Richard W. Rodriguez
Marc Veasey says mid-decade redistricting in time for the midterm elections next year is tantamount to "rigging the game."
U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Fort Worth) paused, spoon in hand, over his bowl of chicken tortilla soup at lunch recently to make a counterpoint to one I just made.
Yes, he says, both parties gerrymander.
“But both parties don’t redistrict mid-decade,” he asserts. “Only Republicans have done that.”
Touché, Congressman.
Veasey knows a thing or two about redistricting, an issue that catapulted his political career in a rise that landed him in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Now, two decades later, on the flip side, redistricting might change the direction of his political career or, quite possibly, end it.
The future is very much up in the air after Texas’ Republican-led Legislature redrew congressional districts in the middle of the decade, a practice rarely undertaken, though Texas has done it twice in the last 25 years. The stated objective, at the behest of the president, was to deliver to Washington five more Republican seats from Texas in the U.S. House, all designed to protect a narrow GOP majority in 2026.
Veasey calls that "rigging the game." Others might just call it politics. There is no sportsmanship in politics, of course. As Will Rogers said, "There's very little anything in politics. It's only: 'Get the Job and Hold It!'"
Or, in this case, get the majority and hold it.
Veasey’s seat in District 33 was one of those targeted. However, Veasey said last week that he will run for reelection in 2026, no matter what the final redistricting resolution might be.
“Let me shut this down right now: I absolutely intend on running for reelection,” Veasey said in a statement. “Any suggestion otherwise is a flat-out lie. I’ve spent my career fighting for North Texas, and I’m not about to back down now. I will continue fighting every single day for the issues that matter to our families, workers, and communities. I will be on the ballot, I’m in the fight, and I fully intend to win. End of story.”
Very well then. It's a change in tone from a conversation we had a couple of months ago.
Veasey last week didn't say whether he would run for reelection in his current District 33 or in District 30, occupied by U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who has also been targeted by Texas state legislators.
The new District 33 is mostly only in Dallas County. If it stayed that way, Veasey indicated, to me anyway, that he'd likely not run in 2026, certainly not in District 33. The constitutionality of the map is being challenged in court. Veasey believes the new District 33 and the new maps in general dilute minority voices in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
“It’s too early to tell right now,” Veasey said at the time. “It’s an all-Dallas district [as redrawn]. I’m not planning on moving [to Dallas]. You don’t have to live in the district, but it would be probably odd if I were to commute from Tarrant County into a congressional district in Dallas. There are several members that don’t live in their districts, but that would be a little unusual, if I did that.”
It’s a long, ongoing story. As originally drawn in 2011, Veasey’s district ran from Dallas to the east, snaking across parts of Arlington, south into Forest Hill, and back north to include parts of Fort Worth to near Saginaw.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the sole residency requirement for representatives is that they live in the state.
“So, I’m waiting to see if the map ends up staying. We’ll see which district I may be interested in or how I may make other contributions, but it’s just too early to say right now.”
Twelve years since first elected to the House, Veasey now stands as Tarrant County’s longest-serving member after the retirement of Republican Kay Granger. Over that time, he has championed affordable housing initiatives such as Hughes House and The Opal, helped secure funding for major transportation improvements, been a strong and consistent advocate for the F-35 fighter jet program, and partnered with Republican Granger on the $1.2 billion Panther Island project, a flood control and economic development effort.
Granger made a note of Veasey’s vital work with the Biden administration to ensure that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers included $403 million for the central city flood control project and development.
He has also played a pivotal role in securing federal grants for the essential work of other local nonprofits, such as, for example, Taste Community, where we dined on this day.
Political tribalism has slowly but surely eroded and pushed aside the local issues that once united people in Fort Worth. Veasey recalls a conservative acquaintance on Facebook rooting for his defeat in Congress, despite the work done locally.
“That’s really sad,” Veasey says. “When I was growing up, people appreciated the fact that Jim Wright and Martin Frost were for jobs at Lockheed, or that Joe Barton was for jobs at Lockheed, no matter the party. Employers like General Motors and Miller Brewery didn’t care whether you were Democrat or Republican as long as you were for this community.
“So much of people’s identity is tied to politics now, and local issues just don’t seem to matter as much. That really bothers me.”
And it’s not only the so-called conservatives. Veasey says he received significant pushback from Democrats during the pandemic when he supported federal aid for airlines. Critics told him to vote against “handouts,” even though American Airlines and Southwest employ tens of thousands in North Texas.
