Texas Redistricting Gets Messed With Again By Feds

I talked about it when the initial ruling against the state happened back in November, and Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) loses in federal court once again.

A federal  three judge panel unanimously threw out the shady and discriminatory Texas redistricting plan that was passed by our GOP dominated legislature.  

The federal judicial panel ruling on this case was made up of GW Bush appointed judges Thomas Griffith and Rosemary Collyer and Obama appointee Beryl Howell, and stated the state failed to show the new political lines would not discriminate against non-white Texans under the Voting Rights Act.  

Texas also failed to show that the new political lines were "not enacted with discriminatory purpose" when passed by the legislature during the 2011 session. 

"Accordingly, we deny Texas declaratory relief," the three judges said in a 154-page ruling released by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“The court’s decision is a damning indictment of (Gov.) Rick Perry and other Texas Republican leaders who, in a cynical attempt to hold on to power, engaged in intentional discrimination against Texas Latino and African-American voters,” said Lone Star Project Director Matt Angle.

"This is absolutely a victory for Texas and for minority voters to elect a candidate of their choice," said Trey Martinez Fischer with the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which opposed the redistricting plans.

Damn right it is.   Texas grew by 4.3 million people and picked up four congressional seats primarily on the strength of African-American, Asian and Latino population growth.   65% of that growth was by Latinos, 13.4% African-American, and 10.1% was Asian.  

In a just world the new districts should have been drawn where the growth occurred in the urban areas of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio-South Texas. 

Justice and fairness is a foreign concept to Republicans hellbent of holding power in a state that has been majority-minority population wise since 2000 and their presidential election prospects are predicated on Texas not becoming the blue-leaning swing state it should be.  

Of course, Abbott is going to waste more Texas taxpayer dollars by appealing this ruling to the Supreme Court.  But once again the Texas Republican Party has been busted for playing shady political tricks.

POTUS Predicts Texas Will Soon Be A Battleground State

Somebody must be reading TransGriot at the White House, because I've been saying this for years that sooner or later Texas would become a battleground state. 

If someone inside I-495 or at DNC headquarters would get their heads out of their behinds and use some visionary thinking, they would realize it would be to their electoral college advantage to set up a situation in which Texas becomes a swing state in every presidential election cycle.

Once that swing state political party starts happening and you put those now 38 electoral votes in play every presidential election cycle, the GOP is screwed in terms of presidential politics.

And that's a major reason why the Republifools passed that racist voter suppression law during the 2011 Texas Legislative session because they know that as well.  They also know that Texas since 2000 has been a majority-minority population state.

President Obama made these swing state Texas remarks during a San Antonio fundraiser attended by San Antonio mayor Joaquin Castro (D) and Eva Longoria (yep, she's a native Texan).



From a selfish point of view, it would be nice to see presidential candidates from both parties have to fight over my home state in order to get to the magic 270 electoral vote mark.

We also need the national Democratic Party to stop using this state as a political ATM machine so we can use those local resources to build Democratic party infrastructure at the county level.  .We also have to get more white liberal progressive Texans to run for office and consistently win as Democrats so that we have even more diversity represented in our Democratic legislative officeholders.    

Frankly, I'm tired of my birth state, which once sent statesmen and stateswomen to Congress such as House Speaker Sam Rayburn, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Rep Albert Thomas, Sen Ralph Yarborough, Sen Lloyd Bentsen, Sen. John Tower (R), President George H.W. Bush (R), Rep Barbara Jordan and Rep. Mickey Leland now being represented on the national scene by nekulturny jerks jokes for leaders such as Sen. John Cornyn (R), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R), and Rep Jeb Hensarling (R).

At the state level I went from governors like Dolph Briscoe, Mark White, and Ann Richards to GW Bush and Rick Perry. 

Now that Texas is worth 38 electoral votes, it's even more important that it happens, especially since the Lone Star State has been a majority-minority population one since 2000.. 

It's past time that the nation, the conservafool movement and the Lone Star State gets used to the reality that the Texas Democratic Party exists.   It's also past time the resources get invested in the TDP so they can build a Blue Texas that allows us Democrats to compete and win here.

Texas Voter Suppression Law Trial Starts Today

Texas' voter ID suppression law will go on trial starting today in front a a three judge panel in Washington DC.  

It pits our Republifool attorney general Greg Abbott making another bogus 'states rights' argument against the Department of Justice and a phalanx of groups seeking to enforce Section V of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Since my birth state has an odious history of suppressing the voting rights of non-white people, they find themselves under Section V of the Voting Rights Act.  

