Redistricting, Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dumb

Dee is trying to play dumb.

Let me ask a simple question before I start: Who controls the State House, the State Senate, and every statewide elected office in Texas?  

Give up?

It's the Republican Party - and it's been that way since 2003.

So who do you think has been controlling the messy Redistricting process that has been going on for over a year?

I'll give you a hint - it's the same answer as my first question. So I was SHOCKED when I read Rep. Margo's testimony that he provided in the DC Preclearance Case. This is going to get a little insider baseball nerdy here, so bear with me. The DC Preclearance case is acase that will ultimately decide whether Texas violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and discriminated against minorities in our state.We might be the majority in El Paso, but we are still minorities in the state of Texas. 

Here is the link to his written testimony. Careful, its a lot of info:
(https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BxeOfQQnUr_gNzE2MTg3ZDItOWE3Ni00MjgzLThhOTctYWQ5NzUwMWFlZjM4&hl=en_US)
His portion begins on Page 17.  

Aside from using his written testimony to deliver campaign rhetoric - which is just plain ridiculous - he says he had no major input into how HD 78 was drawn.

In fact he points to Chairman Pickett and Rep. Marquez by name as the ones that developed what HD 78 would look like.  

Really Dee?  

Let me see if I understand what he is trying to peddle to people. Dee has been running around El Paso since 2006 saying that he's the most connected guy to the Republican Party in the whole City of El Paso - and those connections meant that he could do more for us than any Democrat... allegedly. 

So now you want us to believe - that you had no role in how your district was re-drawn? When you not only had a majority in the Texas House, but a super-majority.

Give me a break. 

I do believe that Margo isn't smart enough to understand the ins and outs of Redistricting laws. But I do know he's smart enough to figure out who wants to vote for him and who doesn't, regardless of the recent brown make-over.
So let's look as some expert testimony in that same Preclearance Case that might shed some light on who doesn't vote for Dee - and how they conveniently got cut out of HD 78. Here is the link to Dr. J. Morgan Kouser's testimony:
(https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BxeOfQQnUr_gMDcxMWUyYWYtMjk0Zi00NThhLWFlNDUtOTI2NjM3YWJiMGE4&hl=en_US&pli=1)
The portion about HD 78 is on Pg. 95 in Paragraph # 71. Dr. Kouser makes mention earlier in the document that Rep. Margo was not the candidate of choice for Hispanics in either 2008 or 2010. 

Here are the numbers:  2008 - Moody 82.7, Margo 14.2, Collins 3.1; 2010 -Moody 79.3, Margo 20.7 (Tables 12-14).  

So despite Rep. Margo's new found Hispanic roots - he has no appeal whatsoever to Hispanic voters. Those are the facts. 

Well, those darn Hispanics were just too troublesome for Dee's re-election thoughts - so guess what - he cut out as many as he could.  

Check out the maps on Pg. 121 and Pg. 122 (Figures 9A and 9B) of the expert testimony and you will see why HD 78 looks like what it does under the Legislative map.  

That second map shows the population density of Hispanic voters - and the new lines of HD 78 do a pretty good job of carving out the major portions of Hispanic voters in HD 78. Here's a page with a link to what the map looked like prior to Redistricting (http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/member-page/?district=78) - so now you can see the changes that were made by the Legislature. Looks pretty clear what was going on here...Dee was trying to boot all those pesky Hispanics out of HD 78 because they don't vote for him!  And he tries to blame it on who - Democrats - who control absolutely no part of the Legislative process. 

GIVE ME A BREAK!

There is a reason that you haven't heard much from Rep. Margo regarding Redistricting - it's because he doesn't want you to know what's going on and how he was responsible for carving Hispanics out of HD 78. 

He wants you to think about his Hispanic roots instead - he wants you to believe he is an influential Republican - except when it comes to Redistricting of course - in that case he had no say whatsoever.  

Personally I don't believe either. 

Looks like Dee thinks we are Tweedle Dumb.