Last week the U.S. Census Bureau released its population
estimates for incorporated places across the country, as of July 1, 2008. The Bureau put the City of Houston’s estimated head count at 2,242,193,
up from 1,953,631 in April 2000 when the last official census was taken. This big jump assures we will have the most
interesting redistricting within Houston
in more than 30 years when the 2010 census numbers are released in early
2011. Let me explain.
The last big shakeup in political representation at Houston City Hall came in 1979. As part of a deal with the U.S. Department of
Justice (DOJ), the City was allowed to complete its annexation of Clear Lake
City, over the objections of most residents of that area, only if it broke up
its eight person city council system with all members elected at large. The new
city council would retain five at-large members, but
nine district seats were added. To placate
minority leaders who had pushed for an all district council, the City and DOJ
agreed that when the municipal population, then about 1.6 million, reached 2.1
million, two additional district council seats would be added. Most of us around at the time thought this
trigger would be reached after the 1990 census, and certainly no later than
2000. That did not happen. The collapse of oil and real estate prices
dramatically slowed area population growth in the 1980s, and the City of Houston abandoned its
pattern of annexing adjacent suburban areas.
Consequently, the 1990 census showed that, for the first time in its
history, the City of Houston
hardly grew over the previous ten year period.
Growth did resume within the city in the 1990s, and Kingwood was
forcibly annexed in 1996, but the 2000 census still found the population count
well below the 2.1 million trigger.
With council membership stable for 30 years, city
redistricting has been a pretty tame affair, featuring mostly minor adjustments
to accommodate sitting council members.
The 2011 redistricting will, however, require major surgery across the
city, but especially on the west side, where most new growth has occurred. The insertion of two new districts, each with
about 210,000 residents, into the current map will necessarily ripple across
all the existing nine districts requiring extensive modifications. These unavoidable changed will almost certainly ignite heated political
infighting as various groups and individuals try to use the realignment to
strength their position at City Hall.
Let me give a couple of specific examples of why this could lead to some
bloody infighting.
First, Houston has been a majority-minority city for years, with large Hispanic and African
American populations, plus a diverse set of Asian residents. All these groups, noting that it has been
their population growth that moved the city above 2.1 million, will want the
new districts shaped to maximize their political opportunities. Both blacks and Latinos are surely going to
expect that at least one new district will give voters from their respective
communities the opportunity to elect representatives to City Hall. That can probably be done fairly easily in
the case of African Americans, give their high levels of voting in city
elections, and the tendency of the black vote to coalesce behind credible
candidates from the community.
Hispanics, however, face a tougher situation in using redistricting to
their advantage. Although far larger
that the black population (the City population is about 38% Latino, 25% African
American), the Hispanic vote is much smaller, is more dispersed, and has less
of a tradition of rallying behind a single candidate in city elections. So, while adding a third district African
American voters will likely dominate is doable if the political will is there,
drawing a third Latino district will be a challenge.
Second, the city’s GLBT Caucus
(Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender) has chaffed for years over most of Montrose
being part of District D, which is dominated by African American voters in
south central Houston, while the Heights is mostly in District H which has been
electing Hispanics since the 1990s, as happened last month when Ed Gonzalez
beat the GLBT-endorsed Maverick Welsh. The GLBT and many white progressives would
like to see the Heights and Montrose combined in a single district that is not
tilted toward black or Latino precincts elsewhere in the city. But pulling these neighborhoods out of
existing “minority” districts, will reduce the opportunities for blacks and
Hispanics to increase their clout in a realigned council.
As these cases suggest, this will all be very interesting,
now that we know massive redistricting will have to happen on Houston City
Council in early 2011. And we also now
know that the new redistricting map will have to be pre-cleared with the DOJ
after the Northwest Austin Utility
District v. Holder decision last month.
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