Fort Bend Officials Face Off Over Redistricting

Fort Bend County Commissioner Andy Meyers got redistricted out of his own house in 2021 while his terminally ill wife was dying, and it appears he’s going to do all he can to rectify what he believes was an unjust and illegal process — by redrawing the county’s precincts again.

Meyers said Wednesday that the county’s last effort to redistrict resulted in eight out of 10 county residents being moved to different precincts — meaning they were represented by officials they never voted for. Eighty percent of the county lost the representatives they had chosen, the longtime commissioner said.

“Fort Bend County Commissioners Court undertook redistricting earlier this year after legislators and others flagged that the map that was approved over my objection in 2021 was illegal as it did not meet state or federal statutes,” Meyers said in an email. “The effort currently underway is to correct those deficiencies.”

The Republican commissioner, backed by County Judge KP George and Commissioner Vincent Morales, is facing off against two Democratic commissioners who say a mid-decade redistricting effort is unnecessary, expensive, and disrespectful to the constituents who elected them. The current precinct boundaries are not illegal and have never been challenged in court, the Democratic commissioners maintain.

The backstory on Fort Bend politics is key in this saga. A Democrat-majority court approved redistricting maps in 2021 that created three blue seats and one red, and caused Meyers to have to move so he’d live in the precinct he represents. 

The Republicans gained a 3-2 majority on the five-man commissioners court in June when Judge George, twice elected as a Democrat, switched parties and promptly undertook a redistricting effort, even though such a measure is only required by law every 10 years when new Census data is available. 

The GOP is now poised to take back one of the voter precincts, not because of a political vendetta, a spokesman for Meyers said this week, but because the current maps are unfair and illegal. Fort Bend County is about 50-50 in how it casts ballots on Election Day. A proposed redistricting map that could be voted on as early as Monday would move the county to two Republican-majority precincts and two Democrat-majority precincts. 

Despite pleas from Democrat Commissioners Dexter McCoy and Grady Prestage, and several members of the public at a September meeting, to halt the redistricting process, Meyers and George appear to be intent on taking action. The likely outcome, according to several people close to the process, is that a new map will pass in a 3-2 vote. 

Commissioners are slated to review the proposed maps on Thursday, October 9, and could vote at a special-called meeting on Monday, October 13. 

McCoy and others have suggested that Judge George wants to redraw new commission precincts to deflect from his personal legal troubles. The judge is slated to go to trial in January on misdemeanor identity misrepresentation charges and in February on felony money laundering charges. George has accused Fort Bend District Attorney Brian Middleton, a Democrat, of pursuing a political vendetta against him.

McCoy said the redistricting initiative is “not even political.” 

“It is one person who is looking to save himself from jail and has switched parties to do the bidding of another party, and it’s a member of court who has been very upset since the last redistricting happened,” McCoy said. “[Meyers] lost land and he has been hell-bent on changing that ever since it happened. It looks like he may well get that at the expense of a great number of residents.”

The Houston Press reached out to Judge George and all four commissioners. McCoy and Prestage agreed to phone interviews. Meyers answered questions via email.

Prestage, the longest-serving elected official in Fort Bend County, has been on the commissioners court since 1990 and voted for redistricting maps four times in the past, including the current ones that were approved in 2021. He said he won’t vote in favor of any new precinct boundaries this time around. 

“I don’t have any concerns about the maps that we’re currently under,” Prestage said. “They’re constitutional and they’re functioning well, from my vantage point. I’m not happy about this process, but at some point in time, you’ve got to be a realist. It’s going to happen.” 

The Political Divide in Fort Bend County

McCoy had big plans for the county he grew up in when he returned to Richmond in 2017 after graduating as student body president of Boston University and working on public education as an appointee in the Obama administration. 

He worked for Fort Bend ISD and later became Judge George’s chief of staff. Over time, he said it became clear that his values didn’t align with the judge’s. McCoy resigned from George’s office and was elected to represent Precinct 4 in 2023. 

Now the wedge between Judge George and his former chief of staff has grown even deeper. McCoy maintains that the maps approved in 2021 were legal and should remain in place until redistricting is taken up again in 2031. 

