Loon Star State: Gerrymandering in Texas

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Ben Sargent, a bald, older white man with a bushy white beard is dressed in a suit and red bowtie, with his artistic tools, including pens, in front of him.

Ben Sargent

In the latest Loon Star State, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ben Sargent takes on the Texas GOP’s practice of gerrymandering, which has been repeatedly found discriminatory against racial minorities.

The Supreme Court decided Monday that it would consider a Wisconsin redistricting case that raises the question of whether voting maps drawn to favor a political party are constitutional. The result could have huge implications for Texas.

Maps that favor a political party have historically been found constitutional by federal courts. Districts that limit the influence of racial minorities, though, have repeatedly been blocked. The Wisconsin case could limit the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature’s ability to carve up odd-shaped districts that quarantine Democratic voters.

But before the Supreme Court takes up that case in October, a federal court in San Antonio will consider Texas’ congressional and state House maps in July. Judges have said the maps are unconstitutional because they were drawn to dilute minority voters.

This cartoon appears in the June 2017 issue of the Texas Observer. Read more from the issue or become a member now to see our reporting before it’s published online. To see more political cartoons, visit our Loon Star State section.

is the Texas Observer's longtime cartoonist. He launched his career drawing editorial cartoons for the Austin American-Statesman in 1974. He was born in Amarillo into a newspaper family and learned the printing trade from age 12 and started working for the local daily as a proof runner at 14. He attended Amarillo College and received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 1970. Sargent won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1982. He has also received awards from Women in Communications, Inc., Common Cause of Texas, and Cox Newspapers. He is the author of Texas Statehouse Blues (1980) and Big Brother Blues (1984).

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