Okay, Rick Miller, For Starters …..
I told you that last Saturday I went to the Texas Senate Redistricting Hearings. Bubba and His buddy Kyle Longhofer, attorney at law, spoke. They, of course, we were wonderful.
I couldn’t go back today for the House Redistricting Hearings because I had to be in San Antonio by 5:00 and the hearings started at 2:00. Kyle, however, went. I am told by folks who were there that this hearing was a lot more raucous and fun. I don’t know how that could be since I wasn’t there and there are rules in Texas about having fun without me.
To speak at the senate hearing, we filled out one form and submitted it.
Oh, not so such with the House. Lookie here at the picture at the bottom.
That’s the forms just to speak.
Kyle spoke for Fort Bend County and got a standing ovation at the end of his speech. Kyle knows election law like I know hair spray, and, Honey, I know hair spray.
After he spoke, while they were on a break, State Represenative Rick Miller, whose district is gerrymandered so badly that it looks like an octopus on crack and who is a Thug at Large, came up to Kyle along with Rick’s silly wife and confronted him in an attempt to intimidate him. They wanted to know why Kyle didn’t like him and why he spoke out against him. “My husband is a good man,” Mrs. Miller insisted.
No, Trixie, he is not. Rick is mean, hateful and vicious to women , a coward of the worst sort, a reactionary, dishonest, encourages voter fraud, and stood and watched a 70 year old woman get beat up.. And I have to stop to catch my breath before I get wound up again.
Kyle will not be intimidated. No Democrat is intimidated by you. We hold you in contempt because you are a jerk.
Juanita Jean, honey, we stand in awe of you and celebrate your presence on earth, even if they had the gall to have fun without you, not to mention lining up too many forms on the sign in table. Good grief. You just keep on bein’ who you are. We’re all lined up, cheering for you and Bubba and the folks you prod along.
1Just curious. What ARE the forms for? Lessee, plain ol’ white man, plain ol’ white woman, rich white man/woman, poor single woman, mean grannies, form for whoever has to draw a pitcher instead of writing his/her name…..did I miss anything?
Oh, the snickerin’ from Kyle & Bubba, attys at law, would have made the whole attempt at intimidatin’ worth the trip!
2Yeah … what Marge said!! And I’ll take that Mean Ole Granny form.
3JJ, remind me not to piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining. That goes for Bubba, too.
4There was a separate colored form for each of the 14 or so bills pending before the committee. each bill had a separate colored form including a salmon colored form. I ended up filling out four separate forms to object to the maps proposed by AG Abbott and Lt. Gov Dewhurst. The other bills will be ignored and the four bills proposed by Abbott and Dewhurst are the only bills that may be voted on
The other funny thing is that Bubba. chairman Brown and I discussed HD 26, Rick Miller lined up four witnesses to defend HD 26 including Fort Bend GOP chair Mike Gibson. It appears that Miller and the Fort Bend GOP ate worried about HD26. This makes me smile
5Keep fighting, JJ. With the Repugs in charge here in Badgerland, things are rapidly going down the tubes. I’m doing the best I can to change things.
6What (if anything) has happened with the Bruce Fleming gets to vote in person in Texas and by mail in PA case. It has been 8 months
7Sat with Kyle but had to leave before he spoke. Have known him about a decade, mostly online. The fireworks turned out to be mostly sparklers, alas.
The two things I took away from the hearing were: Trey Martinez Fischer is a pit bull, and Garnet Coleman has really lost a lot of weight.
8I’m sitting where I am, in wonder and amazement . Nobody has wanted to “re-district” me in decades. I’m hurt.
Course the reason is simple. The Republicans couldn’t find more “business friendly folks” than The “Democrats” who represent me. I know I have a Republican United States Senator, but I don’t know, or care to know who that may be. So mostly the Repubs mostly just let the Blue Dogs be.
From election to election there for a while, we never knew where to go vote…but once the Repubs got that where they wanted it, they have just let it alone, also.
I wouldn’t know what to say about re-districting. My “Democratic” U.S. House member has been re-elected, without opposition, umteen jillion times. Doesn’t do much, which makes the chemical companies on the ship channel happy. So he keeps running, and people keep voting him back up there, to do nothing again for two more years.
I love politics.
9This guy sounds like a real piece of work — a thug and a bully with a GOP Stepford Wife.
