ANNALS OF LAW DRAWING THE LINE Will Tom DeLay’s redistricting in Texas cost him his seat? BY JEFFREY TOOBIN or three days in October of 2003, can be traced to the redistricting fight. Tom DeLay left his duties as ma- Today, his victory in that battle looks jorityF leader of the House of Represen- fragile. On March 1st, the Supreme tatives and worked out of the Texas state Court will hear a challenge to the Texas capitol, in Austin. During the previous congressional map, and the outcome is by year, DeLay had led his Republican col- no means clear. In the first major case to leagues there in an effort to redraw the be heard by the two new Justices, John G. boundaries of the state’s congressional Roberts, Jr., and Samuel A. Alito, Jr., districts. For more than a century, con- the Court will weigh the constitution- gressional redistricting had taken place ality of the Texas plan, which represents once every decade, after the national just one of the partisan gerrymanders census, but the Texas Republicans were that have transformed Congress in recent trying to redraw lines that had been ap- years. The Republican majority in Texas proved just two years earlier. Several and the Bush Justice Department are times during the long days of negotiat- asking the Court to preserve the Texas ing sessions, DeLay personally shuttled plan. But DeLay’s political fortunes have proposed maps among House and Sen- changed so much that, paradoxically, the ate offices in Austin. Once, when report- best thing that could happen to him now ers glimpsed DeLay striding through the may be for the Court to strike down the corridors of the state capitol, they asked plan he created. him about his role in the negotiations. “I’m a Texan trying to get things done,” n cases of extreme partisanship in he said. gerrymandering, it is often difficult Before the end of the month, the Re- toI identify the original sin. The current publicans had pushed their plan through controversy in Texas dates to the period both houses, and it paid off in Novem- just after the 1990 census, when Dem- ber of 2004. The Texas delegation in the ocrats still controlled both houses of the House of Representatives went from sev- Texas legislature. Even though Texas enteen to fifteen in favor of the Demo- was by that time trending strongly Re- crats, to twenty-one to eleven in favor of publican in statewide and Presidential the Republicans. Martin Frost was the races, the Democrats drew district lines third-ranking Democrat in the House that enabled their party to win twenty- when the Republicans eliminated the one seats in the House in 1992, com- district he had represented for twenty-six pared with just nine for the Republi- years. “I knew what DeLay was doing,” cans. By the time of the next census, Frost told me. “I didn’t like it, but he in 2000, the Republicans were under- wasn’t just trying to get me, he was try- standably eager to redress the balance. ing to get as many Dems as possible. I “Republicans had been on the receiving went ahead and ran in one of the other end of what was known as the shrewdest districts. It was almost impossible to gerrymander of the nineteen-nineties,” win, and I didn’t. But I went out with John Cornyn, a former Texas attorney my boots on.” general who is now a U.S. senator, said. The struggle over redistricting “There are those who thought that what amounted to a Promethean display of happened next was payback.” political power by DeLay, and his sub- By 2000, Republicans controlled the sequent downfall has been similarly epic. governorship and the State Senate, but DeLay’s recent travails, which include Democrats still had a majority in the a criminal indictment in Texas last year Texas House. A deadlock between the and his resignation as majority leader, two legislative bodies prevented Texas 32 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 6, 2006 TNY—2006_03_06—PAGE 32—133SC. from adopting any redistricting plan, and Lay’s and Craddick’s idea—to redistrict changed hands, they could have redis- the conflict ended up in federal court. in the middle of a census cycle—had tricted, every two years if they wanted The following year, a three-judge panel, never been attempted in any state. As to, and we didn’t think it was right.” ill-disposed to take sides in a political Cornyn put it, “Everybody who knows Texas law required that two-thirds of fight, ratified a modified version of the Tom knows that he’s a fighter and a the hundred-and-fifty-member