Texas GOP Redistricting Plan Courts Latino Voters While Cutting Their Growing Political Power

For the past decade, Texas Republicans have been fixated on Latino voters — portraying them as the future of the party’s growth and quietly searching for ways to harness their numbers without risking political ground. That fixation intensified after the 2024 election, when GOP strategists seized on modest gains in some Latino communities as proof the party could erode a core Democratic constituency.

The Texas GOP’s latest congressional gerrymander, passed by the Texas Senate, explicitly targets key districts represented by Latino-elected Democrats, underscoring a strategy to court Latino voters symbolically while cutting off their actual electoral power.

“We have three Hispanic-predominated districts in South Texas that we believe we can carve out for Republican leadership,” State Rep. Mitch Little (R) admitted on CNN last week. “It’s good for our party. It’s good for our state. And we need to ensure that Donald Trump’s agenda continues to be enacted.”

The GOP’s mid-decade redistricting plan doesn’t simply seek to win Latino voters — it redraws district lines in ways that experts say will weaken their overall ability to elect their preferred candidates.

On paper, the plan adds a new majority-Latino district. But in practice, it packs and cracks Latino neighborhoods to shore up Republican control, breaking apart districts where Latino voters have long elected candidates of their choice and tethering them to far-flung, majority-white areas.

“Texas is now a Latino-plurality state, yet we don’t have that kind of representation in the 2021 map and certainly not in the proposed 2025 map,” Lydia Camarillo, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP), told Democracy Docket. “Districts where Latinos could decide elections are being dismantled. We believe that Texas is not only violating the Voting Rights Act, but it’s also violating the U.S. Constitution.”

The seats most at risk are concentrated in South Texas, Austin, Houston and Dallas — areas where Latino voters have historically turned out in large numbers for Democratic candidates. The GOP’s own map architects and political allies have openly identified several as prime flip opportunities, including those currently held by U.S. Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Sylvia Garcia (TX-29) and Greg Casar (TX-35).

Latinos have driven more than half of Texas’ population growth in recent years and are now the largest demographic group. That surge has translated into undeniable population power the GOP hopes to exploit, but not into proportional political representation they would likely fulfill.

“Only six members of the Texas delegation are Latino — about 17%,” Eric Holguín, Texas State Director of UnidosUS, told Democracy Docket. “Texas is 40% Latino so there’s a big disparity between who we are and who represents us.”

The proposed 2025 map offers a stark example. 

While Republicans tout the creation of one new majority-Latino district, the overall number of districts where Latino voters can effectively elect their preferred candidates is projected to shrink.

“The gambit by Republicans here is to actually increase the number of Hispanic majority districts in terms of population share, but to diminish the opportunities of Hispanic voters to elect their candidates of choice,” Dave Wasserman, Election Analyst of Cook Political Report said after the GOP’s map was revealed. “There are a number of Hispanic majority districts where Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters will be outnumbered by a coalition of conservative Hispanic voters and white voters.”  

A closer look at the numbers from the 2021 map, which was also alleged to reduce minority voting power, compared to the proposed 2025 version reveals just how precise — and how damaging — the changes are for Latino voters. In several targeted districts, the Latino voting-age population (VAP) is either sharply reduced or, in a more insidious twist, increased in ways that actually make the district less competitive for the candidates most Latino voters have historically supported — usually Democrats.

In South Texas, one district loses more than 14% of its Latino VAP while an adjacent district gains more than 16% — a shift that looks less like organic adjustment and more like deliberate packing. The district losing Latino voters also gains heavily Republican, majority-white precincts from surrounding areas, all but guaranteeing a partisan flip. Meanwhile, the district with the increased Latino VAP, currently held by Cuellar, is already safe for Democrats, meaning the added voters are effectively “wasted” in a seat the GOP has no realistic shot of winning.

In Houston, Sylvia Garcia’s TX-29 remains majority Latino on paper, but Latino VAP falls from 72% to 55%, just enough to dilute the community’s voting power and offset by an influx of conservative-leaning voters from outer suburbs. At the same time, TX-9 — also in Houston — gains 22% in Latino VAP, pushing it to 58% and making it a new Latino-majority district. But that seat is already a Democratic stronghold, meaning the influx of Latino voters there serves only to concentrate their strength in one safe district while diminishing their sway in others.

“CD-29 was a Section 2 Latino-majority district,” Camarillo said. “Under this proposal, CD-29 is no longer a Section 2 majority district.”

