1016
Stevens, J., dissenting
Had these communities been retained by District 30, it would have been much more compact. By giving up these voters to Frost and Bryant, however, District 30 was forced to seek out population and Democratic voters elsewhere. The Democratic incumbents had blocked its way to the south and east; north (and, to a lesser extent, west) was the only way it could go.13
It would not have helped the prospects of a Democratic candidate in the new District 30 had it simply plowed directly north to pick up additional population. Immediately north of the city of Dallas are the "Park Cities," which include a population that has voted strongly Republican throughout recent elections. See State's Exhs. 9A and 9B (depicting one index of political affiliation in 1990 and 1992 elections). Rather than dilute the Democratic vote (and threaten the Republican incumbents) in this manner, District 30 skirted these communities on the west, and then curved east, picking up communities on either side of the region's major interstate freeways.14
As the process of extracting Democratic voters out of the core of the Republican districts in North Dallas progressed, the distinction between Democratic and Republican voters moved from the precinct level (the smallest level at which political affiliation data was immediately available in the re-vance to the validity of the creation of a district from which those minority communities have been excluded. See also infra, at 1030-1032.
13 See, e. g., 3 Tr. 187 (testimony of Christopher Sharman: "[A]ny time you took part of a district away on one end, you would usually squeeze or push the district out on another end; and in this case, most of the time the district would get pushed to the north").
14 The author of the District Court opinion was herself aware of these political realities. See id., at 194 (Jones, J., noting that Johnson did not want anything to do with the Park Cities because she "[d]idn't want competition from Ross Perot"). In light of this recognition, it is difficult to understand why the District Court described District 30's efforts to avoid that community as a contributing factor to the allegedly race-based bizarreness of the district borders. See 861 F. Supp., at 1337; ante, at 967.
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