Federal Judge in Redistricting Battle is Brother in Law of Texas Democrat Senate Caucus Chairman

Judge Orlando L. Garcia is the Brother-In-Law of Democrat State Senator Leticia Van De Putte. Van De Putte was recently the Texas State Senate Caucus Chairman for nearly a decade and she is one of the most liberal Democrats in Texas. Judge Orlando Garcia should have stepped down because of this clear conflict of interest.

I was speaking to a State Senator the other night (he will remain anonymous). We were talking about Texas Redistricting and about the US Supreme Court stopping the ridiculous abuse of power by the two Judges in the San Antonio Federal Court. It was almost as if the Democrats were single handedly allowed to redraw the maps, and then these Judges just used what the Democrats had drawn.

This State Senator asked me if I knew that one of these 2 Federal Judges was the brother in law of the Texas Democrat Senate Caucus Chairman. I almost did not believe him at first because, well, if this was true then it would have been all over the news, but I had never seen this on the news.

Maybe Judge Garcia and Senator Van De Putte do not communicate with each other? Wrong! The State Senator I was talking to told me that Judge Garcia is known to eat dinner nearly every Sunday night with Senator Van De Putte.

Maybe Senator Van De Putte does not have an opinion about Redistricting battles in Texas? Wrong! Senator Van De Putte was very vocally against Republicans in the 2003 Texas redistricting battle. She accused Republicans of trying to hurt minorities in redistricting. That sounds very familiar to what is being said in this year’s redistricting battle. Senator Van De Putte very likely played a hand in making sure this redistricting lawsuit was filed in San Antonio where her brother in law is the Federal Judge. Senator Van De Putte also very likely used her relationship with the San Antonio Judge to inappropriately affect the court’s decision. I guess if you do not want the Elected Officials of Texas to draw the maps as required by the Constitution, then the next best thing would be to ask your brother in law Judge to redraw the maps right? This is judicial activism and corrupt government at its worst.

Also, a reader just sent this comment in to me: Sen Van Putte was also co-chair of the National Democrat Convention in 2008. The lawsuits filed in Justice Orlanda Garcia's court were funded by the National Democrat Redistricting Trust. The National Democrat Redistricting Trust was given a favorable ruling by the FEC, ruling the donors could remain anonymous.

Redistricting Panel Conflict of Interest, Media Cover Up

This relationship between Judge Garcia and State Senator Van De Putte is shocking. Just as shocking is the fact that the media has completely ignored this clear conflict of interest. There was a Republican State Representative, Sarah Davis, who heard about this conflict of interested and objected to this conflict of interest, but the Federal Court quickly shot down her motion. The State Senator that I was talking to mentioned that the Texas Attorney General’s staff did not want to make a big deal about it because this was the beginning stages of the redistricting battle and they did not want to make the Federal Court mad because that might cause the Judges to rule against the State Drawn Maps. That plan sure didn’t work though because the Judges still went on to completely overstep their boundaries and re-draw the Texas Redistricting Maps in favor of the Democrats!

According to Daniel Greer of Agenda Wise, the United States Judicial Code provides for the disqualification of a judge if his spouse or a person within the third degree of relationship to either individual is a party to the proceeding. Democrat legislators sued to have maps drafted during the session disqualified and redrawn by judges. Democrat Senator Leticia Van De Putte is the sister-in-law of one of the three judges on the panel who redrew the maps, Judge Orlando L. Garcia. Since the state was sued, it’s officers are a party to the suit, making Garcia’s relation to Van De Putte a conflict of interest.

One 2012 Texas Primary Election in May Instead of Two (March and May) Would Devastate TX Presidential Vote

I previously wrote an article stating that the Texas Primary Elections will likely be split with one in March and the other in May. This is what the Texas Republican Party and the AG argued for.

Not everyone likes that idea though and there are many who want only one Primary election date, including both Democrats and A good number of Republican State Senators and Texas Congressmen.

We will find out soon from the San Antonio Federal Court whether we will have two Texas Primaries (one in March and One in May) of whether ALL the Primary Elections in Texas will be pushed back to a later day, likely May.

Having only one primary election instead of two would certainly push back the Texas Primary election till at least May.

I certainly understand some of the reasons for not wanting to have a split Primary, including the extra costs and confusion. I also completely respect the opinions of the State Senators and Congressmen who are for just one later primary date. I do have concerns that this later primary election will devastate the Texas Vote in the Presidential Primary Election.

A Later Primary Would Give Texas No Say in the Republican Presidential Primary Race

A HUGE drawback of pushing back all the primary Elections in Texas would be that it would hurt the ability of Texas to choose the next Republican Presidential Candidate in what would be the biggest election against the Democrats in the History of America.

