| Texas's at-large congressional district | |
|---|---|
| Obsolete district | |
| Created | 1870 1910 1930 1950 1960 |
| Eliminated | 1875 1919 1935 1959 1967 |
| Years active | 1873–1875 1913–1919 1933–1935 1953–1959 1963–1967 |
Texas has had at-large congressional seats at various times in its history. It was often the case when the state received new congressional seats as a result of reapportionment, that it would have a representative elected from an at-large seat, voted on by all voters in the state. This enabled the legislature, which was dominated by legislators from rural districts, to postpone re-districting that would reduce their power by apportioning districts to recognize the increased population and economic power of the developing major cities.
YouTube Encyclopedic
-
1/3Views:980 3772 4501 228
-
Congressional Elections: Crash Course Government and Politics #6
-
Beyond the Presidential Election: What to expect in the House and Senate
-
Bleeding Kansas (The Kansas-Nebraska Act and Its Consequences)
Transcription
Hi, I'm Craig and this is Crash Course Government and Politics, and today we're going to talk about what is, if you ask the general public, the most important part of politics: elections. If you ask me, it's hair styles. Look at Martin Van Buren's sideburns, how could he not be elected? Americans are kind of obsessed with elections, I mean when this was being recorded in early 2015, television, news and the internet were already talking about who would be Democrat and Republican candidates for president in 2016. And many of the candidates have unofficially been campaigning for years. I've been campaigning; your grandma's been campaigning. Presidential elections are exciting and you can gamble on them. Is that legal, can you gamble on them, Stan? Anyway, why we're so obsessed with them is a topic for another day. Right now I'm gonna tell you that the fixation on the presidential elections is wrong, but not because the president doesn't matter. No, today we're gonna look at the elections of the people that are supposed to matter the most, Congress. Constitutionally at least, Congress is the most important branch of government because it is the one that is supposed to be the most responsive to the people. One of the main reasons it's so responsive, at least in theory, is the frequency of elections. If a politician has to run for office often, he or she, because unlike the president we have women serving in Congress, kind of has to pay attention to what the constituents want, a little bit, maybe. By now, I'm sure that most of you have memorized the Constitution, so you recognize that despite their importance in the way we discuss politics, elections aren't really a big feature of the Constitution. Except of course for the ridiculously complex electoral college system for choosing the president, which we don't even want to think about for a few episodes. In fact, here's what the Constitution says about Congressional Elections in Article 1 Section 2: "The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature." So the Constitution does establish that the whole of the house is up for election every 2 years, and 1/3 of the senate is too, but mainly it leaves the scheduling and rules of elections up to the states. The actual rules of elections, like when the polls are open and where they actually are, as well as the registration requirements, are pretty much up to the states, subject to some federal election law. If you really want to know the rules in your state, I'm sure that someone at the Board of Elections, will be happy to explain them to you. Really, you should give them a call; they're very, very lonely. In general though, here's what we can say about American elections. First stating the super obvious, in order to serve in congress, you need to win an election. In the House of Representatives, each election district chooses a single representative, which is why we call them single-member districts. The number of districts is determined by the Census, which happens every 10 years, and which means that elections ending in zeros are super important, for reasons that I'll explain in greater detail in a future episode. It's because of gerrymandering. The Senate is much easier to figure out because both of the state Senators are elected by the entire state. It's as if the state itself were a single district, which is true for states like Wyoming, which are so unpopulated as to have only 1 representative. Sometimes these elections are called at large elections. Before the election ever happens, you need candidates. How candidates are chosen differs from state to state, but usually it has something to do with political parties, although it doesn't have to. Why are things so complicated?! What we can say is that candidates, or at least good candidates, usually have certain characteristics. Sorry America. First off, if you are gonna run for office, you should have an unblemished record, free of, oh I don't know, felony convictions or sex scandals, except maybe in Louisiana or New York. This might lead to some pretty bland candidates or people who are so calculating that they have no skeletons in their closet, but we Americans are a moral people and like our candidates to reflect our ideals rather than our reality. The second characteristic that a candidate must possess is the ability to raise money. Now some candidates are billionaires and can finance their own campaigns. But most billionaires have better things to do: buying yachts, making even more money, building money forts, buying more yachts, so they don't have time to run for office. But most candidates get their money for their campaigns by asking for it. The ability to raise money is key, especially now, because running for office is expensive. Can I get a how expensive is it? "How expensive is it?!" Well, so expensive that the prices of elections continually rises and in 2012 winners of House races spent nearly 2 million each. Senate winners spent more than 10 million. By the time this episode airs, I'm sure the numbers will be much higher like a gajillion billion million. Money is important in winning an election, but even more important, statistically, is already being in Congress. Let's go to the Thought Bubble. The person holding an office who runs for that office again is called the incumbent and has a big advantage