Section V requires any changes in election law or that affect voting procedures to be precleared by the DOJ and it was under that provision of the VRA that the Texas Voter ID suppression law was blocked by the DOJ from implementation in March.  

That prompted Abbott to file a suit attempting to convince a three judge panel to uphold this jacked up law.  The sniping you heard Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) direct at Attorney General Eric Holder and demand he resign during that Senate hearing a few weeks ago was in relation to this Texas voter suppression case.

The three judge panel that will hear this case for this projected five day trial is made up of  GW Bush appointee (2002) Rosemary Collyer, Clinton appointee (1994) David Tatel and Obama appointee (2010) Robert Wilkins. 

Collyer was also one of the judges comprising the three judge panel that threw out the partisan GOP Texas congressional redistricting maps a few months ago after a three week trial 

Abbot will argue the GOP party line that this law is only designed to address 'voter fraud', but we non-white Texans know these ALEC sponsored laws are designed to do noting else but suppress non-white voter turnout. 

"The state's argument has this notion of widespread fraud, when what we know from the evidence is that so far, for 2008 and 2010, there were 13 million votes cast across the state and of those 13 million, there's been one indictment for voter fraud," said Texas state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, one of the groups joining the Justice Department.

May this law go down in a painful death later this week.

Texas Primary Election Today

For my Texas TransGriot readers, just a friendly reminder that the polls just opened and you have until 7 PM to get your vote on in the Democratic and (yecch) Republican primary elections today at your normal precinct location.

As a reminder, the Voter suppression law is NOT in effect, so all you will need to vote is to just show up with your yellow voter registration card in hand and handle your electoral business.

If for some reason you are fracked with at your polling place, call the Texas NAACP who is monitoring for any shady electoral behavior.

You can also call 1-866-MYVOTE1 to report jacked up stuff occurring at Texas polling places as well.

Your vote is your voice, so let it speak forcefully for you.

Black Trans History-Althea Garrison

The United States trans community is at a phase in its maturation as a movement in which we realized long ago  we need girls and boys like us to run for and win political office in order to get the trans human rights laws we need passed.

We have watched with envy as transwomen in New Zealand, Italy and now Poland have been elected to their national legislatures, transwoman Aya Kamikawa is holding elective office in Japan, and Thai transwoman Yollada Suanyot is running to do the same in the Land of Smiles..  


We have long assumed in the United States trans community that we have never had a transperson elected to a state legislature.   I've documented the attempts of Amanda Simpson and Dr. Dana Beyer to break that state legislative glass ceiling.

But it turns out that the glass has already been shattered in that regard, and the person who made that history as the first trans state legislator was an African-American 

Althea Garrison was born in Hahira, GA on October 7, 1940 and moved to Boston to attend beauty school.  She went on to enroll at Newbury Junior College and received an associate's degree. Garrison later received a B.S. degree in administration from Suffolk University, an M.S. degree in management from Lesley College and a certificate in special studies in administration and management from Harvard University in 1984 

Although Althea has never publicly announced her trans status or talked about it, we are aware that people who transitioned during that more restrictive HBIDGA era were advised to never let anyone know their trans status and live their lives.  In 1976 her name change petition was approved and filed in the Suffolk County Courthouse "consistent with [her] appearance and medical condition.". 

Keep reading to discover how this info became public, but back to the post.

Politically Garrison is all over the map.  She has been and is currently a Democrat 1982–1986, 1998–1999, 2010–present, an independent in 1988, 2000, 2008 and a Republican from 1990–1996 and 2002–2006. She's run for office multiple times under those various party labels for the Boston City Council, mayor, the Massachusetts Senate and the Massachusetts House of Representatives. .

She worked for the Massachusetts state comptrollers office and made her first unsuccessful run for public office in 1981.  Undaunted, she unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Massachusetts House in 1982 and 1986  

But you know the old saying about persistence paying off.  Despite the Boston Globe dismissing her two years before as a 'perennial loser', her breakthrough political victory fitting occurred during the 1992 political 'Year of The Woman".

She was running as a Republican candidate for the Fifth Suffolk seat in the Massachusetts House and successfully challenged several signatures that Democratic incumbent Nelson Merced obtained as part of the candidate certification process.   The successful challenge meant that Merced was removed from the Democratic primary ballot and ended his reelection bid in the process.  

That meant the Fifth Suffolk seat was now an open one and Garrison went on to a close general-election victory in November 1992 over Democratic candidate Irene Roman, 2,451 votes to 2,014.

