BUILDING ON A SHAKY FOUNDATION: COUNTY REDISTRICTING

By Juan Montoya
A cursory glance at the configuration of the county's commissioners' precincts will immediately show the average viewer that – despite the popular belief – size really doesn't matter.
Put another way, it's not the size or shape of the dog in the fight, it's actually the number of people in the district.
Precinct 3, which covers the larges area also encompasses the largest section, also contains the largest sparsely-populated areas of the northeast abutting Willacy county to the north. And Precinct 4, the second-largest in area, runs west of Brownsville along the Rio Grande towards Bluetown, along the Hidalgo County line, and then turns east until it meets the Precinct 3 boundaries.
Precinct 2 is nestled between precinct 4 on the west, 3 on the north, and 1 on the southeast, and the river on the south. Precinct 1 abuts 2 and 3 on the north, the river on the south, and then veers off east to the Gulf of Mexico, jumps over the jetties and then takes in South Padre Island all the way to the Willacy County line .
Why is South Padre Island bunched up with Southmost, La Buena Vida, Portway Acres and the poorest Brownsville barrios?
The lines were drawn during the last redistricting in 2000, said Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos. At that time, he said that the commissioners were not trying for numerical parity among the precincts, but rather, to assure that they would get political support from the areas they included in their precinct boundaries.
Past commissioners sometimes tried to take in territory they believed would gain them support, or exclude areas where their opponents lived, Cascos said.
The 2000 precinct map that is being used now was designed that way, Cascos said.
The other reason for revising the precinct map, Cascos told an interviewer, is to eliminate a carryover from what he referred to asgerrymandering done in past decades.
"Commissioner (David) Garza and I voted against it. We were not for working out (precinct lines) based on who lives where," he said.
Garza is the San Benito-based commissioner for Precinct 3.
When the daily tried to interview him, Garza was unavailable.
That's very convenient because it was Garza who convinced then-Precinct 1 commissioner Pete Benavides to take in the silk-stocking precincts in the island to dilute the Republican vote that – combined with the conservative vote in Treasure Hills in Harlingen – had in the past elected at least one Republican to the commission, the late James Matz.
Garza, no political lightweight, could vote against the redistricting knowing that the majority on the commission would vote for it while his negative vote would only conceal the fact that he had cut a backroom deal to assure his re-election.
Gerrymandering? Well, yes. Politicians padding their political nests? Well, yes.
Building on a shaky gerrymandered foundation? Well, yes.
Hold on for another 10 years.