This newly drawn Houston district could unearth tensions between Democrats of color

Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune

When Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map this summer, Latino Democrats in Houston saw warning signs for their political future.

Since its creation in the early 1990s, the 29th Congressional District, based in east Houston, has been majority-Latino. For decades, it was represented by white Democratic Rep. Gene Green. In 2018, with Green retiring, the city’s Latino political class achieved a long-sought dream with the election of Sylvia Garcia, Green’s preferred successor, who became the first Hispanic person to represent a significant swath of Houston in Congress.

Garcia has represented the district ever since, coasting to reelection in each successive cycle. But under the new map, she will be courting a new electorate with a much different demographic makeup, potentially confronting tensions among Democrats’ multiracial base.

For the last two election cycles, Hispanics have made up 63% of the eligible voting population in Garcia’s 29th District; under the new lines, they are just 43%. Meanwhile, the Black eligible voting population — citizens who are old enough to vote — grew from 18% under the previous map to 33% of the district.

Latino Democrats in Houston are now grappling with the consequences of a Republican map that leaves the party with precious few opportunities. Strategists say the map has threatened Latino political power and potentially pits different parts of Democrats’ multiracial coalition against each other for a diminishing number of congressional seats — leaving Democrats of color in an awkward spot, even as Garcia and her primary opponents vow to build campaigns that resonate with voters across racial lines.

Garcia, who is Mexican American, has already drawn two Black primary challengers, including former state Rep. Jarvis Johnson. And it comes at a time as the party nationally — and especially in Texas — is trying to win back the growing number of Latino voters who have pulled the lever for Republicans and President Donald Trump.

“When you look at the new numbers, you have to realize that the largest voting bloc in the new 29, for the Democratic Party, is going to be the Black vote,” said Johnson. “And I think it’s important that my community has a voice.”

Garcia has won citywide before, and strategists say she has high name identification and should expect to receive significant resources from Latino groups in Washington. For her part, she said she plans to campaign vigorously in her new territory to build a winning multiracial coalition, and rejects the notion that Black and brown voters will be factionalized.

But some Democrats worry about the potential for divisiveness, or about what happens after Garcia, 75, eventually retires. The only majority-Latino district left in Houston is the 9th Congressional District, where GOP map-drawers paired typically lower-turnout Latino precincts with higher-turnout white areas in Harris and Liberty counties to craft a Republican-leaning seat. No prominent Democrats have stepped forward to run yet; the top candidates in the Republican primary are state Rep. Briscoe Cain and former Harris County Judge candidate Alexandra del Moral Mealer, who is Latina.

“There really is that fear that there will be no Latino representation from a Latino-[plurality] county that’s the third-largest county in America,” said Jaime Mercado, a Houston Democratic strategist.

Inside the new district

The new 29th District looks a lot like Houston, with an eligible voting population that is 43% Hispanic, 33% Black, 18% white and 4% Asian. Only one-third of voters in Garcia’s current district will still see her on the ballot come the March primary.

“That’s truly a coalition district,” said Garcia, who has represented Houstonians as city controller, Harris County commissioner and state senator before her congressional career.

“That’s what I put together to win a citywide campaign in the city of Houston, before we were even 20% of the Houston population. I’ve put coalitions together a number of times for different causes and campaigns, so this will just be another one.”

In upending the district’s demographics, Republicans moved the eastern part of Houston and Harris County — including heavily Latino cities like Galena Park and Jacinto City — out of the 29th District. To offset the population loss, the district took in over 200,000 voters from what is currently Congressional District 18, a bastion of Black political power. Historically Black neighborhoods like Acres Homes and Independence Heights have been added to District 29. (Voters in those neighborhoods can still vote in this year’s special election to fill out the remainder of former Rep. Sylvester Turner’s term representing Texas’ 18th District.)

The new 29th District retains Hispanic precincts in neighborhoods like Lindale Park, Melrose Park and Greenspoint. And it adds more affluent neighborhoods with lots of younger, more progressive voters, like Garden Oaks, Oak Forest and Shepherd Park Plaza.

Though Latino voters are still the largest group, the raw numbers can be deceptive, particularly in Democratic primaries. Houston’s Latino population skews young, while voters who participate in primaries are typically older. Latino voters are also ideologically and culturally diverse. And Mercado said there’s less of a muscle memory with voting.

“[For] African Americans, voting is something that’s completely different,” Mercado said. “It’s cultural. African Americans are a generation removed from the civil rights movement … It’s just different than any other cultures. And too often people look at Latinos and are like, ‘Well, why don’t you vote like the other people of color?’”

In Houston, like the rest of Texas, Democratic organizers have typically prioritized Black communities and voters because they turn out at much higher rates than Latinos and vote more reliably for Democrats. In the city of Houston, for example, VoteHub estimated that Vice President Kamala Harris won 89% of Black voters compared to about 61% of Hispanic voters in 2024.

In the new 29th Congressional District, strategists agreed with Johnson that in a low-turnout midterm election — in which the most engaged voters typically play an outsized role — Black voters are likely to outnumber Hispanic voters in the Democratic primary.

Johnson said the new makeup of the district factored into his decision to run. He said he has no policy disagreements with Garcia, but believes he could better address Black voters’ concerns and turn out the district’s voters in a general election, when Democrats will need every vote they can get to win statewide races.

