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New map Friday: Rural white Democrats in the South are a dying breed, increasingly in the last 10-15 years, as @RuralChrisLee and I both lament. Here is a map of the first state to fall, Texas in 2002. Prior to Tom 'The Hammer' Delay's 2003 redistricting, there were 6 of them.
2002 was the last time that rural Texas at large had a competitive Democratic presence. As the map shows, much of the Republican vote stemmed from urban areas and their suburban spillover, which was heavily R in Texas at the time. All of these would be headed the way of TX-13.
In TX-01, Rep. Max Sandlin and future husband of @augiepres Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D, SD-AL) held on one last time. His seat was based in Texarkana, and the 2003 redistricting's new voters ultimately ousted him by 23 and brought us the scourge known as Louie Gohmert.
In TX-02, Rep. Jim Turner romped in this Lufkin-based rural East Texas district. In 2004, this seat would be broken and merged with the heavily Republican 6th and 8th district, eliminating any chance of winning as his district became more suburban. He declined to seek reelection.
In TX-04 (in the news now), Rep. Ralph Hall was the most conservative Democrat in the entire House, serving from his Tyler/Red River-based district. Hall switched to being a Republican and continued to serve TX-04 until 2014 when now DNI John Ratcliffe beat him in the primary.
In TX-09, Rep. Nick Lampson had his Beaumont-based seat one last time. He would go on to lose to Ted Poe in the new 2nd, and then return to Congress for one term in 2006 in the new Brazoria-based 22nd, when Tom DeLay resigned due to being a criminal.
In TX-11, Rep. Chet Edwards closely held on to his Waco/Temple-based seat. You can see it was on borrowed time already. He was the only white Dem to survive 2004 but was felled in 2010 by Bill Flores in the new 17th after being passed over for VP by Obama.
Finally, in TX-17, Rep. Charlie Stenholm (the second-most conservative Dem) held on barely in his Abilene-based seat, with huge rural margins offsetting close performances in Abilene and San Angelo. But in 2004, DeLay carved the 17th up between the 11th, 13th, and 19th.
They carved his cotton farm into the Amarillo-based 13th, and they put his house in Abilene into the Lubbock-based 19th. In 2004, Stenholm lost 40-60 to 19th district Rep. Randy Neugebauer, the best D showing since the 80s. It was a sad ending to a promising future Ag chairman.
All of these incumbents, except for maybe Lampson, would have lost in 2010 had they held on. 2006 and 2008 were good enough years that they could have scraped by. But once again, it shows that 1. the times are a changing, and 2. land doesn't vote. (TX-17!) Discuss your thoughts.
