US midterms test Republican redistricting in Texas: Houston's Black voters see their district redrawn

Two days before the US midterm elections, the Sunday service at Mount Hebron Missionary Baptist Church in Sunnyside, southern Houston, carried special significance. The predominantly Black neighbourhood now sits on the front line of the US redistricting battle.

Mount Hebron had long been located in the ninth congressional district, where its politically engaged Black voters had for two decades helped elect Democrat Al Green, known in Congress for his cane-waving opposition to President Donald Trump.

But following an appeal from Trump, the Republican state legislature last year carried out a rare mid-decade redistricting, redrawing the church and its Black community into the Black-majority 18th district.

Critics call the process 'cracking and packing' — diminishing the congressional representation of minority groups, particularly heavily Democratic Black communities, by consolidating their voting power into fewer districts.

Pastor Max Miller, who has served at the church for 18 years, said: 'It's kind of one and the same when we talk about the voting and the civil rights. They are trying to manipulate and monopolise the vote and minimise the people who are in those districts. We see so much rolling backwards that it looks like they're trying to take a script from an old song and turn back the hands of time.'

As a result of the redistricting, Green was forced to run in a primary against 18th district incumbent Christian Menefee, another Black Democrat. He lost, and Houston lost one of its Black representatives in Congress.

The ninth district, meanwhile, was redrawn to favour Republicans, one of at least five congressional seats the party hopes to pick up in the midterm vote through the new maps.

The change has resonated with worshippers at Mount Hebron. Alice Jefferson, 97, had followed Green throughout his political career. 'I don't like the redistricting at all because Al Green was moved out,' she said. 'He always had good advice for the people.'

Janice Ray, a 61-year-old home health aide and entrepreneur, said state lawmakers were 'trying to move people out of the district that they're familiar with'. 'To me, it was all a bunch of BS,' she said. 'There was no reason for it.' But she added: 'We'll stand firm, regardless of what they try to do. Because just like it was changed, it can always be changed back.'

Michael Adams, a professor at Texas Southern University in Houston, told Al Jazeera that political science calls this 'descriptive representation': minorities and others feel that if they can elect someone who reflects their values and may look like them, their vote can be defined as one voice. With no additional Black member of Congress representing Houston, he said, a significant segment of Black voters may feel their voices have been weakened.

This election season the redistricting process has undergone a generational transformation, with Republican and Democratic legislatures across the country joining in. Republicans redrew maps in Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Ohio; Democrats did so in California, while a court-ordered map in Utah handed Democrats a favourable seat. A Democratic push in Virginia was subsequently invalidated.

Redrawing maps mid-decade, without waiting for the latest census numbers, was already atypical. But many of this year's maps would have been deemed illegal in previous cycles: Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had long prohibited drawing congressional maps to dilute the electoral power of minority voters.

In April, the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court ruled that anyone challenging such a map must prove 'racist intent'. Critics say the ruling effectively allows racial gerrymandering, with proving such intent an unreasonably high bar. Critics of Section 2, meanwhile, argue that drawing maps to protect minority voting power is itself discriminatory.

Defenders in Texas say the redistricting was based on the state's shifting political makeup, not race. Republican State Representative Todd Hunter said shortly after the new map passed last year: 'This plan includes political considerations, public testimony, recognition of population growth and recent changes in voter trends. Each of these newly drawn districts now trend Republican in political performance. While there's no guarantee of electoral success, Republicans will now have an opportunity to potentially win these districts.'

There are no guarantees a party's redistricting plans will work. After the tit-for-tat redrawings, Republicans hoped to net at least 13 seats nationally, but polling suggests their gains may be much more muted. In all, about 35 million US voters will cast ballots in newly redistricted seats this election.

'Redistricting can change the political boundaries, but it can't guarantee how voters will behave,' Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor at the University of Houston, told Al Jazeera. 'These districts are a test of whether political dissatisfaction can overcome an aggressively partisan map,' he said.

In Texas, the Republican map was drawn largely on recent Latino voting trends. The demographic swung heavily for Trump in the state in 2024, despite once being considered a reliable Democratic bloc. But the political tides have turned again: Trump's popularity has tanked among Latino voters, fuelled in part by unrest over the economy and the administration's aggressive deportation campaign.

The ninth district is now considered Republican-favoured, but its large population of low-propensity Latino voters creates a pathway for a Democratic victory, according to Dayana Iza, Texas state director of Mi Familia Vota, a Latino voting organisation focusing resources on the race. The legislature 'kept a big portion of Latino voters there, but the reality is that the Latino percentage in that district that votes is very, very low,' Iza told Al Jazeera, so the group is working to mobilise turnout.

On the Saturday before the November 3 vote, Democratic candidate Leticia Gutierrez and State Senator Molly Cook zigzagged through a neighbourhood of single-family homes in eastern Houston. Any path to victory, Gutierrez assessed, would rest on face time with disillusioned voters. 'This community here has an average annual income of $63,000 a year. I make a little over that, and it's difficult,' she told Al Jazeera. 'At this point, it's not a left or a right thing anymore. This is an affordability crisis.' She added: 'You've heard some of the voters out here say this is the first time someone actually came to my door. That means a lot, and so we want to continue to do that.'

Among the residents was Christian Garcia, 53, who works at a local chemical plant and has not voted since moving to Texas from Puerto Rico in 2014. He said he is focused on his family, saving enough for retirement and leaving something behind for his adult children; in the past, he said, he felt voting was 'wasting my time'. 'You know, it's a lot of corruption and things,' Garcia said. 'I just don't believe in anybody anymore.' Down the block, Esmeralda Gil, a 39-year-old teacher, said she hoped for a Democratic surge, questioning why taxes, particularly on housing, seemed so high while so many struggled to access healthcare. 'We need affordable healthcare and affordable housing,' she said.