“If we allow this type of bait and switch, and people focusing on the Black and Brown, we’ll miss it’s Republican versus Democrat,” Johnson said.

But he said the reality of the district’s demographics — and his familiarity with the neighborhoods added to the 29th District, which he has represented in the state legislature and on Houston City Council — means he is better positioned to turn voters out.

Under the new boundaries, Harris would have won the district by 31 percentage points. But Johnson said all Democrats should be wary of taking Black voters for granted — and that without that population’s participation, Democrats could be in for a surprise loss in November in District 29.

“We have to be clear that the Latino votes have been leaking over the years to the Republican side,” he said. “We can’t count on Congresswoman Garcia being able to pull them back in, because it’s evident she was not able to do that in her old 29th, because the number of votes that she gets historically have been the lowest in the state, in terms of voter turnout.”

Of the eight congressional districts that include parts of Harris County, Garcia’s, the only majority-Hispanic one, had the lowest voter turnout in 2024 — though her district also had the smallest citizen voting age population of any district in the state.

The primary will create a test for both candidates, and any future Democrat in the area — can they build a multiracial coalition that resonates with every voting bloc among the Democratic base?

Both candidates said doing so will require focusing on issues that matter to Black, Latino and white voters alike. Garcia said she plans to talk about the Trump administration’s health care cuts and how Republican policies have harmed the Houston economy, which affects everyone.

“It’s also about reminding people that the tariffs are hurting people, the fear of deportation is hurting people, and that these costs will [rise] because of both of them,” she said. “When you’ve got construction workers not coming to work because they’re afraid to work, and then the cost of lumber, because it’s imported, with the tariff is going up — that means it’s going to be harder to build a home, which means the housing crisis continues to grow in Houston.”

Those are issues, Garcia added, “that penetrate a coalition, not just one sector or one neighborhood.”

Dynamics of the race

Latino organizers often say that disinvestment is a self-fulfilling prophecy — the more often the party ignores Latino voters in favor of higher-turnout populations, the more depressed Latino turnout becomes.

Democratic strategists said the new lines offer candidates the opportunity to build much-needed political infrastructure in underserviced neighborhoods. For Latino organizers, that could mean investing in areas now that will bear fruit once Garcia eventually leaves office, perhaps ensuring a Latino successor will follow her.

“A good part of that district — hell, probably around 70% of it — really isn’t worked politically on a regular basis,” said Marc Campos, a Houston Democratic strategist. “Beyond the beltway, toward the end of the northern part of Harris County — Democrats usually don’t spend a whole lot of time doing a lot of political organizing up there.”

Campos said Garcia, as a longtime Harris County elected official, is well-known among the electorate and that polling of Houston voters shows she is well-liked. She should have the resources to get her message out to the voters she did not previously represent, he said, adding that she will likely win heavily with Latinos and do well with high-propensity voters north of the loop.

“There’s a good chunk of Latino precincts she’s represented,” he said. “Granted, they’re not our highest turnout precincts, but whoever turns out, she’ll win by overwhelming margins. She’ll kick ass in the white, progressive parts of what I would call zip code 77018 — Oak Forest, Garden Oaks.”

Johnson, by contrast, says he is better positioned to understand the concerns of voters in the new district because he has already represented much of it in his past roles. And he worries that Black voters in the district — who are the most reliable Democratic voters of any group — will not turn out for a candidate they do not know, to the party’s peril.

“You’re going to find a lot of people, [if] they don’t see a name that they know, they’re going to be confused and go, ‘Wait what?’” Johnson said. “And [they] may skip over or just simply [say] ‘Well, nothing’s there for me.’ And then we’ll again lose a sixth seat, because the issues that are facing this community are not being addressed.”

Like Garcia, Johnson said he wants to build a multiracial coalition by addressing local issues that affect all residents: infrastructure, housing, education and business. And he said his existing familiarity with various neighborhoods means there is no learning curve for him.

“She will have to spend a lot of time working and walking the miles upon miles of road to get to know: where are the areas that flood that we need to address?” Johnson said. “Where are the schools that are in need? Where are the communities that have the highest voting precincts? I don’t need to do any of that. I’ve already done it.”

Campos and Mercado both think Garcia, with the support of national Latino groups, should have no trouble outraising Johnson and building out a well-organized campaign to win. But regardless of what happens in the primary, Democrats said the fact it is happening at all — and any subsequent racial divides unearthed from it — serves to benefit Republicans, who drew the map in the first place.

Beyond Texas’ 29th District, the map has created the potential for another high-profile primary, with age being the lightning rod, in the neighboring 18th Congressional District. Voters under the old map will choose a representative to finish out Turner’s term in November; by March, whomever emerges among a cadre of younger Black candidates could face a primary under the new lines from Rep. Al Green, 78, who was drawn out of his current district.

“I do think that took a lot of forethought from Republicans when they started cutting these districts, whether it be the only Latino having to be running in a district that has historically high African American turnout in primaries, and a potential young, dynamic, next generation leader being forced into a primary with a well-regarded, nationally-known figure in local African American politics,” Mercado said. “I think all that was very intentional.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.