Lawmaker Blew Big Bucks to Keep District Lines Unfair — to His Own Voters

How do you write the campaign slogan for this one?

Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX), whose poor West Texas district covers a wide swath of the state’s maquiladora-friendly border region, apparently used $100,000 of his own campaign cash to pay lawyers to fight for Tom DeLay’s discriminatory Texas redistricting plan. (That’s on top of the thousands of dollars Bonilla directed towards the redistricting fight from the coffers of his supposedly pro-minority PAC.)

Bonilla’s district was the only one specifically rejected as discriminatory by the U.S. Supreme Court in its recent ruling. More to the point, the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section — which was set up to protect the voting rights of minority Americans — earlier had unanimously rejected the entire plan as discriminatory.

But Bonilla, whose illegal district happened to ensure him comfortable margins of victory in primary and general elections, didn’t care. FEC records show he paid the Los Angeles-based Latham & Watkins law firm $100,000; in February, the firm filed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court in support of DeLay’s discriminatory plan.

Bonilla’s office didn’t return my phone call on the matter.