Redistricting:  Can You Guess Which Communities of Interest Got Left Out?

East Side Hispanic Citizens, for One

Conservative Anglos were not the only community of interest on the East Side split up in the gerrymandering party at the Roundhouse.  I heard no voices from those in control of the party, including Hispanic legislators, express any worries about the Hispanic community of interests on the East side as these were split into three congressional districts.  Don't they count?

The heart and soul of the area known as "Little Texas" or the Oil Patch, consists of Chavez, Curry, Eddy, Lea, and Roosevelt counties.  Together, these five counties have a population of roughly 262,000 and over half of them (about 134,000) are Hispanic.  Most Hispanics there are relatively new migrants to New Mexico, having come over from Northern Mexico to become farm laborers or helping hands in the oil fields, but many have branched out to become grocery store owners, merchants, truck drivers, school teachers, officials in local and state government, etc.  They tend to cluster along the Pecos River from Carlsbad to Roswell, and also in Hobbs. Some have been spectacularly successful, as was the case with Pablo Acosta, who lived in Lovington and started smuggling heroin into the Oil Patch and ended up the first major drug lord on the US-Mexico border until he was killed at his home during a helicopter raid against him in 1987.

While Hispanics in Little Texas have a lot of common policy interests with the Anglo population there--a fair share of highway money, protecting the oil interests--the jewel of the local and state economy--on the New Mexico side of the Permian basin, etc., their interest don't always coincide with that portion of the population that parties it up in Ruidoso on hot summer weekends and during the ski season.  Medium household incomes in these five counties for Hispanics are only about 75% of White Non-Hispanic household incomes. Hispanics in these areas might, for example, be more interested in better public schools, affordable housing, higher minimum wages, strong pension funds, etc.   If you add the Hispanic populations of Otero, Lincoln, Quay, Union, De Baca, and Harding, it adds up to about 170,000, roughly 8% of the state's population and fully 17% (1/6th) of the state's Hispanic population.  Will their interests, split between three congressional seats, be better represented this way?  Have Democratic Progressives, in charge of redistricting, simply forgotten these people? 

Communities of Interest:  These are collections of people in a given territory who share history, or language, or religious beliefs, or even political ideologies.  Afro-Americans, for example tend to share common histories going back to slave ships and servitude and the rigors of living after slavery in systems rigged against their success.  Many Hispanics in New Mexico can trace ancestry and language and current ways of life back to the colonial period in Northern New Mexico.  Other Hispanic communities have common histories and share the Spanish language, occupational similarities, and often religious beliefs as immigrants to the state, especially in the past three decades.  The Supreme Court tended,  until it became partisan, to view redistricting with a skeptical eye when there is evidence of weakening the interests of these and other communities through splitting up these districts, giving them minority status such that their common interests are much less likely to be heard in governing bodies.