Courts use what’s known as the “Gingles test” to determine whether minority voting power has been unlawfully diluted. To meet the test, plaintiffs must show that the minority group is large and votes cohesively enough to form a majority in a single-member district, and that the majority group votes as a bloc in ways that usually defeat the minority’s preferred candidate. If those conditions are met, the district lines can be redrawn.

The Texas GOP uses textbook gerrymandering tactics — packing high concentrations of Latino voters into a handful of safe seats while cracking other Latino-heavy areas apart and merging them into sprawling, majority-white districts. This not only reduces the number of competitive “opportunity” districts, but also forces Latino communities to compete for attention in districts where they can no longer shape the outcome of elections.

Republican leaders have tried to deflect criticism by pointing to the number of majority-Latino districts in the new map increasing by one. But voting rights experts say that statistic is meaningless without considering whether Latino voters can actually elect their preferred candidates.

“Simply adding additional majority-Hispanic districts isn’t enough to evade scrutiny under the Voting Rights Act,” Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in a statement concerning the new map. “Pointing to the number of majority Latino districts does not remotely answer the question of whether you have violated the Voting Rights Act.”

After a Public Information Act request by Democracy Docket, the legislature acknowledged that it holds map draft records detailing racial demographics and communications about specific Latino-predominated districts. But refused to release them, citing “legislative privilege” and “attorney-client communication.”

The Texas GOP’s Decades-Old Power Playbook

Republicans have also argued that the map isn’t about race at all, pointing to the 2024 election as proof that Latino voters in Texas are shifting red and that it’s fair for the GOP to secure a partisan realignment.

“We’re studying whether any shift in South Texas is permanent or temporary,” Camarillo said. “Some Latinos may have voted for President Trump, but they continue to vote Democratic down-ballot. I don’t believe it’s a permanent shift.”

Voting rights advocates agree one unusual election with atypical swings — driven by unique national conditions and local turnout dynamics — doesn’t erase decades of data showing Latino voters in Texas tend to vote cohesively for Democratic candidates, especially in down-ballot races.

“We’re not entirely sure if the voters who supported Trump in 2024 will show up the same way in 2026,” Holguín said. “In the Rio Grande Valley, Democrats won from the U.S. Senate race down to local judges, even where Trump did better at the top. There’s a disconnect between presidential and local election results.”

By banking on a contested narrative of Latino political change, the Texas GOP has crafted a map that hedges against future Democratic strength by locking in structural advantages today — advantages built on the very racial lines they claim not to be using.

If this all feels familiar, that’s because Texas has been here before — many times.

Over the last half-century, federal courts have repeatedly found that state lawmakers intentionally discriminated against Latino voters in drawing political boundaries. 

In ongoing cases like LULAC v. Abbott (2021) and earlier battles over congressional and legislative maps, plaintiffs have alleged a pattern of mapmakers manipulating lines to blunt the growing electoral clout of Latino communities while preserving Anglo political dominance. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s review of Texas’ 2010 redistricting noted that several districts were drawn with discriminatory intent, even after earlier plans were struck down. Previous Justice Departments have long flagged “coalition districts” in Texas — where Latino and Black voters together could elect candidates of choice — as frequent targets of dismantling. That same playbook to break apart multiracial districts, overpack Latino voters in safe seats, and link urban Latino neighborhoods to far-flung rural counties with different political priorities.

While the GOP’s rhetoric has been most explicit about Latino voters, the plan also likely erodes Black political power. Districts long anchored by Black communities in Houston and Dallas are either being reconfigured to weaken their influence or are left untouched despite previous concerns about their legality, suggesting a political calculation to sidestep Black representation as well.

“We could still draw maps that honor the gains made by Black community, as well as Latino gains,” Camarillo added. “Even with Texas being controlled by Republicans who obviously want to protect their incumbents and continue to build their power.”

The continuity is striking. Each new Texas GOP map is presented as a fresh, politically neutral exercise, yet the end results often mirror the past. The 2025 mid-decade plan by the GOP continues the state’s legacy of racial vote dilution. By targeting districts held by Latino Democrats, dismantling coalition seats and relying on racial demographics while shielding draft documents from public view, the 2025 plan carries, again, the hallmarks of intentional vote dilution. 

For many Latino Texans, this is more than a political maneuver; it’s a continuation of a long struggle for fair representation in a state where their numbers have surged but their influence remains strategically constrained.

“When we don’t have proper representation, the issues we care about aren’t defended, no one is speaking up for us,” Holguín said. “Instead of having a voice to elect our candidates of choice, it’s being taken from us. Our voice is being silenced.”