LUPE joins lawsuit against Texas over redistricting maps
Local organization La Union del Pueblo Entero has joined in a lawsuit against the state of Texas saying the state's new redistricting maps are unfair.
The new map of the U.S. Congressional districts has some changes for the Valley.
One change LUPE is taking issue with is District 15, and its expansion northward.
RELATED: Texas’ new House map challenged in state court, expanding redistricting fight
“95 percent of growth in Texas came from people of color, Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans here in the state of Texas. Yet the new redrawn districts don’t benefit the communities that allowed for Texas to grow,” said LUPE Director of Organizing Danny Diaz.
LUPE’s goal of the lawsuit is change.
“We want them to force the state of Texas to come back to the drawing table, and to redraw the maps to benefit the communities that have grown,” Diaz said.
Diaz says the maps don’t just favor people of certain races, but also, the Republican party.
“We saw redrawn districts, like Texas 15 here in South Texas, to favor a certain party,” Diaz said.
However, Cameron County GOP Chairman Morgan Cisneros Graham sees the new maps differently.
“City 15 wasn’t cut to benefit Republicans,” Graham said. “It was remapped in order to not just hand things to Democrats and to benefit our voters. The fact is, we haven’t been having representation for many years.”
READ ALSO: Voting rights advocates sue Texas again over GOP-drawn maps
Graham says one issue is that people think all Latinos vote Democrat.
“The major complaint is coming from those that still have an advantage, just not as much as before,” Graham said.
U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat who's represented District 15 since January 2017, has announced he'll be running for re-election in District 34 because that’s where the new maps moved his residence.
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