An April primary will be virtually impossible thanks to legal battles over Texas redistricting maps. At the earliest, voters will hit the polls on May 29.
A settlement on the Texas Senate map was announced Feb. 15 after nearly two days of hearings in a San Antonio federal court, but as of press time, a compromise had not been reached on Congressional and state House maps.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott reached an agreement with state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, and minority rights groups on a map that would leave Davis' district unchanged.
Davis was mostly drawn out of her district, which includes Grapevine, Colleyville and Southlake, under new maps approved by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature last year. Davis sued Texas in September 2011, alleging the state Senate plan discriminated against minority voters in her district. With an agreement to leave her district intact, Davis will have a better chance at running for re-election as an incumbent.
"What happened was a tremendous victory," she said at a Feb. 15 press conference, "not just for my opportunity to run again and have the honor of serving this seat, but much more importantly, a victory for the voices of Senate District 10 that otherwise would have been silenced."
But with only a partial deal, the San Antonio court told Democratic and Republican leaders a primary before May 29 was not likely and instructed them to submit proposed changes to election deadlines and procedures based on that date.
"Looks like April is out," Texas Democratic Party Spokesman Anthony Gutierrez said. "May is the next realistic date."
Both parties are set to hold their conventions in June, but a late primary would require election rule changes. Gutierrez and Republican Party of Texas Spokesman Chris Elam said the next step in the process includes negotiations between the parties and the secretary of state on how best to accommodate a May 29 primary. The San Antonio court did not say when a decision on a date would be made.
Once every decade, Texas lawmakers must redraw the state's legislative and congressional boundaries to reflect the population changes as shown by U.S. Census Bureau figures. Federal lawsuits halted the enactment of new maps drawn by the Texas Legislature, originally delaying the primaries from March 6 to April 3.
Texas is among the states that must get approval on redistricting maps from the U.S. Department of Justice under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Instead, the state directly petitioned a federal district court for approval of its redistricting plans, but the petition was denied.
Meanwhile, separate lawsuits were filed in state and federal courts by opponents who claimed the Texas Legislature maps violated the U.S. Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Some of the lawsuits were consolidated and heard by a U.S. District Court in San Antonio, which issued its own maps. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected those maps, though, and the San Antonio court has urged plaintiffs to find compromise with Texas.
