Welcome to the Hot Dish, comfort food for rural America. I'm Heidi
Heitkamp. And I'm Joel Heitkamp. Today we're going to talk about
gerrymandering and redistricting in Texas. It's
a hot button topic right now. Well, it sure is. And if you're
nervous about what's happening, just change the rules. Just
change the rules, Joel. You don't have to go out and work hard to
earn support. You just change the rules and then you win.
That's how it seems to go there. Well,
we're going to have an expert, unlike you and I. His name is Matt
Angle and he's from the Lone Star Project and he's going to be joining me
for a must listen conversation if you're concerned about what's happening
in Texas right now. We're going to learn a lot about this
Texas issue today and I'm excited to get started. You know what, Hyde?
Take it away.
Thanks, Joel. I'm here with Matt Angle, who is
the founder and director of the Lone Star Project, a political research and
strategic communication organization in Texas.
The Lone Star Project works to help individuals, organizations
and the press see beyond the misinformation that is typically
provided by the current Republican state legislature in Texas
and doing really important work nationally right now. Matt,
welcome to the Hot Dish. Happy to be here, Senator. Thank you for having me.
Well, I'm thrilled to have you because this topic is so,
let's say, topical. I've been on many national shows this
weekend, and every one we've been talking about what's happening in Texas
and the inevitable what should the Democrats do about it, not just in
Texas but nationally. So we'll get to that at the end. But
okay, let's start out with the opening question. What's happening in
Texas? Well, what you're seeing in Texas is an assault on
democracy that does go beyond our borders. But in Texas, what
you've got is the governor and the legislature just
cowardly collapsing to the demands of Donald Trump
to create at least five new
districts that Republicans will have in order to
bolster Republicans because of the failed policies of Trump. He
knows that he will lose the control of the house in
2026 unless he rigs the system and he's starting in
Texas trying to deliver five seats. It will go beyond
the Texas border if we don't stop it here or really have a
national response from Democrats. The other thing important to remember
in Texas is that partisan gerrymandering is racial
gerrymandering in Texas. There is only 13
out of 38 districts in which minorities can elect their candidate of
choice, even though Blacks and Hispanics and Asians
together make up over 60% of the Texas population. And
so if you reduce that from 13 down to only
8, then you. It is gross
distortion of not just the politics of Texas, but the racial
makeup of Texas. That's an interesting statistic that I've never
heard, but it does put stuff in a very sharp
contrast. So now that, as I understand it, and correct me if
I'm wrong, the Texas Legislature is meeting to basically
accomplish and do Trump's bidding, led by your
governor, who seems to want to respond
favorably to Trump at every turn of the way. And so where's
the Texas Legislature in this process? And is it likely you'll
be able to stop it in the legislature? Is this a foregone conclusion?
Well, this is where we are today. This morning, actually,
as we're speaking, there's a hearing before the House
Committee on redistricting on the map that they have proposed,
which would decimate minority voting strength in Texas in order
to create five new Republican districts. That hearing will go on for 10
hours. It's the only hearing they've had on the map. They cynically
held seven hearings between the House and the Senate publicly before there
was any map. Texans overwhelmingly, 99%
to 1, opposed them doing anything. But they're relentlessly
moving forward. If there is no disruption, if the
Democrats don't decide to break quorum, then the map
will likely be voted out of the House next week and then would
move to the Senate. Now, Democrats have some filibuster
options in order to delay things in order to build the strong legal record against
the map because it is a overt violation of the Voting Rights Act, as the
Voting Rights Act has been interpreted at least. And also they
have the option to break quorum if they choose to do that in order to
further delay, in order to not just build the record, but I think also
provide some room for the rest of the country and some of the other states
to realize that Texas is just the front in a national
war and that it's important that other Democratic
states start to fight fire with fire. The question that I ask
is, is there a chance that they're being too cute by half
and that this could actually electorally backfire
on them? Well, that's a little bit of wishful thinking by a lot of
Democrats and pundits. I mean, they
protected pretty well all the
districts they currently hold. Now, of the five
that they converted to districts in which
minorities elected their candidate of choice, which are usually Democrats,
into districts controlled by Anglos that will probably elect Republicans.
There's two of those that we have, strong Democratic incumbents, and
they have a good chance of holding on to those. And so rather than getting
five, it could end up being just three. But three is a lot.
And again, even if Democrats are able to hold those districts,
the damage that they will have done to minority voting rights across the state
will remain. I think it's really important that we should
always, always stay focused on the fact that this
isn't about Democrats or Republicans. It's about people's right to vote and right for
representation. And I think you very aptly, I think,
said, you know, this isn't about Democrats or Republicans. This is about taking away and
disenfranchising what is, in fact, a minority majority
in the state of Texas to hang on to political power.
