Domingo Garcia
Former state Rep. Domingo Garcia says he's
considering another run for Congress, which would ostensibly pit him against Rep. Marc Veasey in the Democratic primary once again. But, reports the
National Journal's Jack Fitzpatrick, Garcia's actually hoping that the courts will invalidate in Texas' current congressional lines yet again and force the creation of a reliably Hispanic district in the Dallas area.
That would avoid another confrontation with Veasey, who beat Garcia by 5 points in a 2012 runoff for what was, at the time, a brand-new 33rd District that had come into being thanks to congressional reapportionment. Garcia, a wealthy personal injury attorney then in his last term in the legislature who served as a chair of the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force, actually had a hand in crafting the district, which wound up as a Hispanic-majority seat. But many of those Latinos were non-voters, and African Americans dominated the primary, allowing Veasey, who is black, to win. (Democratic strategist Matt Angle to Fitzpatrick: "As many strengths as Domingo has, interpreting district maps is not one of them.")
There's also the matter of Garcia being a raving asshole. As a state lawmaker, he had to have colleagues file bills on his behalf, because otherwise any legislation bearing his name would have been dead on arrival. That led Texas Monthly to memorably brand Garcia a "one-man leper colony."
And he stayed true to his leperous reputation the last time he and Veasey crossed swords. Shortly before the 2012 primary, Garcia called Veasey an "errand boy" for "big corporations and Wall Street." That predictably incensed Veasey's supporters; as one un-aligned legislator summed it up: "Calling a black man 'boy' is the stuff of Jim Crow."
Since then, Veasey's had the chance to entrench himself. He crushed another self-funding Hispanic attorney, Tom Sanchez, by a 3-to-1 margin last year, so it's easy to understand why Garcia would rather run in a different district. But even if such a seat were to get created, it could be a very long way off. Texas' redistricting litigation has been mired in a strange, years-long limbo now, with a federal three-judge panel still considering several challenges by plaintiffs. The Lone Star State will likely host its primaries in March, meaning that there really isn't much time to put a new map in place for 2016, especially since there will probably be appeals.
But Garcia says he plans to make up his mind by next month, so that would almost certainly require him to take a second shot at Veasey. But given how things turned out last time, he'd probably be wise to stand down.