Garrett Fulce has the latest on Republicans in Texas

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Garrett Folks. He is a Young Voices contributor and he's
also the host of the Seeing Red Texas politics podcast.
Garrett Texas has been in the news recently because of
the redistricting and what looked like it was going to, uh,
I don't know, stall out just because all the Democrats
decided they were going to leave town. They made him
come back and they passed it. So what is the

(00:22):
ultimate what's going to be the ultimate result of all this?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, Tim, I mean five more Republican seats coming from
the state of Texas into the US Congress in the
next session. So you know, if the majority right now
is around five seats, if that majority stays the same
in the next session, and it could be lost some
other seats, it'll be because of Texas this redistricting.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Now, of course, California vowels that they're going to make
five seats of their own, although I questioned their ability
to do that because it seems like California is already
a very very blue state. Are there any red areas?
I mean, I know there are, you know Republicans in California.
It's shot Ron Reagan was a Republican. But are there
any Republican areas in in California for them to be
able to flip.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Blue, well, they are already far more disproportionately jerrymander than
Texas was before we started this process, and I think
we end up being about the same after we've done
our five And if you look at just the total
vote total for Republicans in California or the state, and
then how many congressional seats they have. Now, people kind

(01:24):
of vote with their feet and move near people that
they like, so you'll see Democrats cluster with one another,
you see Republicans cluster with one another. The maps I'm
seeing is I think California you can maybe get three
to five more as well. But you have to keep
in mind Texas in California aren't going to be the
only states that do this. It's starting dominoes. And Republicans

(01:45):
have more seats available to them than Democrats due to
them because they've already. Democrats very jerrymandered their states so much.
Massachusetts doesn't have a single Republican representative and hasn't since
the nineties, and it has like nine of them, right,
they have completely gerrymandered their state. It's a redial thing.
Maryland the same thing. They have eight seats and we

(02:07):
have one Republican. So this is the type of stuff
Democrats have been doing. Republicans are catching up, and we're
going to take the fight to them.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
I was going to say, that's the thing. Everyone's making
this seem as though Texas is doing something novel, as
if they struck first, But in the reality, what was
happening in Texas was basically a reaction to what's happened
already been happening for years. Here in Alabama, we for
the longest time had said we have seven congressional districts,
and the seventh district was already very jerrymannered. If you
looked at a map, you'll see that there's an area

(02:35):
in Alabama's called the Black Belt, which by the way,
has nothing with the people there, but everything to do
with the black soil that is in that area. But
also there are a lot of African Americans there. Well,
they drew this district where they took all of that
and drew this little tiny sliver up towards Birmingham and
then through the western part of Birmingham where there's a
heavy African American population, to create the seventh Congressional district.

(02:56):
So for a long time Alabama was six Republicans in
one day Democrat because the seventh always as a Democrat. Well,
they redrew the district lines and now lo and behold,
we've got two Democrats from Alabama. So now it's five
and two because Sheamari Figures is representing the first which
used to be a well, I wouldn't say it's a
Republican district, but typically it was Republican, and so it's

(03:19):
already being done everywhere. So this is just another move,
I guess, you know, for once the home team had
the ball, we ran it in and we actually got
a touchdown, and the away team is angry about that.
So I think that's that's the upshot of this. Garrett Foles,
thank you so much for joining us this morning on
Alabama's Morning News