Texas Senators Approve Big Changes In Tarrant County With Their Newly Drawn Voting Maps
TARRANT COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) — Texas Senators approved their newly drawn districts for the next 10 years Monday that will bring a big change to Tarrant County.
State Senate District 10, currently in a large portion of Tarrant County, will change under the new map and now be spread out to also include seven other counties, mostly in rural areas.
The district is now represented by Democrat Beverly Powell of Fort Worth who has denounced the changes to the boundaries of her district saying Republicans are disenfranchising minority voters.
In a statement Tuesday morning Powell said, "The map passed last night is a renewed attempt to illegally undermine SD 10's African-American, Latino, and Asian-American communities. Despite comprising 95% of the Texas population growth over the past decade, minority voting power continues to be attacked."
Powell questioned Senator Joan Huffman, Republican of Houston, Chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee who drew the map. "You've said the Attorney General's Office told you SD-10 as proposed in your plan is lawful. So is that a correct statement?"
Huffman responded, "My statement is that I'm not going to discuss what I talked about with my lawyer. I will tell you as I stand before you today, I believe the map before you is legally compliant."
Powell again challenged Huffman about the map of her district. "I hear you say that you didn't look at racial data but you would agree that urban areas in Fort Worth and Dallas have large concentrations of minority voters, wouldn't you?"
Huffman replied, "I'm not going to make assumptions based on race, period. I followed the law."
The Texas House will now consider the newly drawn Senate map.
Lawmakers will also have to approve new maps for the Texas House and Congressional districts.
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