The swelling ranks of Hispanics here are a big reason Nevada will win a new seat in Washington. And so, as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process, leaders here are sketching out a new Congressional district that would give Hispanic neighborhoods more sway over their representative in Washington.
But that simple goal is turning out to be anything but. The efforts are complicated by the many different ways people interpret laws governing redistricting. Politicians are also using the redistricting battles to advance their own agendas — ones that often have nothing to do with the Hispanic population.
Now, Nevada’s new Congressional map is in the hands of a judge, who on Tuesday announced plans to appoint a panel of special masters to tackle the matter, after party leaders here clashed over vexing questions.
How many of the residents of a new district should be Hispanic? What will it all mean for Democratic candidates? For Republican candidates? For the ethnic makeup of the state’s other three Congressional districts? For individual incumbents?
“There is consensus about one thing — that one of these districts is going to give the best opportunity yet for Hispanics to elect a candidate of their choice, and that puts us in a very pivotal position,” said Andres Ramirez, a political consultant and leader of a Nevada Hispanic Redistricting Coalition, which has drawn its own map — a very different one from that proposed by the state’s Republicans, but also different from the ones offered by the Democrats.
“Hispanics have become the political football this year,” Mr. Ramirez said.
The remarkable growth of Hispanics nationwide — they accounted for more than half the nation’s population jump over the last ten years and they now make up more than 16 percent of the population — means similar political calculations, debates and legal considerations are playing out across the country, much as they did in decades past with the shifting population of African-Americans.
Political parties are keenly aware of the stakes. In the last presidential election, surveys showed Hispanic voters leaned toward the Democratic Party, which hopes to hold onto this increasingly powerful bloc, even as Republicans in some places are working hard to woo them over to their side.
The issue is center stage as maps are being drawn in states with large Hispanic populations like Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois and Texas. But it also is playing a role at the local level elsewhere, in political maps for state legislatures, town councils, and even school boards.
In Philadelphia, for example, leaders are pushing for state House and city Council districts with majority Hispanic populations. In Milwaukee, a coalition has called for several aldermanic districts with significant numbers of Hispanic residents. Similar struggles are expected in the South, in states like North Carolina and Georgia, where the Hispanic population surged in the last ten years.
“This is a watershed moment,” Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said of Hispanics’ potential role this year in the redrawing of political lines.
Still, Mr. Saenz said, the verdict will not be in on how much political force Hispanics will gain until skirmishes like the one now playing out in Nevada’s courts are settled. “What we know for sure is getting control of districts to which you are entitled means someone else relinquishing political power,” he said. “And that’s the rub.”
With deadlines approaching to finish the new maps before next year’s elections, battles are heating up around the country.
In Texas, Hispanic groups have filed lawsuits over new maps the state’s Republican leaders drew. They say the maps mainly solidify Republican control and essentially ignore Hispanics — even though some of the state’s four new Congressional seats would not have been created if not for Hispanic growth, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of the state’s boom over the last decade.
In California, where an independent commission is remaking the maps so politicians are removed from the highly partisan process, Hispanic leaders have criticized a draft released in June, they say, would result in them losing Hispanic-dominated state and federal legislative seats.
“They were awful,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Elected and Appointed Officials. “They in no way reflected Hispanic gains.”
And in Illinois, some leaders describe what they view as rising tension over newly drawn Congressional districts between Hispanics, who recently became Chicago’s largest minority, and African-Americans, whose control of some districts may be waning as blacks leave Chicago.
The legal disputes are based on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, aimed at banning discrimination against racial and other groups.
Some states with histories of such problems must get explicit approval from the United States attorney general or the Federal District Court in Washington for changes that affect voting, but others, like Nevada, fall into a murkier realm in which all sides seem to interpret the Voting Rights Act, which calls in certain circumstances for minority-dominated districts, in ways that might propel the map they most desire.
Here in Nevada, Democrats, who control the state Legislature, have drawn a new Congressional map that includes a district where Hispanics would make up 37 percent of the residents, and two other districts in which Hispanic residents would make up about a quarter of the population. Under their plan, three of the state’s four districts would be dominated by registered Democrats, while Republicans could keep one.
But Brian Sandoval, the Republican governor, vetoed the Democrats’ plans, arguing they violated the Voting Rights Act by not establishing a district with a Hispanic majority even though, the governor said, “such a district can clearly and simply be drawn.”
The state’s Republicans have offered their own plan — one in which Republican residents would control two of the four Congressional seats, and Democrats the other two. In one of the Democratically-controlled districts, Hispanic residents would make up just over 50 percent of the residents — giving them, in essence, their own seat; the other districts would include far fewer Hispanics.
If Republicans would appear to be trying to defend the power of Hispanics here, not everyone here interprets it that way. Republicans do not do particularly well in Nevada with Hispanics, who were credited with coming out in force in 2010 for Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader whose re-election had once appeared in jeopardy, and with helping Barack Obama win Nevada in 2008. Governor Sandoval, who is himself Hispanic, received support from only about a third of Hispanic voters in his victory last fall, exit polls showed.
Democrats say the Republicans efforts to create a Hispanic district result in one that is not just oddly shaped but also fails to include a majority of Hispanics of voting age (as opposed to residents of all ages). The Democrats say the proposed map fails to meet the tests required by the Voting Rights Act and ultimately dilutes the voices of Hispanics in the state’s other districts.
“They say we’re packing,” said Daniel Stewart, a lawyer for the Republicans, referring to the practice (part of the lexicon in the world of redistricting) of stuffing minority groups into single districts. “We say they’re cracking,” he said, of claims Democrats are needlessly splitting up Hispanics to dilute their strength.
For Hispanics here, groups seem to be forming by the week, and new maps are — emerging along with them.
Alex Garza, a businessman and a member of a new organization Hispanics for Fair Representation, said he leaned toward a map that would ensure a single district with a majority of Hispanics — something close, he said, to the Republicans’ plan.
“To dilute our voting power right now is kind of shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said. “We finally have not just a seat at the table but we can direct the conversation — so we should.”
Vicenta Montoya, the chairwoman of the Si Se Puede Hispanic Democratic Caucus, described both parties’ maps as flawed, but said the Republicans’ was worse.
“They have taken this very paternalistic position of: ‘We know what’s best for you. And if we stick every Maria and Juan in a single district, you’ll get a candidate,’ ” she said.
Ms. Montoya’s imagined map: one Congressional district with a higher percentage of Hispanic residents than the Democrats have pressed for, but also Hispanic residents spread through other districts.
“I’d like to be able to go to three representatives who are going to listen to me,” she said. “Why not?”
