The Fort Worth City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed a redistricting map they code named “Anna,” a special honor for the soon-to-be-delivered baby girl belonging to the district director of Councilman Michael Crain, who noted that the new arrival might be through college before the duty of drawing a redistricting map was completed.
And suffice to say, Anna’s highly anticipated coming out party will be a far simpler process than the intensive labor it took last week to sort out this redistricting map, which reflects two new seats to be added in 2023. Voters in 2016 approved a change to the city charter that altered the council makeup to 10 council districts and one mayor. In short, a 10-1 structure.
The process to carve up the city’s council boundaries was tantamount to watching the proverbial sausage being made in Niles City, a task of democracy — no one would mistake it with a “science of craft” — that would have made even Tocqueville turn his head, lest a dry heave manifest itself the way the sight or scent of Goldschläger might the Rev. Norris.
But there they all were on Wednesday of last week — all day Wednesday — trying to bring to life a new council map that could garner a majority five votes for, while juggling all the precincts (not all precincts are created equal in terms of performance on election day), and competing special interests of the citizenry and councilmembers, all who gave up something and one who, true to his word, didn’t give up anything.
The latter is a matter that might have left a lingering touch of colic among the council.
There was a consensus formed among the current nine that one final result of the whittling should be an additional seat at the table for a Hispanic man or woman. The so-called second Hispanic opportunity district. Currently, only one Hispanic sits on the council, Carlos Flores, he of a predominantly Hispanic District 2.
Activists for years have argued there should be another, an assertion ramped up for this round of redistricting with ammo-data showing that Hispanics make up 35% of the city’s population.
The council got there without any prequels of Will Smith, the uxorious chap, and Chris Rock — barely — though it was considered.
The body also needed the hotly debated “horseshoe” feature to the map, which connects neighborhoods in the South Side to east Fort Worth. There hasn’t been that much controversy over a horseshoe since two beer drinking neighbors got together to toss one at well-grounded stakes.
The new District 11 will have a total Hispanic voting age population, or VAP, of almost 59%. Currently, Flores’ District 2 features a VAP in the low-to-mid 50 percent.
Another new district, District 10, was created for the burgeoning north Fort Worth, north of Loop 820.
“Our goal was to create some kind of horseshoe with a Hispanic opportunity district,” Mayor Mattie Parker said afterward last week. “We have achieved something pretty notable today.”
Despite the few predictable naysayers — they are everywhere it seems, regardless of color, creed, or neighborhood— Fort Worth’s Hispanic community has come away from the proceedings pleased by the outcome and the increased potential for political empowerment in the city.
“This looks pretty good,” said Fernando Florez, a representative of the United Hispanic Council of Tarrant County, who has been working on the issue of Hispanic representation on the council since 1990. “Not everybody is happy in the Hispanic community, but that’s the way it goes. We didn’t get everything we wanted, but we got a pretty good deal. That’s just the reality. You don’t get what you want always.”
There’s no guarantee a Hispanic will be elected, but the theory follows that a district with weighted demographics will encourage more Hispanics to become engaged.
“This will encourage good [Hispanic] candidates to run,” Florez said. “It’s going to change the community. People will become more engaged in municipal elections. That’s my prediction.”
Getting there also required quite a bit of compromise — the word “sacrifice” was used more than once on Tuesday — on the part of councilmembers. District 9 Councilwoman Elizabeth Beck probably wins the profile in courage award for this one.
She willingly gave up the most at the very real risk of losing her seat on the council in 2023. As part of her “compromise,” Beck added Wedgwood to her District 9. Wedgwood is a more conservative neighborhood traditionally in District 6. That is at odds with Beck’s more liberal leanings, a reality she acknowledged in remarks on Tuesday. She vowed to her would-be new constituents that she would be committed to them and their concerns no matter what their differences would be in a different political sphere. (The city's business is making sure the water and lights stay on, police arrive when you need them, firefighters get to distress calls, and the such.) She reminded them that Wedgwood is her first home. She graduated from Southwest High School.
Crain handed over the Como neighborhood, a reality that brought him to near tears on Tuesday as he said his first goodbyes to the historic neighborhood on the West Side that is going to District 6. (Como is a traditionally Black neighborhood whose demographics are evolving with new Hispanic residents.)
Como residents had expressed a desire to be one of those opportunity districts. To that end, the neighborhood went to District 6 and Councilman Jared Williams, a Black man.
That was the wish of the neighborhood.
Williams stood to be one of the big political winners in redistricting. The way he did it almost certainly didn’t please his colleagues.
While Beck, Crain, Chris Nettles, and others compromised, Williams gave up nothing, and at one point during the negotiations last week announced he would not budge one bit in ceding any ground that, by all appearances, he believed would benefit him politically. That led to heated arguments between Williams and Beck, and Williams and Nettles. Losing Wedgwood wasn’t exactly a “loss” for Williams, who didn’t fare well there in his election victory against Jungus Jordan.
Williams, currently in Italy on city business, didn’t respond to a call. (Carlos Flores, too, did pretty well for himself, increasing his voting age population to 62% Hispanic.)
No one will go on the record about what the current temperature is on council, but Beck and Crain might have flashed their feelings on Tuesday by both saying they hoped one day soon a “son or daughter of Como” would ascend to the City Council.
To do that, of course, an electoral challenge to Williams would have to be made.
As the mayor remarked, this redistricting stuff is full-contact sport that even the gooniest of hockey defenseman would likely decline. No one believed it would be a trip to the place space at McDonald's.
The battle of redistricting is done with a second Hispanic opportunity district the end. The means to get there left some scars, and whether reconciliation or a council cold war is next is a matter on the radar.