Unfortunately Garrison only got to savor her long sought after electoral victory for two days. 

A story broke in the conservative leaning Boston Herald that revealed Garrison's old male name and the 1976 name change petition.   The author of the smear piece was Eric Fehrnstrom, the current communications director for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign who was then a conservative attack columnist for the Herald. 

The outing undermined her opportunity to be judged as a freshman legislator by the same criteria and merits as her fellow Massachusetts House colleagues and probably derailed any opportunity for Garrison to build her political career   It also unfortunately for her occurred the same year The Crying Game was released in theaters.  She was treated as an oddity or the punchline for a joke in local political columns mocking her transition. 

Howie Carr, a conservative talk show host who was at the time a colleague of Fehrnstrom's at the Herald once wrote a column in which he stated, “I’ve always liked Althea. She has a big heart. Not to mention big feet. And very, very big hands.” 

Instead of confronting the smear, no one in the Massachusetts state house, including Garrison herself was willing or comfortable discussing trans issues and their trans colleague.  

She took the lemon situation she'd been thrust into by Fehrnstrom's hit piece and turned it into lemonade. She impressed her legislative colleagues on a personal level.  "She’s a transvestite or transsexual black woman, with an Adam’s Apple, who’s a Republican, who you run into in the members’ ladies’ room," recalls one former colleague. "That being said, when you get past all those obvious things, I always found her to be very pleasant and very kind."

During her term from 1993-1995 she consistently voted pro-union and sided with the Democrats on many issues far more often than she did with the Republicans.  When she ran for reelection in 1994 her pro-union record earned her endorsements from the AFL-CIO and eight additional unions.  It wasn't enough to keep her from being challenged by Democratic rising political star Charlotte Golar Richie.

In the 1994 general election.that fall Garrison's bid for reelection resulted in defeat as Golar Richie garnered 2108 votes to Garrison’s 1718.

Since then Garrison has continued be involved in local politics and run for various offices in the Boston area   She ran as a  'Independent Progressive' in a 2000 Massachusetts House race, a 2001 Boston mayoral race, a 2002 special election for the Massachusetts Senate as a Republican for the 1st Suffolk district; 2003 and 2005 races for at large seats on the Boston City Council, and a 2006 Massachusetts House race as a Republican.

In 2010 Garrison made another run for the 5th Suffolk district Massachusetts House seat she'd once held and finished third in the Democratic primary.  She ran in a February 2011 special election to fill a vacancy on the Boston City Council, District 7 seat and finished in fourth place in the preliminary election.


Unfortunately Garrison has been on the wrong side of the marriage equality issue. 

“Furthermore, to grant special benefits and privileges to a certain group of people is discriminatory toward heterosexual males and females. The issue of same sex marriage is not like race in which a person has no control over the color of his or her skin of which they were born, same sex is a matter of choice and lifestyle not to be confused or associated with class or race.“

She called for the judges who ruled on that groundbreaking Massachusetts marriage case to be removed from the bench and in her 2003 Boston City council race she was supported by the odious anti GLBT organization MassResistance.

But the facts are that we now know the glass ceiling for a transwoman being elected to a state legislature in the United States was broken in 1992, and the woman who did so was Althea Garrison.  

Early Voting Starts Today In Texas Primaries

No thanks to the redistricting chicanery the Republifools tried to pull in the Lone Star State and got called on by federal judges and the Department of Justice, the electoral primary elections that normally happen in March got pushed back to May 29.

Karma is a witch ain't it GOP?    If you hadn't tried to frack with us non-white people ability to vote or tired to lock in you ill gotten Delaymandered supermajority you would have been able to have a major say in whether Willard would be the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

But I can needle y'all Texas Republifools about your overreach later.  Back to our regularly scheduled TransGriot post. . 

Since we have early voting in Texas, that gets cranked up today and runs through May 25.   If any of the races require a runoff, the two two candidates will square off off for their party's general election nomination on July 31  

If you live in Harris County (the county that Houston is in for you geographically challenged people) here's the info specific to us via the Harris Vote website. 

You can access the primary candidate ballots for both parties, find out where the 37 countywide early voting polling places are located, and if you missed the cutoff date for getting registered to vote for the primary can still get it done so your behind will be eligible for the November 6 general election.     

The information for the rest of Texas is here.   You can also go to the website specific to your county for local polling place info as well or pick up a voter registration card at your local US post office, fill it out and mail it postage free.