Yeah, and it's, it's disorienting, I think, to the national media a lot of times
to think about things in terms of other than Democrats
versus Republicans or partisan. But it's simple
to say it, but it's a difficult concept for people to get their head around
that in Texas, the method, the process that
Republicans have used in order to gain partisan advantage is
to systematically undermine the voting strength of minority citizens.
And it distorts politics in Texas at every level.
This is not the first time that this has happened in Texas,
right? Correct. The template for this was set back
way back in 2003, when then the
notoriously partisan Tom DeLay, who was a corrupt
Republican leader in Congress, he
bullied the legislature at that time into redrawing
districts in mid decade and also really kind of
pioneered the use of racial gerrymandering to achieve
partisan gains and set the template for the rest of the South. Then the
south saw what DeLay had done in Texas to eliminate at
that time six Democratic seats where minorities had voting
strength. And that method was used in 2011
across the South and in some of the Midwest, and then repeated in
2021. And so if you're really looking at where the page turned
and where Republicans really started using hostility
to minority voters as a political tool to gain voting
strength, it was way back when Tom DeLay reviewed the district's mid
decade in Texas in 2003. Yeah. So one of the questions
I'm sure our listeners have is, you know, what is the likelihood that
this will be stayed or at least kind of judged harshly
by the courts? Well, it's important to keep in mind, had
the courts not overturned the preclearance provisions
of the Voting Rights act, then this map wouldn't see the light of day.
It would never be able to go forward. But given that now there is no
preclearance, then we have to move to a Federal Court to get it enjoined.
There is a good chance or less than 50/50 on anything.
But there is a certainly a more than zero chance of getting into
federal court because there is already a three judge federal court
formed because who just heard complaints against the
current map, which also doesn't fairly represent minorities. And
they heard three weeks of testimony as how the current map is
inadequate. And so if we get back before that court showing that
even that map now has been further diminished, it's gone from 13
districts where minorities have the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice
to only 8. We believe that that court may step in and say
enough's enough. Yeah, it's going to be interesting because right now
you're seeing the governor of California, perhaps Illinois, perhaps
Michigan, saying New York, although New York is a
different situation, saying, look, two can play this
game. And I think there's a lot of people who
have done this for a lot of years like you, who just hate to see
this contagion jump red/blue line and
basically lead to kind of similar tactics in
blue states. But I will tell you that the Democrats that I talk
to, especially the activists, are saying, look, we can't, you know,
bring a knife to a gunfight. We've got to be as aggressive as they are.
I mean, how do you react to what's happening in the dialogue across the country?
Well, it's maddening and it's frustrating because none of us
want a process in which state after
state, there's a distortion of the district lines to help one party
or the other. However, we'll never fix that if we don't
achieve power in order to reform. And so I
think it's very important that Democratic states respond
just as aggressively so that Democrats can get
regain control of the House, gain some leverage to, to bring
reform. The truth of the matter is the high
road's not available to us anymore. You take the high road under
Donald Trump and it's authoritarianism, you'll walk right off a cliff. You gotta
fight on their terms, on their terms,
just as hard. And keeping in mind that, look, the good guys and the bad
guys in this fight are easy to identify. We're the good guys.
We're looking to gain power in order to make reform. They are looking
to gain power to cement in and
consolidate authoritarianism. Yeah. I have a kind
of soft spot in my heart for people who have been fighting this on behalf
of voter rights. And now we see so much
race to the bottom in some way. And I think your
statement about the high roads not available to us, I think that
reflects 90% of what Democrats believe.
Now, this idea, they go low, we go high.
That's not where people are anymore in the Democratic political
party. Yeah. If there's to be a high road, we're going to have to gain
power and build it. Yeah. Because the Republicans have torn it to pieces.
Yeah. Well, is there any Republicans who
are nervous about this in Texas? One of the most
startling things about this, I mean, I'm proud
Texan and Texas politicians over the years
have been fiercely independent, whether they're Democrat or
Republican, and, and been jealously protective of their
constituents. That's not the breed of Texas Republican
anymore. They are totally submissive to Donald Trump.
There's no Texas Republican Party now. It's a Trump Party in Texas.
Governor Abbott and the Republican leadership in Texas,
they took a knee before they saw a map. They didn't even draw
the map. It was delivered to them from a Washington operative.
And so it's startling and disappointing as a Texan to
see any leader, I don't care what party there is, so
willfully submit to a stronger voice. I mean, for
goodness sake, way back in the day, you know, Congressman, you
know, Jim Wright and Jake Pickle and, and Jack Brooks, they fought with
LBJ. Texas Republicans fought with Ronald Reagan. These
guys can't make a fist no matter how hard they clinch.