“People are embarrassed,” McCoy said. “I’m embarrassed to even talk about it. I wish I could calculate the amount of human capital hours we have spent working on this ridiculous effort. We’ve spent so much of the past year focusing on the county judge and his legal woes. That’s not what people sent us here to do.” 

In addition to being embarrassed, the residents of Fort Bend County are angry “and outright pissed off,” McCoy said. 

Meyers responded that those who are upset are “people who do not want to lose a map that has three Democratic precincts in a county that is split 50-50. “

“All of our constituents deserve a map that represents the political makeup of the county,” he said. “That is what we hope to achieve.”

Fort Bend County’s Proposed Redistricting Maps

A resident advisory committee voted September 29 to recommend five maps for consideration by the court. 

A map that received the most votes from the 10-member panel would create two strong Democratic precincts, one strong Republican precinct and one “competitive precinct” that favors Republicans. Fort Bend’s current precincts are 60 percent red, 62 percent blue, 53 percent blue, and 56 percent blue. 

McCoy said the social media chatter among Fort Bend Republicans reveals that they originally wanted to draw three red precincts, but “that’s impossible in this county.” McCoy and Prestage are up for re-election in 2026, along with Judge George. 

McCoy said he’s not voting for any proposed redistricting map but acknowledged that the GOP court members have the votes to pass it. The proposal first came to Fort Bend via Texas Rep. Matt Morgan, R-Richmond, who sent a letter to commissioners saying about one-fifth of its voter precincts did not meet the state’s population requirements.

Some have questioned whether the maps approved in 2021 were drawn based on race, which would be a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Meyers has said that the 2021 map was pushed through by Democrats without an opportunity for the public, or even commissioners, to review it thoroughly. 

“For the past three election cycles, we have been operating under a map that has been flagged as illegal, and this process is designed to correct that problem,” Meyers said. “I expect the commissioners court will approve a map that reflects the actual political makeup of our county, which is about evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, and fair to all voters.”

McCoy said any allegation that the current maps are illegal is a farce. 

“In pulling at straws for justification for this unjust mid-decade redistricting, they literally tried to pull a rabbit out of a hat,” he said. “It is true that our voter precincts need to be rebalanced. It’s a routine thing that every fast-growing county in the state of Texas faces. By law, we’re supposed to address that and rebalance our precincts. They leveraged that to say that our maps were somehow in violation of federal law.” 

McCoy said the proposed maps represent textbook gerrymandering, “dividing Asian and Hispanic communities and diluting their voting power to create another white plurality precinct in one of the most diverse counties in the nation.”

“Let’s be clear: this is not about improving services or quality of life for our residents,” he said. “This is about settling political scores and boosting Commissioner Andy Meyers’ ego, so he can cater to developers instead of the people he was elected to represent.”

McCoy has also taken issue with the removal of County Attorney Bridgette Smith-Lawson from advising the court on redistricting matters or making recommendations on outside counsel. Commissioners voted 3-1 last month to remove Smith-Lawson from having any involvement in redistricting. Prestage left the room when the vote was taken. 

George said publicly at the time that there are “trust issues” with Smith-Lawson, an elected Democrat. He also proposed last month hiring Butler Snow LLP, a well-known redistricting law firm, to advise the court, but removed the agenda item before a vote was taken. McCoy said it’s a waste of taxpayer money, noting that Butler Snow charges $20,000 per month. 

“This proposed agreement to engage an outside law firm for general counsel services is a wasteful duplication of resources and a direct encroachment on the duties of Fort Bend County’s duly elected county attorney,” McCoy said. “The Texas Constitution and state law make clear that the county attorney is the county’s chief civil legal adviser.” 

Meyers says the court hired attorney Allison Bass to advise on redistricting in 2021 and paid a nonrefundable $10,000 retainer but the lawyer did not report any billable hours.

“Records show the county attorney’s law firm, Brazille Dunn, provided the overwhelming majority of the legal work on redistricting and billed more than 183 hours of work,” Meyers said. “I’ve requested that the county attorney provide me with documentation that they gave the map a full legal review. The county attorney has not provided any documentation that a full review was conducted.”

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