ustxtxb_obs_1965_06_11_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

TEXAS CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING District The Situation Through Mid-1965 The Situation Under the Legislature’s 1965 Law Incumbent Population % of Ideal Population % of Ideal Population Population 1 Patman 245,942 59% Patman 378,334 91% 2 Brooks 420,402 100% Dowdy 387,794 93% 3 Beckworth 293,942 70% 410,622 99% 4 Roberts 216,371 51% Roberts & Beckworth 411,041 99% 5 Cab ell 951,527 228% Cabe11 417,174 100% 6 Teague 248,149 59% Teague 382,639 92% 7 Dowdy 265,629 63% 417,283 100% 8 Thomas 568,193 136% Thomas 408,479 98% 9 Thompson 498,775 120% Thompson & Brooks 457,092 110% 10 Pickle 353,454 84% Pickle 476,475 114% 11 Poage 322,484 77% Poage 389,958 94% 12 Wright 538,495 129% Wright 438,578 106% 13 Purcell 326,781 78% Purcell 381,829 91% 14 Young 539,262 129% Young 456,742 110% 15 De la Garza 515,716 124% De la Garza 418,183 100% 16 White 573,438 138% White 394,679 95% 17 Burleson 287,889 69% Burleson 376,200 90% 18 Rogers 363,596 87% Rogers 394,582 95% 19 Mahon 424,774 102% Mahon 425,517 102% 20 Gonzalez 687,151 165% Gonzalez 449,303 108% 21 Fisher 262,742 63% Fisher 453,334 109% 22 Casey 674,965 162% Casey 417,396 100% 23 436,447 105% Should Thompson run, he would not be a set-up for Brooks. The Galveston congressman is related to the Moodys and is said by reliable persons to be worth $25 million. On the other hand, if Brooks won, Galveston’s liberalism on race issues would give Brooks an even more secure base for lifetime service in the House and the Speakership to which he aspires. Some Galveston observers believe Brooks should go on and run for the Senate in 1966, leaving Thompson the district. Conservative legislators would desire to get rid of one of the two liberals. Sens. Parkhouse and Crump said to other senators that they would be glad to see one or the other of the congressmen knocked off ; Crump said he’d gladly take responsibility for their having to run against each other. One member of the conference committee admitted to a reporter that the White House had telephoned for him on the final Saturday, but he had not received the message in time to return the call. The switch of Johnson’s home county, Blanco, back into Jake Pickle’s district by resolution the final Monday probably occurred at Johnson’s instance, since Mutscher said the conferees had meant to put Blanco in with Cong. Fisher, contradicting Barnes, who said it had been done by mistake. Fisher is a right-wing Democrat who seldom votes with Johnson. It was reported among legislators that nine votes for repeal of 14-B of Taft-Hartley were assured the President in connection with the Texas congressional redistricting bill, but the source of this report was not learned. The fact that Cong. Wright Patman, Texarkana, whose old district was the second smallest in the state, was given all his old counties plus five more to the south, none of them harboring an incumbent congressman, was taken by some as proof that the President took an interest in Patman’s welfare. However, there was an alternative explanation close at hand. Sen. Bill Patman, Ganado, the congressman’s son, had yielded ground all session as to his own senatorial district, provided only that his colleagues take care to see that his father had no incumbent opposition. Sen. Patman is popular in the Senate, and his representations for his father had effect. The friendliness of the final bill toward Cong. Patman is unmistakable especially in that the counties added to his district did not include either Smith or Gregg, where there is much Republicanism. The price for Patman’s security was Cong. Beckworth’s. The latter congressman was thrown into Ray Roberts’ district, including Gregg and Smith. The question in the new district four, \(Sam end of it will win the next race, the Democratic end-Grayson, Fannin, Collin, Hunt -or the Republican end of Smith and Gregg? In 1960, the counties in the new fourth district favored Kennedy-Johnson over Nixon-Lodge and the Constitution Party by a bare majority of 2,000 out of 104,000 votes cast. Rep. John Allen, Longview, felt Beckworth was disadvantaged in that Patman had been given some of the counties favorable to Beckworth, but Beckworth had been left with the two most conservative ones, Gregg and Smith, which are not likely to support the moderate Beckworth enthusiastically. “They have protected Roberts and Patman,” Allen said. Roberts, of course, is Sen. Hall’s congressman, and Hall was a power in redistricting. Because the figures used by the daily press were based on computations made before the last day’s jugglings, it has not been realized that the legislature’s law permits a range of variation from the smallest to the largest congressional district of 24% from two districts 10% below the ideal population of 416,508 to one 14% above it. The seven districts that were given population 5% or more larger than the ideal The incumbents, respectively, are Thompson-Brooks; Pickle; Wright; Young; Gonzalez; Fisher; but no one in the South Texas district. Only District 21, of these, is clearly rural, but Bexar County \(San ers comprise only about 40% of the new South Texas district. On the other hand, eight districts are 5% or more smaller than the ideal. These, and their incumbents, are northeast Texas, Of these, only White can be said to represent mainly a large city. Rural bias is further perceptible in the law in the way major counties are split off into rurally-dominated districts. Teague’s central-east district of 382,639 persons includes 59,705 from Dallas and 99,917 from Tarrant. Purcell’s north-northwest district gets 64,026 of its 381,829 people by nibbling into the northwest corner of Dallas County. Fisher’s lower west Texas district gets 125,931 of its 453,334 people from Olmos Park and Alamo Heights in north Bexar County. This district runs from a point 15 miles from New Mexico 300 miles to San Antonio, and part of the district opens onto old Mexico. Finally, 111,917 of Bexar County’s south-side voters are run in with the new South Texas district of 436,447 voters, including those of Laredo. Thus San Antonio is stretched westward and southward; a segment of Tarrant County is in a district that runs southward to within five miles of Harris County; Dallas is drawn northwesterly more than 200 miles to the Panhandle’s joint with the Red River and southeasterly into the district that extends to within five miles of Harris County. Harris, however, gets three congressmen all its own, with no “nibbling.” Some city spokesmen say the question these two-way splittings raises is not whether part of an urban county can be joined to a rural area-obviously it has to be in some cases-but whether the surplus of an urban county can itself be divided and put into separate rural districts. By an odd variation of this pattern, one large semi-rural county, Brazoria, was bisected, part of it going into Young’s Corpus-based district reaching way down the coast, the other part into the BrooksThompson district. GOV. JOHN CONNALLY worked actively for the adoption of the conference committee report, cancelling a weekend speech to stay in his office Saturday night. Legislators filed in and out of there during the evening. Dallas legislators were June 11, 1965 13