Here’s another thread of the Tom DeLay/Texas Redistricting story. It hasn’t yet gotten much attention. But it played an important role in the lead-up to the confrontation two weeks ago. It has to do with alleged Voting Rights Act violations tied to the DeLay-backed Texas redistricting bill.
Richard Raymond is a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives from Laredo. During the time the DeLay-backed redistricting bill was moving through the House, it was in the hands of State Representative Joe Crabb (R-Atascocita), chairman of the Republican-controlled redistricting committee. Raymond charged that in the process of rushing it through the legislative process, Crabb had violated the Voting Rights Act — the particulars are complicated but they have to do with legal requirements for bilingual notice and comment of changes to legislative districts, 
and so forth. (Raymond’s district is heavily Hispanic.) Raymond made a formal complaint to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, dated May 7th.
This complaint was at least a complication for moving the redistricting bill through the House, as Texas Republicans were then trying to do.
Now here’s where the story gets murky.
Earlier this month DeLay went to Texas to personally lobby for the new redistricting bill. According to Raymond, Republican colleagues of his from the House came to him and told him the following: DeLay had told them and other anxious House Republicans not to worry about Raymond’s Voting Rights Act complaint because he had gotten the complaint taken care of at DOJ and it would be quickly dismissed, in time to pass through the redistricting bill. In the words of Raymond’s lawyer, Raymond said he had “received reliable information that the normal processes of the Department of Justice for such complaints have been circumvented under pressure from Congressman Tom DeLay of Texas.” (To the best of TPM’s knowledge, there is no independent evidence of Raymond’s charges.)
After this, Raymond withdrew his complaint to the Justice Department, arguing that his constituents could not recieve a fair hearing there, and filed a lawsuit — making the same claims as the original complaint — in federal court in Texas.
Last week I asked DeLay spokesman Stuart Roy if there were any truth to Raymond’s charges about inappropriate contact between DeLay’s office and Justice. He said there was not. Roy said DeLay’s office had contacted Justice about Raymond, but only after Raymond publicly charged DeLay with trying to get his complaint dropped. (Still with me? Good.) According to Roy, this contact was strictly for the purpose of ascertaining whether Raymond had filed a formal complaint against DeLay and, if so, why DeLay’s office hadn’t been notified.
These claims and counter-claims have triggered an acrimonious correspondence between Raymond’s attorney and the Justice Department. Copies of three key letters — including one from Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Ralph F. Boyd, Jr. — have just been added to the TPM Document Collection.