So one final question, Matt. How do you think this will affect a rural
voter? Not just a minority voter, but a rural voter? Again,
one of the more frustrating things is how much damage that the Trump
agenda and redistricting has done to rural Texas.
I mean, rural Texas has real needs as it relates to especially health
care and to schools. I mean, we're having rural hospitals
close across the rural parts of Texas. And then of
course, rural school districts really are the
heartbeat of, a lot of times, of communities. And
you've seen the most extreme
anti-public school forces take control in Texas. And again,
these cuts to Medicaid aren't just going to affect
people in the cities. They're going to drastically impact
and harm rural communities. And hospitals, a lot of times, hospitals in
rural Texas are the biggest employers. They're closing down. But listen,
Matt, this is gonna go on. We're in middle of it right now.
Can you promise me, you'll come back and talk to the folks who listen to
the Hot Dish about what's happening and, you know, keep us posted
on your work and the people who care about voting
rights in Texas, their work to preserve
voting rights for all Texans, not just those who vote
Republican. Yes, ma', am, I certainly will. And I'm so grateful
that you're shining a light on this and letting the rest of the country know
about the big fight that's happening in Texas. The big fight in Texas, as
you have so eloquently said, is not going to stay in
Texas. What happens in Texas is going to creep out across
the country. And the hope is that it can be stopped in
Texas so that we can get back to a more legal
process for redistricting. 100% agree. And again,
thank you. Okay, thanks so much, Matt, for joining us on the Hot
dish.
You know, Joel, the one thing that I think is problematic
in Texas is they're seeing in real time what these
indiscriminate snatching up of people
in the state of Texas and what it means to the economy. I think there's
still some broad based support for deporting people
who are bad actors in this country, people who entered
illegally. But I think there's a whole lot of people who aren't really happy
about what's happening. And it's not just in states like Texas. It's
all over the region. And, you know, you have a really interesting story
about a young woman that you and I both know who is
Norwegian, who somehow got into this whole
problem of people just kind of walking up and saying,
get in the car. Can you imagine what you would feel
if somebody did that to somebody really close to you?
In this particular case that we're talking about, this individual tans
and they get incredibly dark. I know I've known
this individual all of her life. And so
you can be Norwegian and tan. But the fact
of the matter is, they were targeting her because of
her color. They were. And
this has got to stop. And it's going to take
Republicans in Congress to make it stop because Stephen Miller
is putting a criteria out there of how many
people that you have to have per day, per week.
It's like they're deer hunting, for Christ's sake. I mean, it's, it's
repulsive, Heidi. It just is. And it is. I want everybody to think about if
you were a woman and this happened to you. Not that, you know,
I'm playing that card, but I think it doubles down in
the scary factor. Well, it does. I mean, it absolutely
does. And it seems as though part of the strategy
here was to get this individual alone, you know, to
make sure that this individual was alone. And so, you
know, luckily, there were others that, that jumped to her
defense. But, you know, I don't want to go into too many
details because basically she's asked me not to
out of fear for her child. I mean, that's how scary it is
for these folks, and they're going to have to live with that the rest of
their life. And so I just have to say this.
If you're so tough, if you're so tough that you can go up
to a woman and scare the hell out of her that way and affect her
life for the rest of her life, then why the hell can't
you wear something that identifies who you are? Why do you have to wear a
mask? Why do you have to sit there and hide that supposed badge
you have? How are they supposed to know? I mean, how are they
supposed to know whether or not somebody's accosting them to rape
them, to steal them for - I mean, this is repulsive.
It's disgusting. But I'll tell you what, they're affecting
real people's lives, Heidi, and it's got us ticked off. And there is going
to be trauma that these people will experience every time someone
approaches them, every time someone comes up to them. And just to add
a little bit of detail so people understand there was just
an approach; she said, I'm an American citizen. Who
are you? No attempt to identify themselves. And then
insisting that she get in a car. And right now, Joel,
think about this. If you were a perpetrator, if you
were a rapist, wouldn't you put on a
mask and pretend you were whoever and say, get in the car?
Well, and that's how scary it can be. Complete utter strangers walking
up. When you hear some of this stuff firsthand, it just makes you shake
your head. And just because someone is tan, I mean, literally
because they're tan, they want their federal ID, as it was
called. And it just, it's repulsive. It's disgusting. It
shouldn't take the threat of attorneys, no identification.
It's not the America that I grew up in. It's the America clearly
we're in today or being allowed to be today. But,
you know, imagine how scared she was. I mean, you and I raised daughters,
you know, we know, imagine how scared they would have been.
And it's not the America that we grew up in. It's not the America that
we want to live in. And you know, no one wants people here who have
committed heinous crimes. But this idea, you know, the promise was,
and I think people believed him, that we were only going to
deport the worst of the worst. Guess what? You know, when you look
at the numbers, that's not going to get them to the numbers they need.