over any challenger. This is according to political scientists who, being almost as bad at naming things as historians, refer to this as incumbency advantage. There are a number of reasons why incumbents tend to hold onto their seats in congress, if they want to. The first is that a sitting congressman has a record to run on, which we hope includes some legislative accomplishments, although for the past few Congresses, these don't seem to matter. The record might include case work, which is providing direct services to constituents. This is usually done by congressional staffers and includes things like answering questions about how to get certain government benefits or writing recommendation letters to West Point. Congressmen can also provide jobs to constituents, which is usually a good way to get them to vote for you. These are either government jobs, kind of rare these days, called patronage or indirect employment through government contracts for programs within a Congressman's district. These programs are called earmarks or pork barrel programs, and they are much less common now because Congress has decided not to use them any more, sort of. The second advantage that incumbents have is that they have a record of winning elections, which if you think about it, is pretty obvious. Being a proven winner makes it easier for a congressmen to raise money, which helps them win, and long term incumbents tend to be more powerful in Congress which makes it even easier for them to raise money and win. The Constitution give incumbents one structural advantage too. Each elected congressman is allowed $100,000 and free postage to send out election materials. This is called the franking privilege. It's not so clear how great an advantage this is in the age of the internet, but at least according to the book The Victory Lab, direct mail from candidates can be surprisingly effective. How real is this incumbency advantage? Well if you look at the numbers, it seems pretty darn real. Over the past 60 years, almost 90% of members of The House of Representatives got re-elected. The Senate has been even more volatile, but even at the low point in 1980 more than 50% of sitting senators got to keep their jobs. Thanks, Thought Bubble. You're so great. So those are some of the features of congressional elections. Now, if you'll permit me to get a little politically sciencey, I'd like to try to explain why elections are so important to the way that Congressmen and Senators do their jobs. In 1974, political scientist David Mayhew published a book in which he described something he called "The Electoral Connection." This was the idea that Congressmen were primarily motivated by the desire to get re-elected, which intuitively makes a lot of sense, even though I'm not sure what evidence he had for this conclusion. Used to be able to get away with that kind of thing I guess, clearly David may-not-hew to the rules of evidence, pun [rim shot], high five, no. Anyway Mayhew's research methodology isn't as important as his idea itself because The Electoral Connection provides a frame work for understanding congressman's activities. Mayhew divided representatives' behaviors and activities into three categories. The first is advertising; congressmen work to develop their personal brand so that they are recognizable to voters. Al D'Amato used to be know in New York as Senator Pothole, because he was able to bring home so much pork that he could actually fix New York's streets. Not by filling them with pork, money, its money, remember pork barrel spending? The second activity is credit claiming; Congressmen get things done so that they can say they got them done. A lot of case work and especially pork barrel spending are done in the name of credit claiming. Related to credit claiming, but slightly different, is position taking. This means making a public judgmental statement on something likely to be of interest to voters. Senators can do this through filibusters. Representatives can't filibuster, but they can hold hearings, publicly supporting a hearing is a way of associating yourself with an idea without having to actually try to pass legislation. And of course they can go on the TV, especially on Sunday talk shows. What's a TV, who even watches TV? Now the idea of The Electoral Connection doesn't explain every action a member of Congress takes; sometimes they actually make laws to benefit the public good or maybe solve problems, huh, what an idea! But Mayhew's idea gives us a way of thinking about Congressional activity, an analytical lens that connects what Congressmen actually do with how most of us understand Congressmen, through elections. So the next time you see a Congressmen call for a hearing on a supposed horrible scandal or read about a Senator threatening to filibuster a policy that may have significant popular support, ask yourself, "Is this Representative claiming credit or taking a position, and how will this build their brand?" In other words: what's the electoral connection and how will whatever they're doing help them get elected? This might feel a little cynical, but the reality is Mayhew's thesis often seems to fit with today's politics. Thanks for watching, see you next week. Vote for me; I'm on the TV. I'm not -- I'm on the YouTube. Crash Course: Government and Politics is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios. Support for Crash Course US Government comes from Voqal. Voqal supports nonprofits that use technology and media to advance social equity. Learn more about their mission and initiatives at Voqal.org. Crash Course is made by all of these nice people. Thanks for watching. That guy isn't nice.
History of at-large seats
From its admission to the Union in 1845, Texas has had single-member congressional districts; the first congressional delegation consisted of two House members from single-member districts. This remained the case until after the Civil War and Reconstruction. In 1869 Texas was awarded four seats and two more as a result of the 1870 census. In 1870, the two new seats were designated as at-Large and were elected statewide. Each citizen voted for three Members of Congress (one from their district and two statewide). By the elections of 1874, the legislature still delayed redistricting the state into six single-member districts, although the districts were of unequal populations.
