The Curious Case of Chet Edwards

I don't really have a terribly profound topic in mind for today, so perhaps it would be fun to recount the (ongoing) story of Chet Edwards, Texas Democrat. So, Texas used to be a really Democratic state, like the rest of the Solid South. I've been looking into party changes, and it seems like states change their presidential voting patterns before senators and representatives, and those before state-level, and once you go further down politics becomes increasingly nonpartisan. The point being that Texas voted Republican on the presidential level as far back as 1952. It elected its first Republican senator, John Tower, back in 1961. It elected its first Republican representatives around the same time. First Republican governor was Bill Clements, elected in 1978. The Republicans captured the state Senate in I believe 1998, and the state House in 2002.

You get the idea. The take-home point is that Democrats in the legislature controlled redistricting for a while, until the really crazy 2003 middecade redistricting. But before then, they carefully gerrymandered the seats so that most representatives would be Democrats. That grew harder and harder as time went by, and the Texas Democrats won their elections by increasingly narrow margins.

Chet Edwards was a state senator first elected to the House in 1990, from a district that I believe was centered on Waco - ancestrally Democratic territory, but who thinks of Waco as Democratic now? He won an open seat with 53%. Now, his district also contained Fort Hood, and he became a member of the Armed Services committee, and later Appropriations and Budget. An important reason he kept on winning, as the 90s went on and we met George W. Bush, was his attention to his district - his work for veterans and funding of other local projects. He gained seniority.

But back in Texas, Republicans grew steadily more powerful. The Democrats kept hold of the state House, though. Redistricting is generally done every 10 years, between the -00 and -02 elections (after the census). So in 2001-02, the Democrats drew their map, which (naturally) preserved all those Democratic incumbents. Their map won out in the inevitable court battle. But in 2002, with a Texas President in the White House and his approval ratings naturally very high in his home state, the Democrats lost control of the state House. Tom Craddick became the new Speaker, and Tom DeLay wanted to see more Republicans from Texas in Congress. So they decided to draw up a new map ---

now of course the Democrats in the legislature hadn't lost their balls or anything like that. So they decamped to Oklahoma, depriving the legislature of a quorum. But, yeah, the new redistricting map passed eventually. I think police were involved with the rounding up of the Democrats. Pretty wild stuff. So, new map: what DeLay and Craddick wanted to do was eliminate the white Democrats in particular. How? Slicing up their old districts. Make them run in a district that contained 30% of the old district. Pack the minorities more tightly into minority districts. This plan targeted nine Democrats: Max Sandlin, Jim Turner, Ralph Hall, Nick Lampson, Chet Edwards, Charlie Stenholm, Martin Frost, Lloyd Doggett, Chris Bell.

Sandlin lost in 2004. Turner retired. Hall converted into a Republican - not much of a stretch, he was pretty conservative and an outlier in the House. He's still in the House today. Lampson used to represent Beaumont, and we know what happened to him. Stenholm and Frost, both first elected in 1978, lost in 2004 as well. Doggett is a real ballsy Democrat, a real kickass Texas liberal, who represented an Austin district. You know Austin, and you understand that DeLay and Craddick split Austin into 3 districts to dilute its Democratic power. Two districts were designed to be Republican (and they are), the third was Democratic - and stretched all the way to McAllen. The point was that the district was supposed to elect a Hispanic. But Doggett fought, dammit, and he won the primary and the general. The district was changed in court, and is now more compact, and Doggett still represents it. Chris Bell - something similar, his old district was torn up and he decided to run in a majority black district. He lost the primary. Oh yeah, and Gene Green - not targeted by DeLay, he's white but represents a Hispanic majority district.

But, yeah, Doggett won reelection in a Democratic district. For him, the hard part was winning the primary. For Chet Edwards, this wasn't so true. Now Chet's margins were kind of small by now. In 2000 he won with 55%, in 2002 he won with 52%. He chose to run in the new District 17, which contains Waco (the nucleus of his old district), but new territory as well: Fort Worth exurbs, Bryan and College Station. It also contained the town of Crawford, which sounds familiar for some reason. These aren't exactly Democratic strongholds, to put it mildly.

Now, y'all know (or can guess) what happened to Edwards: He WON! Bush also won the district, 70-30. So the question naturally arises: How in the holy hell did Edwards hold on? Here's why, best as I can tell: Attention to the district, like I said. Now, DeLay knew Edwards was popular with veterans, so he removed Fort Hood from the district, but the district still contained people who worked there. Waco - Edwards was from there. The pork - Edwards funded lots of projects in the district. A&M - Edwards is an Aggie and unfailingly mentioned that on his television ads. The opponent - a pretty mean person, extreme for a Republican, a real partisan. Edwards won 51-47.

2006, Edwards wins by 18 points or so. Strong Democratic year, too - that helped. 2008 was a more interesting year: Edwards did something pretty significant in the Texas Democratic primary. He endorsed Barack Obama before the primary. And something even more interesting happened in the coming months - Nancy Pelosi said Chet Edwards was her choice for Obama's vice president.

This is pretty funny, because the liberal netroots strongly supported an Obama/Edwards ticket. It's just that Chet was the wrong Edwards. Seems there was another prominent politician by the last name Edwards. Whatever happened to him, anyway? Would Chet Edwards have been a good VP for Obama? It would have been interesting - I really like the guy (as you can tell from the existence of this entry), but he is pretty moderate. Yanno, voted for the Iraq war. Now, yeah, he's in a very Republican district, so I forgive him for his votes. I want him in Congress. But Obama probably should have picked someone with a more progressive record than Chet Edwards, and so he did. I understand that Obama's VP choosing team vetted Chet, but I'm not so sure how serious the vetting was. They probably did any vetting out of courtesy to Pelosi.

Of course, that other Edwards kinda killed any chance of Chet Edwards being the VP nominee. You can imagine the undecided voter: "Why is that nice Muslim man running with that $400 haircut bastard who cheated on his cancerwife?" After the 2008 election (Edwards won reelection by 8 points or so) apparently Edwards was a contender to become secretary of veterans' affairs. He would have been damn good. (Obama chose Eric Shinseki instead.)

I was thinking about the Texas governor and senate races recently, and Chet Edwards is probably the best candidate possible. He fights and he wins. He won't run for governor or senate in 2010, I think, but maybe he'll run someday.

Anyway, that's a lot of rambling. I'm probably going to do an entry on another odd politician who I've been reading up on - Fritz Hollings. Chet Edwards - I admire him. Hollings - he can make me go "hell yeah" or "fuck you" - he's an odd one. He also has an accent remarkably like (but thicker than) Foghorn Leghorn. Also, I've gotta write an entry on the two types of progressives. If I had posted this on Sunday, I would have wrote that entry today.