And so today another story in social media
about a guy who is a researcher researching
basically a cure for Lyme disease. He's
Asian and lives in the country on a green card,
comes back into the country and he was basically disappeared for a
week coming into the country and his family,
they don't know where he is. And at a minimum, they should be
required to give people at least one phone call and connect with
one person to tell people where they are. And they're not even doing that.
Yeah, "at a minimum," I mean, give me a break! At a minimum, they
should be able to be held to the same accountability that
the Constitution holds all of us. And in the good news category,
when you look at that polling, the vast majority of Americans
think you shouldn't be able to do this without an independent third
party looking at it. You know, there's no level of accountability
which gets to this redistricting issue in Texas,
which is, you know, they can sense that the grip,
the, that, you know, that this so called mandate is slipping away,
that this isn't going to be a favorable midterm. And
so now they've got to rig the rules. And so all of the people out
there are saying, when is going, when are we going to see a level of
accountability or at least pushback? Well, number one,
the first thing that I would say is quit expecting it from the President. He's
a lame duck. You may think that he can be reasoned with. I don't
think that's true. We have got to hold members of Congress
accountable. We have got to have some level of
accountability. And so this redistricting gets
really, really significant and the midterms get significant. But
again, this is a guy who doesn't really care about
legitimate constitutional process. If I were, and
understand what we're really talking about here is the electoral College, I get
that. But if I was the Governor of California, of Illinois, of
Pennsylvania, of Kentucky, if I were any one of those,
I would look at my staff right now and I'd say, draw me a
plan, draw me a plan. Call it plan A, call plan B.
But it's going to have my state gerrymandered. It's going to have
my state exactly what they don't want to see.
And then I would get on a plane, I'd go to the White House, I'd
go to all those little smart butts that they have,
and I'd say, look, go ahead and do it in Texas. Here's what we're going
to do in California. Here's what we're going to do in Illinois. Here's what we're
going to do in states that are Blue states, where we control them. Now, let's
see how you do. Because a lot of those states have a lot of
congressmen in them. And so you know what's going to happen
then. Heidi is the Michelle Fischbach
in District 7 of Minnesota, which had voted
Democrats at times with Colin Peterson. You start
redistricting her a little bit, putting in this or that, draw a
straight line towards the Twin Cities, and she's going to start
crying, she's going to start whining, and she's gonna go to the White House and
say, you just cost me my seat. Don't do this. You need me. And so
two can play that damn game. Well, I think that's what basically
those governors are saying, that they are not gonna let this stand.
That if what? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And
it's a race to the bottom, Joel. This is all a race to the
bottom because we shouldn't have partisan
gerrymandering. We should have legitimate - I'm for just, just
crank up the old AI and let the AI, you know, plug in a couple
parameters and let AI redistrict, because that is
going to make more sense than what's happening right now. Well, and I
can tell you this on a small, small, small scale. I got
gerrymandered when I was in the legislature. Yeah, you did.
It's a fun story. Yeah, I did. I ended up having to run against
a fellow Democratic senator. And, you know, it didn't exactly
make for hugs and kisses all the time, but these guys
gerrymandered me into my district. They didn't
realize where I lived, and so they kept me in the
district that I wanted to be in. It was like,
can't you read a map? Or at least, can't you do the homework if you're
going to be that big of jerks and find out where I live? And you
know what? I still won. So there. That's the other point, Joel.
When they're in charge of the rules, you need to figure out how you can
still convince people that the time has come to
be hold people accountable. Well, my brand of politics
and public policy has always been the same. You know,
whatever you shall do to me, it's coming back tenfold. I don't know if
that's in the Bible, I doubt it is. But, I mean, here's, here's my
case. If Governor Abbott, who is one of the most evil
men I think there is on this planet, if that man does what he
does, then by God, Ken Martin and others better
have a plan B because that's what they're hired to do. Yeah, I
have no doubt about it. Well, anyway, this is a really important issue, one we're
going to be covering, and it's really important to our mission here at One
Country. And it's something we need to not talk about just
this time, but stay on top of as we head into the
Midterms.
Well, listen, I think that's a wrap for us in this
episode. Joel, if you're around, let's keep talking about
these issues that are important to rural America. Keep talking about what's
happening with the rural economy, how
various policies are going to affect the rural economy.
We'll be on it on a regular basis. You know, and you can email
us your thoughts. Our email address is
podcast@onecountryproject.org. And to
keep up with everything One Country is doing between these podcast
episodes, be sure to follow us on Bluesky and
Substack. Thank you for joining us today on the Hot Dish, which is brought to
you by One Country Project, making sure the voices of the rest of us
are heard in Washington. Learn
more at onecountryproject.org. And we're going to be back in two
weeks with more Hot Dish, comfort food for rural America.