10Just to let you know Texas doesn’t have the monopoly on scumminess: http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/arizona-senators-son-used-homophobic-anti-semetic-language-o
11When I was looking for a seat for the hearing after having been called down to add my profession to all four of the forms that I have completed, I heard someone call me by my screen name for an internet board. That is something that does not happen in normal day to day activities. PDiddie and I met about 9 or so years ago in a meeting for the Houston posters on that board.
One of the more interesting aspects of yesterday’s hearings (at least to me as a law nerd) was the testimony of Jeff Archer who is the top attorney for the Texas Legislative Council (the organization who does the number crunching for all redistricting maps). Archer was not allowed to testify in either of the Federal law suits on the Texas redistricting and it was fun hearing him testify. PDiddie has a good discussion of this on his blog http://brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2013/06/todays-redistricting-hearing.html After hearing Archer’s testimony, I can see why Abbott did not let him testify in either of the two Federal lawsuits on redistricting. Archer does not believe that the Texas legislature’s approval of the interim maps will help in the next round of litigation which was the sole purpose for the special session. Archer’s testimony in effect means that AG Abbott screwed up by having Goodhair call a special session. PDiddie may be correct in his belief that Goodhair and Dewhurst are letting Abbott take the blame if the special session does not have the desired legal results.
Trey Martinez Fischer had fun asking Archer some questions and as a result we did not start the public testimony until 3:30 despite a 2:00 start time for the committee hearing. The next round of litigation will be interesting in that I think that the Democrats have established some good grounds to challenge the interim maps in the next round of redistricting litigation.
12I have a redistricting question. I came across this quote from the Austin Chronicle from the 2001 redistricting fiasco, “each of Texas’ 254 counties is supposed to be either wholly within a single House district or contain at least one complete district.” I don’t know about Fort Bend, but Travis County didn’t contain any complete districts within its borders. It was split into multiple pieces (expected due to population), but all were spread across the state, including bits of multiple counties and with one spreading to the coast and most of the way to the Valley.
So is this a law or just a “rule of thumb”?
Is this not a law? Or is it just not enforced? A cursory search couldn’t find it for me.
Austin Chronicle article: http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2001-04-06/redistricting-2001-texas-house-of-representatives/
13SusanF
I will try to help. The county line rule was mentioned yesterday. That is a state constitution guideline and in order to enforce this guideline, one would have to sue in state court and any ruling would eventually end up with the 9 GOP justices on the Texas supreme court. The county line rule is pretty well ignored since it would get in the way of drawing gerrymandered districts and no one wants to waste their time suing in state court.
Most if not all redistricting litigation is in federal court because the federal issues are the best way to get meaningful relief. This is one reason why the Senate Republicans are fighting to keep President Obama from filling three vacancies at the DC Circuit.
I hope that this helps
14Thanks, Kyle. As someone who lives in a seriously gerrymandered district, I wish the folks who swore to uphold the Texas Constitution would actually do so when it was pointed out that they were not.
It’s getting really hard to find the current district maps on Google. When you do a search, you get the proposed ones, and man, oh man, are there a lot of those!
Kyle, thanks for helping to keep an eye on the Congresscritters.
15This is funny. Bubba, the Fort Bend Democratic Party Chair and I all pointed out that HD 26 is the poster child for GOP gerrymandering. Miller got Mike Gibson (the Fort Bend GOP chair) and three other republicans to come defend HD 26 yesterday. Mike Gibson lied to the committee and told the Committee that HD 26 was a minority majority district. Michael Li in his blog has the facts here and is now citing HD 26 as the poster child for GOP gerrymandering http://txredistricting.org/post/52892791604/communities-of-interest-part-2
Take for example, HD 26 in Fort Bend County. In the San Antonio court’s original interim map, HD 26 was a compact district taking in most of the city of Sugar Land…That resulted in a district with a citizen voting age population (CVAP) that was 16.6% Hispanic, 17.6% African-American, 26.1% Asian, and 38.8% Anglo. ….But as drawn by the Texas Legislature – and incorporated wholesale into the second interim map – the district became an oddly shaped district that splits non-Anglo communities and weaves through Fort Bend County to pick up Anglo neighborhoods….The resulting district is one with a CVAP that is: 14.3% Hispanic, 11.1% African-American, 21.1% Asian, and 52.3% Anglo.
The GOP has to lie about their gerrymandering efforts. I am glad that others are now looking at HD 26 and are realizing that this district is the poster child for GOP gerrymandering.
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