The case involving Tom Delay stemmed from his efforts to obtain a Republican Majority in the Texas House in the election of 2002, which would have been the first time the Republican Party had controlled the institution since Reconstruction.
Of course it was a very different Republican Party back then - nationalist in outlook and supportive of - Civil Rights.
What made this controversial was that DeLay's intent was to enable the Republican Party to draw new districts for the House of Representatives and give the Republican majority in the House a few extra seats. These are normally only redrawn in the legislative sessions immediately following the census when House seats are reapportioned. The Democratic Party still controlled the Texas Senate though, so Republicans were unable to dominate the redistricting process.
The legislature elected in 2000 was able to draw the US House districts that allowed the Democratic Party to continue to dominate the state delegation - there were 17 Democrats to 15 Republicans. The one elected in 2002 was able to redraw the districts, target certain Democrats - mostly white males - and result in a scheme that elected 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats.
This demonstrates the effectiveness of gerrymandering.
What got DeLay into trouble was that the manner in which donations from corporation were funneled to candidates. Corporate financing for candidates was illegal at that time. Prosecutors argued that DeLay circumvented those rules by funneling corporate money through his account to those of the Texas Senate candidates. The appellate court seems to have argued that these funds were not meant for the campaign, but rather to have access to DeLay.
As we should expect, a Wikipedia page exists that provides an overview of the 2003 redistricting effort.
We will discuss elections in Texas soon enough - this gives us a head start.
Here are more sources:
- The Texas Gerrymander
- Justice staff saw Texas districting as illegal
- The Killer D's
- Sourcewatch
