SEGUIN, Texas – Under a broiling sun, there's a popular, frozen drinks stop here in the seat of Guadalupe County known as Milly's where locals cool off in the summer.
But business owner Tomas Hernandez Jr. says the political environment is hotter than ever. Much of that has to do with a struggling economy, he says.
"A lot of people who supported Trump were not expecting this to happen," said Hernandez, 64.
Grocery prices are high, suppliers are charging more and laborers are leaving as the Trump administration intensifies its deportation push.
Now, state Republicans are moving Hernandez's south central Texas community into a new congressional district as part of a controversial mid-decade redistricting effort designed to grow the size of their delegation in the U.S. House. It's a move that became official on Friday, when Gov. Greg Abbott signed the new map into law.
At the center of the GOP redistricting plan is a high-stakes bet that the new map will boost the party's chances of keeping control of Congress in next year's midterm elections. The effort has triggered a redistricting arms race of sorts, as Democrats in California have moved to redraw their maps, with other states expected to follow.
In Texas, where Republicans made big inroads with Hispanic voters in last year's election, the party is hoping those gains can be locked in for good. The new Texas map adds five districts that are expected to be safe Republican seats.
Four of those seats are Hispanic-majority, testing the GOP's gains with the state's largest demographic group.
A Democrat, Hernandez questions whether Latinos who voted Republican last year, including his own relatives, will stay loyal to Trump.
"Hispanics, whether they're my own family, or non-family members that supported Trump, they saw it as good for the economy, but I don't see any benefits," he said.
Party leaders are more confident. Longtime Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn likes to brag on his party's gains with Latino voters.
"President Trump won a substantial increase in the vote of the Hispanic population," Cornyn said during a campaign stop at an Abilene, Texas technical school this week, roughly 300 miles from Seguin.
In last year's election, Trump came within striking distance of winning a majority of Hispanic voters nationwide, taking 48% of the vote to Kamala Harris' 51%. For Trump, it was a sharp uptick from the 36% share he won in 2020.
"As Democrats at the national level become more and more radical, and more and more extreme, I think more Hispanics are looking to Republican candidates to vote," Cornyn said.
But Texas Democratic congressman Greg Casar disagrees. During his campaign launch this week from a downtown Austin building, he said Republicans will lose Latino voters.
Casar is running to represent a shrinking blue dot in Austin under the new Texas map in a redrawn 37th congressional district. His old 35th congressional district will shift south to a four-county area that includes Seguin. It will be 60% Latino.
"I've already heard from south Texas Democratic elected officials, who are looking to run in that south Texas District, and I look forward to supporting them," he said.
University of Houston politics professor Brandon Rottinghaus says history may not be on Democrats' side, noting the party effectively lost control of the state in the 1990s.
"The effort here seems to be to make Democrats be exclusively an urban party," Rottinghaus said. "The districts that Republicans are drawing to try to maximize their gains include suburban areas, exurban areas and rural areas," he said.
But there's no guarantee the Republican gerrymander will play out that way, at least in the near term.
Polls show Latinos who voted for the GOP are turning against Trump over the economy and deportations. Roughly a third of Latinos who supported Trump last year "are not set on voting for a Republican" during next year's midterms, according to Equis Research, a Latino polling organization.
That could make the new maps riskier for Republicans than they think.
"This is what some people call a dummymander," Rottinghaus said. You "inadvertently draw a map that ends up hurting."
The shifting landscape poses a critical test for Republicans. The new GOP map could solidify the party's grip on Texas for years to come, especially if Democrats struggle to win back Latino voters who were once solidly in their camp.
Back in Seguin, Hernandez says Democrats have taken Texas Latino voters for granted. Now, he argues, Republicans have given them a new opening, and his party needs to ramp up their game.
"If Republicans weren't worried, they wouldn't be doing all this redistricting," he said. "I think Democrats need to wake up and be active and vote."
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