354, according to census estimates. The number of African-Americans increased by 34 percent, from 183,885 to 246,731. The growth rate for whites was 6 percent, from 899,762 to 952,609.

As a result of the changes, whites' share of the population in Tarrant County has fallen from 62 percent to 54 percent from 2000 to 2008, according to Census Bureau estimates. The percentage of African-Americans has increased from 12.7 percent to 13.6 percent. Hispanics constituted 26 percent of the population as of 2008, compared with nearly 20 percent in 2000.

Veasey, the only African-American from Tarrant in the state House, said the ethnic changes are notable because of minority growth throughout the county and not just in selected pockets, as in the past.

"It's really amazing," Veasey said. "It's not like it was 10 to 15 years ago, when almost everybody moved into two or three different neighborhoods. Now that growth is all over, as far as African-Americans are concerned."

The ethnic changes will be an integral part of the coming redistricting debate as Hispanics and African-Americans push for greater representation. Hispanic leaders plan to seek the creation of a new minority congressional district that stretches from heavily Hispanic areas in Fort Worth, running eastward along the Interstate 30 corridor into Dallas County to encompass portions of Oak Cliff and south Dallas, said Sergio DeLeon, an Hispanic activist and Precinct 5 constable. "There's a lot of chatter among Hispanic elected officials and Hispanic activists" about the possible district, DeLeon said, adding that proponents will probably begin an organized push after the Nov. 2 general election.

New seat for Tarrant?

Smith said one topic of discussion at next month's hearing will focus on whether Tarrant will get another seat in the state House. Because Texas' population has increased by 18 percent -- from 21 million to 24.8 million by 2009 -- the population of a Texas House district will grow from about 156,955 to about 167,000, according to the Texas Legislative Council.

With an estimated population of 1,789,900 as of 2009, compared with 1,446,219 at the start of the decade, Tarrant County is approaching the point where it may need another district to meet the per-district population standard, but lawmakers won't know for sure until final census figures are released in April, while the Legislature is in session.

"My understanding is we're kind of on the bubble in that regard," Smith said, adding that it appears "somewhere between possible and likely" that Tarrant will get an extra seat.

Just where that seat would be located would undoubtedly intensify the redistricting debate. Some Republicans say that heavy population growth in the suburbs, traditionally regarded as GOP strongholds, raises the likelihood that a new district would be Republican. But Democrats and minority leaders said African-American and Hispanic growth throughout the county would mandate either a minority-dominated district or an ethnically mixed district with a heavy concentration of minorities.

Regardless of its location or partisan makeup, creating another district would touch off a ripple effect spilling out into the rest of Tarrant. "It could wind up changing every single House seat in the county," said Steve Hollern, a former Tarrant County Republican chairman.

Hollern, echoing an assessment of other Republicans as well as some Democratic strategists, said he expects his party to try to reclaim Davis' seat through redistricting. Republicans want to "to get that seat back to strengthen the Republican majority in the Senate," he said, but he added that the effort is "not targeted at Wendy Davis."

Davis' election to the 31-member Senate altered the chamber's makeup to 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats, strengthening Democrats' ability to block legislation.

"I didn't go to the Senate to represent a party, I went to represent people," Davis said in an e-mail last week.

Congressional battle

Democrats have repeatedly vowed to upend the state's last redistricting plan -- engineered in 2003 by then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- which they say systematically diluted African-American and Hispanic voting strength and unfairly gave Republicans control of all four multicounty congressional districts that include Tarrant.

Tarrant County is represented by Republican Reps. Kay Granger of Fort Worth, Michael Burgess of Lewisville, Joe Barton of Arlington and Kenny Marchant of Coppell. Democrats say Tarrant County has lost considerable influence in Washington because its congressional delegation is part of the minority party and has no pull with the Obama administration or leaders of the Democratic majority in Congress.

Fort Worth attorney Art Brender, a former Tarrant County Democratic chairman who participated in a legal challenge to the state's redistricting plan, said he believes Tarrant should have two congressional seats wholly contained in the county, which might be divided between a Democrat and a Republican. "If you have one of each, it's not like having the whole banana, but it's not as bad as having no banana at all," Brender said.

One area that Democrats will target is Burgess' 26th district, which stretches from southeast Fort Worth through Denton County and north to the Oklahoma border. As drawn by the Legislature, critics contend, the district is dominated by white suburbs and rural communities and dilutes the voting power of a large concentration of African-Americans in Fort Worth.

Burgess, however, said he believes that Tarrant County is "well represented" by the current delegation and defends his stewardship of the district. "I'd like to keep the general outline the same," he said.

Other counties in North Texas have also been the beneficiaries of enormous growth, including Collin (61 percent), Denton (52 percent), Ellis (36 percent), Parker (30 percent), Hood (25 percent), and Johnson (24 percent). A notable exception is Dallas County, which, compared with its neighbors, posted relatively modest growth of 10 percent.