Wright Patman was a populist democrat representing a northeastern TX district. Tyler and Longview, both noveau riche oil towns, were kept out of his district and put in the 4th.
Patman and House Speaker Sam Rayburn were from adjacent districts along the Red River.
If you read the footnotes in
Wesberry v Sanders, you will see that the most populous congressional district in the country was Dallas County, with just short of 1 million people (in 1960). Joe Pool received more votes in losing that district, than Rayburn and Patman combined received. Pool was the only losing Democrat in Texas.
Following the 1960 census, rather than creating new districts in the more populous areas, or equalizing the population, the legislature kept the old districts and made the added representatives at large.
During the 2000 redistricting hearings, Martin Frost's henchman Gerald Hebert bragged on how the legislature had made Joe Pool run at large in order to preserve the seats of long term House leaders like Rayburn and Patman (who was chairman of the Banking Committee). In fact, it was done to deny creating additional districts in urban areas which might vote Republican, and was a blatant violation of OMOV.
It was only an accident of timing that
Wesberry v Sanders was not
Bush v Martin, which had already been won at the district court level, and was summarily affirmed by the US Supreme Court. Bush, is George HW Bush, who was state GOP chairman at the time.
Rayburn died in 1961, so by the time the legislature finally redistricted they were more concerned about Patman.
If you compare the maps pre- and post-OMOV
http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/redist/pdf/congress_historical/c_1958_1964.pdfhttp://www.tlc.state.tx.us/redist/pdf/congress_historical/c_1966.pdfYou will see that 1,3, and 4 in NE Texas were merged into 1 and 4, and 3 was moved to Dallas. What they really did was pair the incumbents of 3 and 4 in the primary. When you take Tyler, Gregg, Upshur, and Van Zandt you're grabbing the core of 3. The 1972 map simply added a couple of more counties (Fannin and Henderson) to 1. If they had added Gregg, they would have had to shift some counties the other way.
The 1974 court map split a few counties for better population equality.
Patman was knocked out of his chairmanship by the northern Democrat hegemonists, and died in 1975.
The 1966 map combined 2 and 7 in SE Texas, and moved 7 to Harris County, where Bush was elected. It also moved 9, and 14 eastward along the coast (14 started out north of San Antonio and has now migrated to SE Texas).
The 1966 map also created TX-23 (from the at large representative). Every redistricting since it has been tipped one way or the other, first as battle for control between Laredo and San Antonio, and later between Republicans and Democrats.
Tarrant County also narrowly voted for Ford in 1976. The most democratic parts of the county were put into a single district (the 12th), which was Jim Wright's district. The more republican areas of the county (like Arlington) were glued to some of the most straight ticket democrat precincts of South Dallas. The 5th district also took in some working class eastern suburbs of Dallas as well as some black precincts. The 6th district took in some republican areas of SW Tarrant County and republican Brazos County, but also took in some black areas and rural yellow dog areas to balance it out.
Olin Teague and Phill Gramm were both from College Station. Putting Arlington into 24 ensured that Gramm could be elected as a Democrat in 1978, when Teague retired.
The gerrymander is reflected on the fact that the Democrats had a 22-2 delegation in the 95th congress and how the districts voted for president in 1976 (Carter won the state 51-48)
The 93rd Congress was the first after redistricting. Republicans picked up TX-5 Alan Steelman, and Bob Price held TX-13 (he had been elected from TX-18 in the Panhandle. TX-13 and TX-18 were merged, which is where the Amarillo-Wichita Falls linkage started.
Price lost in Watergate 1974, and Steelman was beatern in 1976. But by the end of the decade Republicans had picked up 3 seats that had to be converted into Republican sinks (TX-22 when Ron Paul replaced the retiring Bob Casey, TX-21 where Tom Loeffler replaced Bob Krueger who lost in a run for the Senate, and TX-8 where Jack Fields defeated Eckhardt.
And in 1983 Gramm was elected as a Republican in TX-6.
so overall, the number of Republicans increased from 3 to 6 over the decade.