To be eligible to register to vote in the Lone Star State, a person must be:

• A United States citizen;
• A resident of the Texas county in which application for registration is made;
• At least 18 years old on Election Day;
• Not finally convicted of a felony, or, if so convicted must have (1) fully discharged the sentence, including any term of incarceration, parole, or supervision, or completed a period of probation ordered by any court; or (2) been pardoned or otherwise released from the resulting disability to vote; and
• Not determined by a final judgment of a court exercising probate jurisdiction to be (1) totally mentally incapacitated; or (2) partially mentally incapacitated without the right to vote.

As for that odious Voter ID Suppression law the Republifools passed and Governor Goodhair signed,.that got legally pimp slapped thanks to the DOJ and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.   The conservafools that run this state for now are appealing ti, but odds are long that they will reverse it.

The law was clearly shown to have a deleterious discriminatory impact on Latino voters, and it's not too far an extrapolation to deduce that it would have had the same jacked up effects on African-Americans and other targeted groups for suppression such as college students and seniors as well.

And conservafools, spare me the what's wrong with requiring an ID to vote to prevent voter fraud spin line you'll send me in the comment sections.   We've has less than 12 people arrested in over a decade of elections out of millions of votes cast and know what the real deal is in terms of motivating your faux concern for stamping out voter fraud..

We are quite aware you conservapeeps define 'voter fraud' as massive numbers of non-white and liberal voters lining up at the polls to put Democrats in office

We know as part of your scheme to make a certain Democrat residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave a one-termer y'all rushed these unconstitutuional laws to passage in 34 states after the 2010 midterms.

So with the Voter ID Suppression Law being struck down, that means all you'll have to do is present your new yellow voter registration card they should have mailed you already when you show up at the local polling place to cast your ballot.

If you have any drama doing so, notify your local or the Texas state NAACP chapters 

This is the first step for you liberal progressive Texans on the long road we have to making our state more progressive and one we can be proud of.   

So handle your civic duty, thank you for caring enough about who runs this state and your counties to do so and see y'all at the polls.

Recall Scott Walker Effort Passes 300K Signatures

In just a mere 12 days the effort to recall conservafool Wisconsin governor Scott Walker (R) has gathered an astounding 301,000 signatures.   They are well on their way to the 540,000 verified signatures they need to trigger the recall election.

As much woof ticket selling that Scott Walker, the Wisconsin  GOP, the national Republicans an d their FOX Noise propaganda ministry have tried to pimp in discounting the recall movement as 'sour grapes', it's interesting to note for somebody that isn't worried about it, the $2 million he's spent in ads trying to defend his union busting job performance say otherwise.

The United Wisconsin proponents have until January 17 to gather those 540,000 signatures, then once they are verified, the election can take place and the Democrats will probably announce their candidate to oppose walker in the recall election. 

Look for the GOP to dig deep into their political dirty trick playbook to try to come up with ways to slow the runaway freight train momentum building toward what is increasingly looking like a wildly successful effort to gather enough signatures to force that historic recall election in Wisconsin

Mike Laster Makes Houston Rainbow History

When I was griping about the fact that Bo Fraga jumped into the crowded City Council Position 2 at large race that Jenifer Rene Pool was attempting to win a seat in, I was concerned that if neither candidate finished in the top two or won, it would leave the Houston rainbow community with no representation on city council for the first time since 1997. 

What I feared would happen did as neither Pool or Fraga garnered enough votes to get into a runoff but the Houston rainbow community will have representation when the new expanded Houston City Council is inaugurated in the person of Mike Laster. 

Laster ran in one of the two new districts that was created as a result of the city's population passing the 2.1 million mark and a city ordinance mandating the council be expanded when that happened.  

District J is a diverse district in Southwest Houston stretching from Bellaire and the Galleria area southwestward to Beltway 8 along either side of the Southwest Freeway.

It was designed to be an opportunity district for the Latino and Asian communities.  63% of the population in it is Latino but Laster as a longtime Sharpstown area attorney and activist had name recognition and cruised to victory with 67% of the vote over his two opponents Criselda Romero and Rodrigo Canedo.  

He will not only be the first councilmember to represent the new District J, he made a little rainbow history by becoming the first out gay male to win election to Houston City Council.

The previous rainbow community persons elected to Houston City Council were now mayor Annise Parker (the first ever elected to council) and Sue Lovell, the person who succeeded her.

Congrats to Councilman-elect Laster for your history making victory and may you have much success in representing your District J constituents and the community.