“You want me to vote no on legislation that would help friends and neighbors who fuel our local economy?” he says of what he told them.
It’s an out-of-whack disconnect that clearly demonstrates how national politics has overtaken practical — and oftentimes local — concerns. Even when jobs and livelihoods are at stake, some constituents would rather see their “side” win than support bipartisan solutions.
“It’s gotten that bad,” he said. “Politics has become so nationalized that people will root for our own economic demise, even when it impacts them personally. That’s really unfortunate.”
That’s not to say Veasey hasn’t played his own role in all of this. As the party’s highest elected official in Tarrant County, he is the de facto leader of local Democrats. And he plays the part as a decided underdog with virtually no Tarrant County Democratic Party apparatus to do any of the partisan lifting. On this thought, he recalls a story former Speaker of the House Jim Wright told him.
Wright once told his daughter to go find a job, but with one condition — she couldn’t use his name. After all, who wouldn’t suspect favoritism if the House majority leader’s daughter suddenly landed a position? To his surprise, she returned within the week, announcing she had done exactly that — without his help — by securing a spot in the office of Minority Leader Gerald Ford.
Wright admitted he was embarrassed, even a little irritated, and quickly called Ford to apologize, making it clear there had been no hidden, underhanded agenda in his daughter’s application. As Veasey remembers Wright telling it, Ford brushed off the concern. “Jim, we’re friends,” Ford said. “If your daughter wants to work here, she can. I don’t have an issue with that.”
Wright insisted his daughter not take the job, but, Veasey says, “That conversation would never happen today.”
Since we spoke at lunch that day, Tarrant County Democrats have suggested a new role for him if he had decided not to run: a 2026 campaign for Tarrant County judge against incumbent Tim O’Hare, the conservative firebrand seeking a second term. It’s a proposition Veasey said he would consider, though apparently has tossed to the side.
So here we are. Politics is not for those weak in spirit, but it’s a place Veasey, a 1990 Arlington Heights graduate, has long had an interest. Sometimes, there’s even governing and policymaking involved.
“It’s just part of it,” he says. “I don’t even really think about it.”
He was probably in junior high school, he says, when an uncle spurred an interest in the career path. His uncle, who like Veasey grew up in the Como neighborhood, was a television reporter in Abilene. He went on to work for Wright, then the Democratic majority leader.
“I was watching the news; I was a news junkie,” Veasey says. “And I was watching this clip of a White House briefing, I think, or a State Department briefing. I remember asking, ‘How did the person answering the questions get that job?’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s the press secretary.’ That was fascinating to me. From that point on, I knew I wanted to do something in politics.”
His mother, despite struggling financially, he says, fed his interest by buying him a subscription to the US News and World Report. That was life-changing, he says. He was now an authority for his school peers in the realm of current events.
“It was a way for me to be able to engage in something that I was really good in and had a lot of confidence in,” he says.
It looked as if Veasey might go the route of the press secretary. He earned a degree in mass communication at Texas Wesleyan, where today he serves on the board of trustees, a body whose chairman is, coincidentally enough, Glenn Lewis.
He went to work as a part-time sports reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram before eventually landing a job as a field representative in the office of U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, a Democrat and Fort Worth native.
Veasey has not shied away from the bloody trenches of partisan combat. It was redistricting that sent him on his way to elective office.
During a 2003 redistricting fight, the first to occur mid-decade, it was Frost, then the dean of Democrats in Tarrant County, whose seat that Republicans had as a bull’s-eye. And they eventually got it.
However, Democrats didn’t believe state Rep. Glenn Lewis, a Fort Worth Democrat, did enough to stop the Republican-led redistricting. Some even accused him of cooperating. For example, when Democrats left the state to deprive the Legislature of a quorum, Lewis stayed in Austin. He didn’t go to the capitol, but he also didn’t leave.
Lewis, who had built a reputation on pragmatism and cooperation, often touting his ability to work across party lines, was too cozy, Democratic critics said, with House Speaker Tom Craddick.
Veasey resigned his post with Frost to mount a primary challenge to Lewis. Many believe he did so at the urging, if not the direction, of Frost.
Veasey’s bid to unseat Lewis was successful.
A new political career was underway.
“Redistricting has shaped my career probably more than any other single issue that I can think of,” he says, knowing full well it’s about to happen again.