The Texas Constitution of 1876 required that the Legislature pass a redistricting plan during the first session after the publication of the decennial national census of the population. But, the Texas legislature, like others across the country, sometimes did not follow through on this obligation. The rural-dominated legislature had little taste for giving up power.[1]
After the 1880 census, Texas had the largest percentage gain in its congressional apportionment, from 6 members to 11. The legislature defined 11 single-member districts for the 1882 elections. When Texas received additional congressional seats as a result of the 1890 census and 1900 census, it quickly accomplished redistricting to have equal populations in single- member districts.
After the 1910 census, Texas received two additional seats. Rather than redistrict, it added these as at-large seats. They remained at-large seats until shortly before the 1918 elections. The legislature decided to redraw the state's 18 districts almost at the end of the decade in an effort to punish Rep. A. Jeff McLemore of Houston for his opposition to President Woodrow Wilson (a fellow-Democrat) based on Wilson's decision to seek U.S entry into World War I. McLemore and fellow Houstonians Daniel E. Garrett (also an at-large congressman) and Joe H. Eagle were all drawn into the 8th congressional district.[2]
As Texas received no additional seats until 1931, it had no need to redistrict. In 1931, three more seats were allotted to Texas; the legislature waited until 1933 to redraw the districting plan. "This resulted in the under-representation of the people in those districts where population grew faster than the rest of the state. The failure to redistrict favored the rural areas at the expense of Texas's growing urban centers. The latter's faster population growth meant they deserved additional seats in the state Legislature and the U.S. Congress."[3]
Voters amend the Constitution
The great imbalance in representation between declining rural populations and growing urban interests that had developed over the decades finally resulted in the voters adopting a state constitutional amendment in 1948 that gave the Legislature a deadline to enact a redistricting plan as specified under the original Constitution. The amendment provided that, if in the first legislative session after the publication of the decennial census of the population a redistricting plan was not adopted, the responsibility passed to a newly formed board, the Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB). The LRB is composed of the Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the House, Attorney General, Comptroller of Public Accounts, and Commissioner of the General Land Office. "The prospect of the LRB determining district boundaries represented a significant incentive to the Legislature to seriously engage its redistricting obligation, as a LRB-authored plan would diminish significantly lawmakers' control over their own reelection fates."[3]
The next time that Texas received additional seats in Congress was as a result of the 1950 census, in which Texas gained one additional seat. That seat remained at-large throughout the decade; the legislature finally adopted the next redistricting plan in time for the 1958 general election. In 1960, Texas received one more member; again, the state legislature did not redraw the seats. .
Equal population—the courts act
The Apportionment Clause of Section 2, Article I, of the United States Constitution, together with the amendment to that section made by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, requires seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to be apportioned among the states according to the "whole number of persons in each State" and to be elected "by the People of the several States." These provisions have been construed by the United States Supreme Court to require not only that congressional seats be divided among the states according to population, but also that congressional districts within a state be drawn according to population.[4]
In the 1964 case of Reynolds v. Sims, the United States Supreme Court determined that the general basis of apportionment should be "one person, one vote."[5] This rule means that electoral districts, within reasonable bounds, must be equal in population according to the most recent census so that each person's vote is equally weighted. This holding was applied explicitly to congressional districts by the Supreme Court in the 1964 case of Wesberry v. Sanders.
In Bush v. Martin, plaintiffs from two congressional districts asserted that, in the round, those in Texas were unconstitutional. The Federal District Court in Houston held Texas' Congressional Districting act to be such and stated that the Texas Legislature must redraw them in compliance with Wesberry v. Sanders. Bush v. Martin, 224 F. Supp. 499 (S.D. Tex. 1963), affirmed, 376 U.S. 222 (1964).
The three-judge Federal District Court found that the population disparity among Texas congressional districts—ranging from 216,371 to 951,527—was "indeed spectacular." It noted that marked under-representation was "not surprisingly" found in metropolitan districts. Although Texas boasted a total of 254 counties, more than half of the population of the state was living in only eighteen counties; fifteen areas in the state qualified for the classification of "metropolitan" according to US Census Bureau standards.
During the 1965 legislative session, the state legislature passed a plan on May 31, 1965, realigning the state's 23 congressional districts into single-member districts.[6] Governor John Connally signed the bill allowing the new districts to take effect for the 1966 elections.
