Lloyd Doggett had been set to bow out of politics after three decades in the U.S. House after Republicans in the Texas Legislature redrew his congressional district this summer. If he hadn’t, he would have been forced into a re-election battle against a young fellow Democrat and rising progressive star in the Austin area, Greg Casar.
Then a federal court stepped in and blocked the new map, with a three-judge panel ruling they found “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
For a moment, Mr. Doggett found a political career that dates back to 1973 suddenly revived. “The reports of my death, politically, are greatly exaggerated,” he said.
Maybe — or maybe not.
Mr. Doggett’s tale of uncertainty is one of many such stories in Texas as incumbents and would-be challengers struggle with the on-again-off-again-back-on-again saga of Republican efforts to gerrymander House districts to deliver President Trump as many as five more seats in next year’s midterm elections.
More than a dozen candidates, as well as hundreds of state and county election officials across Texas, are watching and waiting for the Supreme Court to decide which congressional map will be used in Texas races in 2026, the old one drawn by Republicans in 2021 or the new one drawn by Republicans this summer.
The decision, which may come within days, could shift the outcome in several congressional races, and possibly impact which party controls the House. Regardless, it’s affecting the candidates.
Mr. Doggett had planned to file for re-election this week, he said in an interview on Monday, effectively coming out of retirement after a lower court threw out the maps drawn this summer as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Then the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, pausing the ruling and reviving the new map, at least temporarily.
Now Mr. Doggett is not sure whether he will run. “It is a bit of a period of uncertainty,” he said.
The last-minute judicial wrangling has upended Texas’ congressional races for a second time this year.
“It’s extraordinary that the process that’s meant to bring clarity has brought confusion,” said Matt Angle, the director of the Lone Star Project, which supports Democratic candidates in Texas. “What we’re telling people: don’t make any changes right now. Whatever you’ve done, you’ve done. Let’s wait and see.”
Representative Julie Johnson, a Democrat, is heeding that advice. Her district was redrawn to be heavily Republican, turning from shape that meanders around Dallas’s suburbs to that of an elongated tadpole with its narrow tail near Dallas and its bulbous head 120 miles to the east in rural Gilmer. If the old map stays, she’ll likely stay in Congress.
If the old map is restored, two moderate Democrats on the U.S.-Mexico border would go from uphill re-election fights in redder districts to the merely tough swing seats they are used to.
Not knowing what map will prevail has created complicated dilemmas for some candidates. Representative Al Green, another longtime Democratic incumbent, saw his Houston district, the ninth, completely moved and made strongly Republican when the map was redrawn this summer. He had vowed instead to run for a neighboring seat long-held by a Black Democratic representative, the 18th.
But if the high court orders the old map restored, he would likely run in his existing district.
The same kind of consideration faced Mr. Casar, whose Austin district was moved to a mostly rural area outside of San Antonio. His decision to remain in Austin and run in Mr. Doggett’s district led the senior member to drop out of the race over the summer. But Mr. Casar said he would run in his old district and not Mr. Doggett’s, if the old map were restored.
“If this decision stands, I look forward to running for re-election in my current district,” Mr. Casar said after the lower court ruling.
All of these decisions must be made before the filing deadline of Dec. 8, unless a court orders an extension.
Republican candidates have also been watching with interest, particularly those who have chosen to run in the newly redrawn districts.
Briscoe Cain, a Republican state representative from the Houston area, declared his intention to run for the new ninth House district, drawn to favor a Republican. If the old map were to be restored, that district would again be heavily Democratic.
Mr. Cain, who voted to redraw the map over the summer, said he had confidence the Supreme Court would endorse the new map. He was so confident, in fact, that he filed his official paperwork to run after the lower court blocked the new map last week. The high court must now decide whether the districts were drawn purely for political advantage, or whether race was the dominant factor.
“As someone who was part of the redistricting process, I am confident that the maps were legally drawn,” Mr. Cain said in a text message.
In contrast, Mr. Doggett said that he spoke to other Democrats last week, and everyone had been “pretty much preparing to file” based on the lower court ruling.
“There’s still a great deal more that I would like to do on behalf of the city” of Austin, Mr. Doggett said.
By engaging in a mid-decade redistricting, Republican legislators loudly proclaimed their partisan intent.
When the process began, some Republican incumbents expressed concern that the effort to gain more seats for the party would actually leave them more vulnerable. Their districts had been drawn in 2021 to make them safer. With new lines and new voters, some House Republicans worried that a wave election for Democrats in 2026 could result in Republicans losing more seats.
Those concerns were allayed after the map was unveiled in August and appeared to craft districts that would remain safe for incumbents while shifting the lines of five Democratic-held districts to favor Republican challengers.
Now Republican members of Congress are supportive of the redrawing, said Chad Wilbanks, a Republican lobbyist and former executive director of the Republican Party of Texas.
“The Texas congressional delegation is all-in on the new districts,” he said.
No one can be sure how the Supreme Court will rule.
The opinion last week in El Paso that Republicans had unconstitutionally taken race into account in redrawing the map was written by an appointee of Mr. Trump. It cited as evidence a Justice Department letter sent to Texas officials in July. The letter focused on what federal prosecutors said were several unconstitutionally designed districts around Houston and Dallas, where no ethnic group had an outright majority.
Gov. Greg Abbott immediately appealed, saying the claim that the map was racially discriminatory was “absurd.” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is assigned to handle such emergency applications from Texas, issued the administrative stay on Friday evening.
On Monday, the Trump administration filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, arguing that its July letter was not evidence of racially discriminatory intent behind the new map.
The lower court did not find “any direct evidence that race predominated in the redistricting process,” the Trump administration argued, and instead misconstrued several bits of weak circumstantial evidence instead of presuming the “good faith” of elected legislative map drawers, as is required by earlier rulings.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
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