Right now, Texas is in position to have a major say in the Republican Presidential Primary election. A later primary Election would give Texas nearly no chance of having a major impact on who the Republican Presidential Candidate will be.

The RNC made a rule that if certain states had their primary Elections before March 2012 and February 2012, then those state would lose HALF of their Presidential Primary Delegates. Well, most of the states that have primary elections before Texas have not complied with this rule and therefore those States will lose half of their Republican Presidential Primary Election Delegate Votes.

A Candidate needs 1214 Delegates in order to have a majority of the Republican Presidential Primary Delegates and win the Republican Nomination.

As is stands, at the end of February 2012, and going into the March Texas Primary Election, there will only have been 87 Delegates Republican Presidential Delegates Selected (after the penalties)

Texas Has 155 Presidential Primary Delegates!

With 155 Delegates, A Texas Presidential Primary Election in March could COMPLETELY alter the Republican Presidential Race with Texas getting to pick the leader

On the other hand, a Presidential Primary Election in May would give Texas very little say in the Republican Presidential Race because many more delegates will have been selected and the media will likely have already decided who the leader is by that point in time.

We will find out soon from the San Antonio Federal Judges whether we will have two Texas Primaries (one in March and One in May) of whether ALL the Primary Elections in Texas will be pushed back to a later day, likely May.

Texas Primary Elections Likely to be in March & May After Supreme Court Stops Unconstitutional Court Drawn Redistricting Maps

Update: Federal Court has Ordered the Texas Republican Primary election to be on just one date on April 3rd, 2012. Click Here to read more

Also, at the bottom of this article you can read an Excellent, In-Depth Explanation of the Supreme Court Stay emailed to me from State Senator Robert Nichols

The US Supreme Court has granted a stay requested by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Governor Rick Perry along with other state officials. The stay blocks Texas from using the maps drawn by the lower Federal Court in San Antonio, TX. This Federal Court re-drew the maps for Texas in response to race based lawsuits from Liberal Democrat groups who cannot get the people to vote for them so they try to get into office via Activist Judges.

This Stay is GREAT news for Texas. The Constitution of the United States should just be thrown in the trash if 2 judges in San Antonio are able to draw the voting maps for the entire State of Texas. The United States Constitution says that the ELECTED Representatives in the State Legislature of Texas are the people who are supposed to draw the new voting maps. The court drawn maps represented the greatest attack against Texas and The Constitution since, well, since I can ever remember. Two unelected judges should not and cannot draw the maps for Texas. That is NOT their job nor do they have the authority to do it. The Supreme Court has taken the extraordinary step of granting a Stay to stop the court drawn maps. This shows that the Supreme Court believes there are serious problems with what is going on.

These court drawn maps not only went against the Constitution and the Sovereignty of Texas, but they also were illegal in many ways. The lines in the court drawn maps irresponsibly cut through communities and discriminatorily used race as the sole basis of where the lines were drawn. The court drawn maps created districts that had significant differences in population therefore creating districts where one person’s vote in one district was stronger than one person’s vote in another district.

So What Does This Mean for Texas Elections?

Texas Will Likely Have TWO Primary Elections in 2012. One in March and One in May

It is not official that Texas will have two primary elections in 2012, but I am positive that this will happen. The Court Drawn Maps being fought in court only involve the Texas Congressional, State Senate, and State Representative maps. The Supreme Court will not be hearing arguments on these Redistricting Maps until January 9th, 2012. This makes it impossible for these three Primary Races to be held in March. The Congressional, State Rep, and State Senate Primary Elections will likely be pushed back until May so that those maps can be figured out in a Supreme Court Battle. The most likely date in May will be May 22nd 2012. May 22nd is already scheduled as the Texas Primary Election Runoff date so the State is already prepared to do a Primary Election on that date. It is a couple weeks after the Texas Local Elections in May so the Local elections will get a boost in publicity, but there will not be a shortage of voting machines because of the 2 week difference in these May Elections
All the other Primary Elections will still be able to be held in March. This includes all the other Primary races like the Presidential Primary election, US Senate, state wide positions like Railroad Commissioner, State Board of Education, and the County level Primary Elections.

All Candidates running for Congress, State Representative and State Senate should just hold tight and wait until the Supreme Court makes a ruling because we will not know how these districts will look yet. All voters should also hold tight because you do not know what district you will be in until after this is resolved.

All other Primary races are still a GO for March so let’s all not lose focus on the March elections because there are very important races like President and US Senate. You know, having two primary election dates this year might be a good thing. There are so many important political races that it is hard to know who is running for what. Splitting up the races into two different elections might be better than having just one big overwhelming ballot. Plus, the local races in the May election will see possibly the biggest turnout in all of history because of the addition of the Congressional, State Rep, and State Senate Primary Elections so close to the local elections. So if you think you will be able to just fly under the radar running for School Board in May or trying to pass a tax increasing bond in May, think again! The typically low turnout May election will have a HUGE turnout and these local elections will see a record number of voters and will garner more publicity and community interest because of the primary elections that will also be in May.

