New congressional maps about to be adopted in Texas, which aim to replace as many as five Democratic-leaning seats with likely Republican seats, are primarily aimed at protecting the GOP’s slender majority in Washington. But they also have the potential to push outgoing Democratic House members, some observers suggest, into statewide races in 2026.
The new maps passed by the GOP-dominated state legislature, which now await Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature, will force a number of sitting Democratic legislators to make difficult choices. Some may retire from Congress, others will run in newly-created districts against a favored Republican and others will be forced to face a fellow Democratic incumbent in dog-eat-dog primaries in redrawn districts.
Two of the map’s new districts have been drawn to pack many more likely GOP voters into traditionally blue districts along the U.S.-Mexico border. Three others are designed to dilute Democratic votes in three of the state’s largest metropolitan areas, potentially flipping one district from blue to red in Austin, in greater Houston and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Along the border, Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, both moderate Democrats, will now need to seek re-election — if they choose to run — in redrawn districts where Donald Trump won in 2024 by about 10 percentage points.
Rep. Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat, will see his district, which currently stretches from Austin to San Antonio, redrawn to include more conservative rural areas around the latter city. It will also become a district where Trump prevailed by 10-plus points.
In the Houston area, Rep. Al Green will see his current district, where more than 80 percent of residents are people of color, teleported to the city’s northeastern suburbs, a much less diverse area that Trump carried by about 20 points.
Rep. Julie Johnson, who now represents Texas’ 32nd district in and around Dallas, will see it expanded to incorporate territory to the east of the city, creating a new district that Trump carried by 18 points.
In these five seats, where incumbents will be forced to decide whether to quit or run again in unfriendly terrain, only one situation has been resolved.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a 78-year-old Democrat who has served in Congress for more than 30 years, announced last week that he plans to retire if the new maps are upheld.
Casar, the current chair of the House Progressive Caucus, has already announced that he will run in the newly redrawn 37th district in Austin, which will retain a likely Democratic lean.
In the other districts, however, there’s no simple solution.
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The Dallas-Fort Worth area will now have two blue-leaning districts. The 30th district, now represented by Rep. Jasmine Crockett, will remain largely unchanged from the previous map. The open question is whether Johnson will switch from her new GOP-friendly district to the 33rd, and run there against incumbent Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey.
In Houston, there will now be two Democratic leaning seats: the 29th district, currently held by Rep. Sylvia Garcia, and the 18th, which is vacant after the death of Rep. Sylvester Turner earlier this year. (He had replaced veteran progressive Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died in the summer of 2024.)
There’s a faint silver lining for Texas Democrats facing gerrymandered districts: They could forge new careers, and energize the base, by pursuing statewide office.
Green, whose district has now been redrawn, says he won’t resign his current seat to run in the 18th district special election this November, but may run for that seat next year, depending on what other candidates emerge.
In the South Texas border districts, there’s no clear path for Democratic incumbents Cuellar and Gonzalez to remain in office, at least not without overcoming a significant Republican advantage.
Cuellar has suggested that he may run for re-election in the newly Republican-friendly 28th district in comments to Spectrum News, noting that although Trump did well there, Democrats also enjoyed some down-ballot success. Cuellar is widely viewed as the most conservative Democrat now in Congress.
Gonzalez has not yet said whether he plans to run again in the redrawn 34th district. If he does, his likely opponent will be former Rep. Mayra Flores, a Republican who briefly held the seat after a 2022 special election.
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Joshua Blank, director of research for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said in an interview with Salon that there is one faint silver lining for House Democrats facing gerrymandered districts: They could forge new careers, and energize the base, by pursuing statewide office.
While next year’s U.S. Senate race in Texas is “gaining all the attention” because of the intra-GOP battle between Sen. John Cornyn and scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton, Blank said, “The reality is, there’s a whole ticket to fill out. Someone needs to run against the governor. Someone should be running against the lieutenant governor. Someone needs to run that attorney general’s race.”
There are already some announced Democratic candidates in those races, but a sitting member of Congress would likely have a higher statewide profile, and could potentially run a competitive race. None of the Democrats currently announced as gubernatorial candidates, for instance, has held elected office before. While GOP gerrymanders have locked in control of the state legislature and the congressional delegation, races for statewide office are often fairly close calls.
“So one of the questions,” Blank suggested, is whether “any of these people consider running, jumping to a statewide election, even if it’s just to build up your base, fight the good fight, and then turn back around and figure out what you’re doing next?”