body 1991 map, with two new seats awarded competitor, and he saw an opportunity be present in order to conduct legislative to high-growth districts. “The court es- to help the Republicans stay in power in business; the Democrats, who num- sentially carried forward the 1991 Demo- Washington.” bered sixty-two, could stop the legis- cratic gerrymander of Texas, which is in- In the spring of 2003, Texas Repub- lation simply by not showing up. So creasingly problematic, given the over-all licans, who were now dominant in both most of them took off for Oklahoma. Republican tilt of the state,” There was some prece- Samuel Issacharoff, a pro- dent for this kind of ac- fessor at New York Uni- tion in Texas. In 1979, a versity School of Law, told group of liberal state sen- me. “The status-quo ante ators, known as the Killer looked like a distortion.” Bees, fled the state to de- In the 2002 elections, prive the majority of a quo- DeLay set out to give the rum in a dispute over the Texas House a Republican date of the Texas Presi- majority and thus remove dential primary. This time, the last obstacle to full in 2003, the House Dem- Republican control of the ocrats were dubbed the state. That year, he created Killer D’s. two PACs, which raised Laney was on his cot- and spent $3.4 million on ton farm, in the Texas twenty-two races for the panhandle, on May 11th Texas House. The law firm when he and his Demo- of Jack Abramoff, the lob- cratic colleagues decided byist whom DeLay has de- to leave the state for the scribed as one of his “closest Oklahoma town of Ard- and dearest friends,” con- more, just across the bor- tributed twenty-five thou- der. Most of the legislators sand dollars to the cause. travelled from Austin by On October 4, 2002, the bus, but Laney flew in his DeLay PAC known as Tex- private plane, a seven-seat ans for a Republican Ma- Piper Cheyenne. The fol- jority sent a hundred and lowing day, the clerk of the ninety thousand dollars to Texas House issued arrest seven candidates for the warrants for the missing State House. The follow- DeLay’s plan to redistrict mid-decade was unprecedented. politicians, and DeLay’s ing month, all seven were staff decided to find them. elected, and Republicans became the the State House and Senate, proposed On the afternoon of May 12th, a se- majority party in the Texas House. a new congressional map that promised nior aide to DeLay called an official “After the 2000 census, we never to add between five and seven new Re- with the Federal Aviation Adminis- had a chance to vote on a congressio- publicans to the Texas delegation. At the tration and asked the agency to track nal redistricting plan, because the court time, DeLay said that, with fifty-seven the location of tail number N711RD, did it,” Tom Craddick, a close ally of per cent of Texas voters backing Repub- Laney’s plane. The staffer didn’t say DeLay’s, who became Speaker of the licans for Congress, it was only fair that why he wanted the information, and Texas House after the 2002 election, the G.O.P. control more than fifteen of F.A.A. officials later said that they as- told me. “When we took over, we de- the thirty-two seats in the U.S. House. If sumed there was a safety issue involving cided that we ought to do congressio- a mid-census redistricting was necessary the plane. According to a subsequent nal redistricting. If we hadn’t taken con- to align the seats with the popular vote, report by the Inspector General of the trol, we wouldn’t have gone ahead with the Republicans argued, so be it. Department of Homeland Security, a it. Tom pushed to do it.” It was true Pete Laney, the Democrat who pre- DeLay staffer also contacted D.H.S. that a court, and not the legislature, had ceded Craddick as Speaker, helped lead “requesting assistance in determining drawn the congressional maps after the the opposition to the DeLay plan. “We the location of an aircraft believed to 2000 census, but that had also occurred couldn’t believe what they were trying to be overdue.” By the end of the day, the in several other states where the political pull,” he told me. “They were looking to F.A.A. had told DeLay’s staff that local RICHARD THOMPSON branches couldn’t agree on a plan. De- create chaos. Every time the legislature officials had traced the plane to Ard- THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 6, 2006 33 TNY—2006_03_06—PAGE 33—133SC.—LIVE OPI ART R14884 six to eight, and the number of African- Americans from two to three.