Cutting Up Travis County

Travis Co. is split three ways, and the five-county Austin metro area six ways, in the map carried by Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, and passed Wednesday by the Senate Committee on Jurisprudence. (Supposedly, this map, like any other re-redistricting plan, is DOA for this special session, but Gov. Rick Perry is threatening to call another session as early as next week.) Lloyd Doggett's Dist. 10 would lose most of its Austin Democrats and now stretch all the way to Fort Bend Co.; Southeast Austin would be part of a new snakelike (and vacant) Dist. 25 stretching to McAllen; and the rest of town, including Downtown, would go to Lamar Smith's Dist. 21. To accomplish the miraculous feat of making Austin un-Democratic, the Staples map finely minces the city center; under this plan, Travis Heights, Hyde Park, and Old West Austin would each be split between two congressional districts.