Almost two decades ago, Grant Jones — an insurance man from Abilene who was McLennan County’s state senator at the time — predicted Waco was too small for its residents to expect to have one of its own in the state’s upper chamber.

In town in 1981 for a Rotary Club meeting, Jones was talking about the upcoming redistricting when he said, “Waco does not have the population to control the full district, and persons living outside the city would not elect a Waco resident to represent them in Austin.

“Call it jealousy or whatever you want,” he continued, “but that’s the way it is.”

Or the way it was, at least.

Then-state Sen. Grant Jones, D-Abilene, who represented Waco from 1973-82, stands outside the Waco Lions Den in 1981. Before David Sibley was elected to the Senate in 1991, Waco was represented by residents of other counties for two decades.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald, file

For the past 17 years McLennan County has been represented in the Senate by a Wacoan, though the recent decision of Republican state Sen. Kip Averitt to end his re-election bid puts that streak in jeopardy.

Burleson Republican Darren Yancy, who has positioned himself to the right of Averitt, was considered a long shot in the GOP primary. But when Averitt said he would follow his doctor’s orders and mothball his campaign, it opened the door for Yancy.

It also sparked a wave of concern in local political circles that McLennan County’s influence in the Capitol would erode with the loss of Averitt and that the loss would be compounded by having an out-of-towner as Waco’s voice in the Senate during next year’s redistricting.

Former state Sen. David Sibley suggested McLennan County could get sliced into pieces and said Yancy would be out to protect his own re-election interests if he wins the upcoming March primary and takes the seat.

Yancy has said that as senator he’ll fight to keep the county whole, making the pledge part of his platform in press releases.

A redistricting expert said it was hard to imagine a scenario in which McLennan County, with its size, would be split up next year.

“A population center like that is a natural center for the creation of a district,” said University of Texas law professor Steve Bickerstaff, who wrote Lines in the Sand, chronicling Texas’ contentious 2003 mid-decade redistricting.

Bickerstaff said it would take an extraordinary and external factor to see McLennan County split up.

But it’s happened before.

The last time the county was divided was in 1994, the result of a map drawn up by state Senate Democrats in 1992 that was found to be legal after a lengthy court challenge.

Sibley, a moderate Republican, had represented a compact five-county district running from Waco to southern Dallas County. The new map, drawn in part to defeat him, put Sibley into a district that included most of McLennan County (minus some heavily Republican precincts), then wheeled westward around Fort Worth.

“I’m the reason Hewitt, Robinson and Mart were in another senate district for almost a decade,” said Sibley, who was able to win in the unwieldy district.

Before Sibley was elected to the Senate in a 1991 special election, Waco was represented by residents of other counties for two decades — for most of the ’70s by Jones, of Abilene, and for most of the ’80s by now-U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, who lived in Duncanville, a southwest Dallas suburb.

The Edwards race was somewhat of an anomaly because McLennan County had the bulk of the district’s population, though the two candidates running were from other counties. Edwards, who would later move to Waco before being elected to the U.S. House, managed to beat a state representative and former Hill County district attorney from Hillsboro.

After the hotly contested race in which both candidates touted endorsements from Waco’s former and current mayors, Edwards opened an office in Waco, telling a crowd of constituents that “Waco and McLennan County, as the largest city and the largest county in the district, deserve a senator who will be there.”

Burleson Republican Darren Yancy says he won’t forget Waco if elected to the state Senate.

Yancy has similarly sought to reassure area residents that he won’t forget Waco if he’s elected. But unlike Edwards, he’ll be in a position to influence the redrawing of the Senate district’s boundaries in a redistricting.

And Baylor University political scientist Thomas Myers said that anything can happen when legislators get together to work out the new seats, even the splitting up of a big county like McLennan.

Unpredictable event

“Redistricting is one of the most unpredictable events in politics,” Myers said. “Any area is being more vulnerable to being split up when you don’t have an incumbent . . . so we’ll be a bit vulnerable in that regard.”

But Bickerstaff, the UT law professor, said Yancy would have his hands tied to some extent in what he could do to improve his chances at re-election. (State senators will all be up for re-election in 2012 after redistricting.)

“If the concern is he wants to try and draw a district so McLennan County can’t defeat him in the future, he’d still be a freshman, which means it’s much more difficult for him to achieve that even if that’s an objective.”

Yancy said Friday that he does have a couple of tweaks he’d try to make to the district if elected.

While Averitt had told a residents during a town hall in September that he’d work to bring Bell County into the district, Yancy’s focus was farther north.

Eyes on Erath County

“I think we need Erath County and a portion of south Tarrant County to come into the district,” Yancy said.

He said adding parts of southern Tarrant County would put his home city of Burleson — a Fort Worth suburb that sits in both Tarrant and Johnson counties — into a single Senate district.

As far as Erath County goes, he said it shares an agricultural bond with the rest of the district and is home to Tarleton State University, which would increase the district’s higher education presence.

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

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