In a statement sent in to me by e-mail, State Senator Robert Nichols gives an in-depth explanation of a Supreme Court Stay (Nichols said he did not write this but he did send it to me and it is unknown who wrote it):

Texas election maps blocked, for now...

The Supreme Court, working late on a Friday, agreed to rule on the constitutionality of three redistricting plans for the two houses of the Texas legislature and its 36-member U.S. House of Representatives delegation, and put on hold temporarily a U.S. District Court’s interim maps. The Court ordered expedited briefing, and set a hearing on the cases forJan. 9 at 1 p.m. The Justices’ action gave Texas much of what its lawyers had sought in their challenge to the three-judge trial court’s temporary maps, which were to be used for the 2012 election cycle. The Court’s order is here. It raises the strong possibility of a major new ruling on the power of federal judges to draw up redistricting plans while a state legislature’s own maps are under challenge in court.

Although the state had initially sought only a stay of the temporary redistricting plans, it suggested as an alternative that the Court take on the cases itself, and issue a prompt ruling. That is what the Justices agreed to do, putting the cases on its docket for review as 11-713 (the Texas state house case), 11-714 (the Texas state senate case), and 11-715 (the congressional delegation case). What the Court did not do was order any immediate change in the way Texas candidates go about signing up to run in the 2012 primary, now set forMarch 6. Cases 11-713 and 11-715 go by the same title, Perry, et al., v. Perez, et al., and case 11-714 is titled Perry, et al., v. Davis, et al.

Candidates began filing for seats in the legislature and in the House of Representatives on Nov. 28, and the filing period now in effect was to continue until Dec. 15. Friday’s order made no immediate change in that. It was unclear whether the filing period is now to be interrupted until after the cases are decided, and, if not, what districts would actually be used for purposes of candidates’ filing in the meantime. The three maps drawn by the state legislature earlier this year supposedly cannot be used, because their validity under federal voting rights law and the Constitution is now under review by a different U.S. District Court, in Washington. And the interim districts crafted by the District Court in San Antonio cannot be used because they are now stayed by the Justices’ order.

The Court set this briefing schedule: it consolidated the cases, ordered Texas officials and the challengers to the legislature’s maps to file opening briefs simultaneously on Dec. 21. Reply briefs from both sides are due Jan. 3. The oral argument on Jan. 9 will be for one hour only.

Stay applications such as the ones that put these cases before the Court are usually only for temporary remedies, and, most often, seek simply to maintain the status quo while the underlying decision at issue is reviewed. The Court, this time, converted the applications into what it calls “jurisdictional statements,” which is the label it uses for cases that are appealed directly to the Justices from a three-judge District Court. Federal law provides that challenges to redistricting cases are to be heard initially by three-judge District Courts, with direct appeals to the Supreme Court, bypassing the usual transit through a federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

By granting review, the Court, of course, gave no indication of how it would rule on the constitutionality of the District Court’s interim plans. But the Court appeared to have taken seriously and heard perhaps somewhat sympathetically the Texas lawyers’ argument that a 1982 Supreme Court precedent — Upham, et al., v. Seamon, et al. — strictly limits the power of a federal court to craft its own interim redistricting plan that deviates greatly from one drafted by a state legislature. In the San Antonio District Court, the dissenting judge in the 2-1 rulings at issue had argued that the Upham decision barred a court-ordered map that strayed so far from what the state legislature had drawn.

Because the three cases reached the Justices as stay applications, they did not spell out specifically the legal or constitutional questions being laid before the Court. But it does appear, at least at this stage, that the Court will only be ruling on the validity of the San Antonio court’s decision to draw up interim maps of its own. No lower court has yet ruled on the underlying question of whether any of the districts — for the legislature or for the House delegation — actually violate federal law or the Constitution.

Because the issue of federal courts’ power to craft interim redistricting plans usually arises only after each ten-year federal Census, there are not a great many precedents on how wide that judicial authority reaches. The state said in one of its applications that the drafting of a court’s interim plan may occur only infrequently, but “even once in a decade is too frequent for states to sacrifice their sovereignty in this way or for courts to be put in the untenable position of drawing political lines from scratch.”

While Friday’s order seems to put a hold on further proceedings in the San Antonio court’s review of the Texas legislature’s three maps, there was nothing in the order that would appear to have any effect on the continuing review of the validity of those plans by the District Court sitting in Washington. The Justice Department is taking part in the Washington case, and is making significant challenges there to the maps the legislature drew for the Texas house and for the House of Representatives delegations. Those maps, as well as the one for the Texas state senate, are also under broad challenge by minority and civil rights groups.