How Texas Republicans’ redistricting radically changed one Tarrant County Senate district

Clara Faulkner has never been to Brownwood. The former Forest Hill mayor and City Council member knows little about the semi-rural city 150 miles away, in the northern reaches of the Texas Hill Country. Brownwood has about 18,800 residents and is known as a manufacturing hub and the home of Howard Payne University. Brownwood Mayor Stephen Haynes, likewise, has never visited Forest Hill, a spartan stretch of residential areas that house about 14,000 people. Strip centers line Interstate 20, with hotels that promise cheaper rates than ones 10 minutes north in downtown Fort Worth. Forest Hill leans Democratic and has a majority population of nonwhite residents. Brownwood, meanwhile, is majority white and votes conservative. Though the two communities have little in common, Texas lawmakers united them under the state Senate district represented by Sen. Beverly Powell, a Burleson Democrat who ended her campaign for reelection as a result of the redistricting.

Senate District 10, one of more than 200 districts in the Legislature and U.S. House that lawmakers redrew, illustrates what the Brennan Center’s Michael Li calls a “defensive gerrymander” — a shoring up of the GOP’s advantage in Texas, which had in recent years flirted with becoming a swing state. Li and other experts say gerrymandering has diluted the voting power of Texas’ nonwhite voters, creating districts that don’t reflect the booming Hispanic and Asian American populations that have fueled Texas’ growth in the last 10 years. The result? The state’s elected officials are largely chosen in low-turnout primaries, and critics say they often don’t represent the needs of the broader community they serve. “There’s a multiracial future for Texas, and Republicans just gerrymandered that away,” Li said.