An unusual mid-decade redistricting that McLennan County commissioners quietly approved this past week appears to transfer thousands of Republican voters to the historically Democrat-friendly Precinct 2 of the Commissioners Court.
Precinct 2 was drawn in the 1980s as a majority-minority precinct that includes much of inner-city Waco and has been a Democratic stronghold for most of the time since.
The commissioner seat was held by Black Democrats from 1990 until November 2024, when Republican D.L. Wilson narrowly defeated Democrat Jeremy Davis in a special election. That left the court with five Republicans, including four commissioners and County Judge Scott Felton.
Davis says he still plans to challenge Wilson in the November 2026 general election, but it appears he will now face much steeper odds.
The decision to pursue mid-decade redistricting, announced on the county’s website Oct. 7, may be a first for McLennan County. The last redistricting was in 2021, following the 2020 census.
Roads, growth rationale
The county website says the latest redistricting is based on the need to balance road work and population growth evenly across the county’s four precincts.
Elected commissioners oversee road and bridge maintenance operations in their precincts in addition to voting on general county business.
“The Court’s goal is to ensure that McLennan County’s precinct structure remains equitable, effective, and responsive to the county’s growth and administrative needs,” the redistricting notice states.
Judge Felton was out of the office Friday and could not be reached for comment, but in comments before the vote on Oct. 21 he did not mention the political ramifications of the new map.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Jim Smith told The Waco Bridge on Friday that he did not see the vote as partisan, and McLennan County Republican Party chair Chris DeCluitt said he learned about the redistricting effort only after it was underway.
But McLennan County Democratic Party leaders see the move as a partisan power grab by the all-Republican commissioners court.
“It does appear that the effect of this is to make Precinct 2 more Republican,” said Mark Hays, McLennan County Democratic Party chair. “I believe that to be the true objective of it.”
Hays, Davis and other Democratic leaders were not present for commissioners’ discussions.
Davis said he called the county judge’s office to talk about redistricting ahead of the Oct. 21 vote.
“I didn’t get a call back,” Davis said. “I would have asked them to reconsider the decision they were making. … Making sure that they are advertising to the community so the community is aware of what’s happening.”
Dem stronghold no more
Before the October redistricting, Precinct 2 included most of the historically Black neighborhoods in East Waco, as well as majority Hispanic neighborhoods in North Waco and South Waco.
Prior maps since the late 1980s have heavily favored Democrats. The seat was held by a Black Democrat starting when Lester Gibson was elected in 1990 and ending in January 2024, when Commissioner Pat Miller died in office.
By 2011, it was the last Democratic seat on the commissioners court, and since 2014 it has been the highest county office held by a Democrat.
The Precinct seat remained open after Miller’s death until November, when Wilson, a Republican former state trooper, won by a razor-thin margin. He won 7,554 votes, just 87 more than the combined votes of Democrat Jeremy Davis and write-in candidate Travis Gibson.
The new map stands to widen that gap significantly. A Waco Bridge analysis of publicly available elections and demographic data points to a favorable shift for Republicans and a weakening of minority representation:
- Commissioner Precinct 2 will lose 13 voting precincts, mostly in areas of North Waco and South Waco. Of those, only one small voting precinct in downtown Waco supported Wilson in 2024.
- In the 2024 election, only 38% of voters in those 13 precincts voted for Wilson as county commissioner, and he fell 1,066 votes short of his rivals in those areas.
- Twelve of the 13 newly excluded voting precincts are both Democratic and minority-majority, according to a review of precinct-level data from the Texas Legislative Council.
- At the same time, Precinct 2 will gain eight new voting precincts, six of which went for Donald Trump in the 2024. Those areas include Lacy-Lakeview, Baylor University, and large rural areas toward Leroy.
- Within those newly added voting precincts, Trump outpolled Democrat Kamala Harris 3,845 to 2,220, winning 63% of the vote.
- The net effect of the voting precinct losses and gains within Commissioner Precinct 2 is that it will gain 3,121 Trump voters and lose 77 Kamala Harris voters, based on 2024 results.
Minority safeguards weaken
Historically, protecting minority representation has been a key consideration in redistricting decisions, but those protections have been weakened by a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings. A 2013 ruling ended the requirement that many jurisdictions had to seek preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice to ensure that redistricting did not weaken minority representation.
In their two meetings this month on redistricting, McLennan County commissioners made no mention of how redistricting might dilute minority representation or affect future elections.
“The issue has been imbalance in road miles, population, which affects the budget,” Felton said during the commissioners’ Oct. 21 meeting, shortly before approving the new map.
“This move really balances out the county and will give one-man-one-vote a more equal chance in the community.”
The Waco Bridge was unable Friday to reach Felton, Wilson or commissioners Ben Perry or Will Jones for comment.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Jim Smith, a Republican, told The Waco Bridge on Friday that his motives were practical, not political.
“We’ve had a lot of growth in the county and it’s not all been distributed equally across the precincts, so we’ve got some precincts representing north of 40,000 (people) and another representing 20,000 or so,” he said.
Smith’s commissioner precinct boundaries include the Robinson, Hewitt, Lorena, part of South Waco and Moody. The new map will add several heavily Democratic inner-city voting precincts to his commissioner precinct.
Law firm record
To create the new map, commissioners contracted with the Public Interest Legal Foundation, the Virginia-based conservative law firm that aided Tarrant County in its contentious 2025 redistricting, also involving a majority-minority district.
The foundation’s president, J. Christian Adams, was appointed by President Donald Trump to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017.
Commissioner Smith said the redistricting study presented by the firm to the court did not mention race or voter party affiliation. The Waco Bridge has filed an open records request for that information.
Smith added that the McLennan County Republican Party was not consulted in redistricting discussions. County GOP Chair Chris DeCluitt affirmed that statement.
“I knew there were conversations going on, but I wasn’t involved,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s really directed towards the voters. I think I had a conversation sometime back with D.L. Wilson (and) it’s about the roads and bridges.”
Hays, the Democratic chair, said he took some responsibility for not noticing the redistricting agenda sooner, but added that county officials usually made “an overt effort to make sure that we, our party, and the Republican Party and the public, were able to know that these things (are) happening.”
“None of that happened this time,” Hays said. “So (redistricting) was done kind of quietly in such a way that the public would not find out about it until after it had already happened.”
Hays said a legal challenge to the redistricting is not off the table, while Davis, the Precinct 2 challenger, felt the lack of community consultation underscored the need for new faces on the court.
“I think (this is) why we need leadership on the commissioners court who are knowledgeable of the precincts and who are thoughtful when making major decisions like this, and who also include the community,” Davis said.
In addition to the Precinct 2 seat, the November 2026 election will include races for Precinct 4 and county judge. Ben Perry, the Precinct 4 commissioner, and Judge Felton have said they will not seek re-election.
This story first appeared in The Waco Bridge. To get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for the Waco Bridge newsletter at wacobridge.org/newsletter.
