The Texas legislature preliminarily approved a redrawn congressional map on Friday that gives Republicans a chance to pick up as many as five congressional seats, fulfilling a brazen political request from Donald Trump to shore up the GOP’s standing before next year’s midterm elections.
The tentative map adoption passed in an 18-11 party-line vote.
To get final approval, the state legislature’s upper chamber will take a vote, which is forecasted to happen this weekend, the Texas Tribune reports. However, a Houston Democratic state senator has plans to delay the final passage.
Senator Carol Alvarado revealed her filibuster plans in a post on social media. “Republicans think they can walk all over us. Today I’m going to kick back,” Alvarado’s post read. “I’ve submitted my intention to filibuster the new congressional maps. Going to be a long night.”
Once the bill is granted final passage, it will be sent to governor Greg Abbott, who is expected to quickly sign it into law. The Texas house of representatives approved the map on Wednesday on an 88-52 party-line vote.
“HB 4 I believe should elect more Republicans to the US Congress,” state senator Phil King, the bill’s sponsor, said on the floor of the senate, referring to the legislation enacting the new map. “I also want you to know, and I can’t emphasize this enough, that I have not reviewed any racial data.”
Over several hours of questioning, Democrats pressed King over the racial demographics of the new districts, seeking any acknowledgment that race played a factor in how the districts were drawn. Any concession would be a significant piece of evidence in expected lawsuits arguing that the new districts diminish the influence of minority voters. King said repeatedly he didn’t look at any racial data.
“There is absolutely no reason to look at racial data when you’re trying to improve political performance,” he said. “The best measure of that is whether people have been voting Republican or Democrat and if you want to draw a map and the goal is political performance, then that’s what you look at.”
The vote comes after California Democrats set a special election for November in which they will ask voters to approve a new congressional map in their state. That map would add up to five seats for Democrats, a move designed to offset the new map in Texas. California governor Gavin Newsom launched that effort after Texas began its push to redraw its maps.
Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional districts. Under the redrawn map, they would be favored in 30 districts. Abbott called a special session last month to draw new maps after Trump requested that he do so.
The new map eliminates Democratic-held districts in Austin, Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and replaces them with Republican ones. It also tweaks the lines of two districts currently held by Democrats in south Texas to make them more friendly to Republicans. Swift lawsuits are expected challenging the new districts under the Voting Rights Act amid allegations the new lines make it harder for voters of color to elect their preferred candidates.
Related: Obama calls California’s redistricting plan ‘a responsible approach’
Lawmakers passed the maps after Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives left the state for two weeks, denying Republicans the necessary quorum to conduct legislative business. The Democrats returned to the state on Monday after California Democrats began moving ahead with a plan to redraw their state’s congressional map.
Even after Democrats returned to Austin, protests continued at the state capitol this week as Republicans pushed the new map through. The efforts were galvanized by Nicole Collier, a Democratic state representative from Fort Worth who refused to sign a “permission slip” necessary to leave the House floor. Collier refused and remained confined to the House floor and her office until Wednesday.
The Texas push set off an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle before next year’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are expected to lose seats in the US House. Republicans currently have a three-seat majority and the president’s party typically performs poorly in a midterm election. Republicans are also expected to redraw the maps in Florida, Ohio, Missouri and potentially Indiana.