Through most of the 20th century, until after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, another kind of under-representation was enforced in Texas. The Texas legislature passed a poll tax in 1901, which had to be paid by people wanting to register to vote. It was a barrier to voter registration for many minorities and poor whites, as they often had little cash to spend. After this, voter rolls declined dramatically. Another way Texas Democrats kept power was to establish white primaries. In what essentially became a one-party Democratic state after minorities were disenfranchised, Texas said that only whites could vote in primaries - effectively the only competitive races.
List of members representing the district
1873 – 1875
From 1873 to 1875, Texas elected two members at-large, as well as electing others from districts.
| Seat A | Seat B | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Years | Cong ress |
Member | Party | Electoral history | Member | Party | Electoral history | ||
| March 4, 1873 – March 3, 1875 |
43rd |  Roger Q. Mills (Corsicana) |
Democratic | Elected in 1872. Redistricted to the 4th district. |
 Asa H. Willie (Galveston) |
Democratic | Elected in 1872. Retired. | ||
1913 – 1919
Texas re-established an at-large seat in 1913; it elected two members at-large following the 1910 United States census, as well as electing others from districts until 1919.
| Years | Cong ress |
Seat A | Seat B | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member | Party | Electoral history | Member | Party | Electoral history | ||||
| March 4, 1913 – March 3, 1915 |
63rd |  Daniel E. Garrett (Houston) |
Democratic | Elected in 1912. Lost renomination. |
 Hatton W. Sumners (Dallas) |
Democratic | Elected in 1912. Re-elected in the 5th district. | ||
| March 4, 1915 – March 3, 1917 |
64th |  James H. Davis (Sulphur Springs) |
Democratic | Elected in 1914. Lost renomination. |
 A. Jeff McLemore (Houston) |
Democratic | Elected in 1914. Re-elected in 1916. Redistricted to the 8th district and lost renomination. | ||
| March 4, 1917 – March 3, 1919 |
65th | Daniel E. Garrett (Houston) |
Democratic | Elected in 1916. Redistricted to the 8th district and retired. | |||||
1933 – 1935
Texas re-established an at-large seat in 1933, electing three members at-large following the 1930 United States census, as well as electing others from districts until 1935.
| Years | Cong ress |
Seat A | Seat B | Seat C | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member | Party | Electoral history | Member | Party | Electoral history | Member | Party | Electoral history | |||||
| March 4, 1933 – January 3, 1935 |
73rd |  Joseph Weldon Bailey Jr. (Dallas) |
Democratic | Elected in 1932. Redistricted to the 5th district and retired to run for U.S. Senator.[7][8] |
 Sterling P. Strong (Dallas) |
Democratic | Elected in 1932. Redistricted to the 5th district and lost renomination.[7][8] |
 George B. Terrell (Alto) |
Democratic | Elected in 1932. Redistricted to the 7th district and retired.[7][8] | |||
1953 – 1959
Texas re-established an at-large seat in 1953, electing one member at-large following the 1950 United States census, as well as electing others from districts until 1959.
| Years | Cong ress |
Member | Party | Electoral history |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 3, 1953 – January 3, 1959 |
83rd 84th 85th |
 Martin Dies Jr. (Lufkin) |
Democratic | Elected in 1952. Re-elected in 1954. Re-elected in 1956. Retired. |
1963 – 1967
Texas re-established an at-large seat in 1963, electing one member at-large following the 1960 United States census, as well as electing others from districts until January 1967, by which time the effects of the Supreme Court judgment banning at-large districts in multi-district states had been applied to the election prior.
| Years | Cong ress |
Member | Party | Electoral history |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 3, 1963 – January 3, 1967 |
88th 89th |
 Joe R. Pool (Dallas) |
Democratic | Elected in 1962. Re-elected in 1964. Redistricted to the 3rd district. |
References
- ^ Brown, et al. Practicing Texas Politics, 11th Edition (2001), p. 222
- ^ Keith, Jeanette. Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight: Race, Class and Power in the Rural South during World War I. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. p. 169.
- ^ a b Texas Politics, Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services, University of Texas at Austin, 2006 Archived 2007-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Texas Legislature's Guide to Redistricting" Archived 2004-11-17 at the Library of Congress Web Archives
- ^ Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964).
- ^ Washington Post, May 31, 1965, p.A3
- ^ a b c Brooks, Raymond (May 3, 1933). "Texas Topics". The Austin Statesman. p. 4. ProQuest 1610373786. Retrieved May 2, 2023 – via ProQuest.
- ^ a b c Thornton, William M. (May 3, 1933). "Redistricting Bill for Congress Gets Committee Favor". The Dallas Morning News. p. 3.
Further reading
- Martis, Kenneth C. (1989). The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
- Martis, Kenneth C. (1982). The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
- Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present
This page was last edited on 27 December 2023, at 20:20