Messing with Texas
Partisanship, Voting Rights, and Congressional Redistricting at the Turn of the 21st Century
A Reacting to the Past Game in Development
Historical Context
Messing with Texas places its players into the heart of a heated political battle, one that would have lasting consequences for Texas and for the United States as a whole. That battle concerned the shapes, sizes, and placements of the thirty-two congressional districts that Texas was allotted after the 2000 Census.
In the 2002 elections, Texas Republicans secured majorities in both houses of the state legislature for the first time in generations. Republican candidates also won every state-wide public office, including Governor and Lieutenant Governor. With this unprecedented level of control over the state government, they saw an opportunity the following year to redraw the state’s congressional districts to favor election of many more Republican candidates. Securing additional seats in the United States House of Representatives would make it much harder for the Democrats in Washington to challenge President George W. Bush’s agenda and to retake the House majority in future elections.
Seeing that the stakes were so high, Democrats in Texas used every ounce of their remaining political power to try to stop the Republican redistricting efforts. Near the end of the regular legislative session, for example, fifty-two Democrats from the Texas House of Representatives fled the state in order to prevent the House from reaching a quorum, the minimum number of legislators needed in order to do business. Most of those Democrats spent a week in Oklahoma, not returning until they were certain that Republicans would not have enough time to pass a redistricting bill.
Game Details
Messing with Texas begins in the summer of 2003 during first special session of the legislature called by Governor Perry after redistricting failed in the regular session. Most players in the game will take on the roles of Texas state senators as they grapple with the issue of redistricting. A smaller number of players will represent members of the press. The Democratic and Republican parties will represent the main factions for debate during the game. However, not every character is equally dedicated to the goals of their party. Many have personal objectives or represent regions with specific needs that they will also seek to address. As a result, blind party loyalty may not be as common in the game as one might first expect.
Partisanship, however, does represent one of the big issues that players must face in Messing with Texas. American politics had become increasingly partisan at the end of the twentieth century. As a result, players will face pressure to shun any forms of bipartisanship as they consider the number of districts each party should expect to control. Because a congressional district map determines who will make up the voter base in a district, maps can be drawn to give some types of voters an advantage over others. A partisan map-maker, for example might pack the opposition party into as few districts as possible or spread them thinly across many districts. Both of these strategies have been used often in America to gain partisan advantage.
Of course, American politicians have also historically used district lines to reduce minority voting strength. Such efforts to disenfranchise minority voters were made illegal by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since then, the Federal Courts have generally allowed creation of partisan advantage but not racial disadvantage when drawing districts. However, because Hispanic and African-American Texans tended to affiliate with the Democratic party, efforts on the part of Republicans in the game to gain partisan advantage will surely encounter resistance from minority rights activists as well as the Black and Hispanic senators.
Players on both sides of the political divide will also have to choose whether or not to abide by the rules and traditions of the state Senate. If leaving Texas allowed for House Democrats to stop redistricting during the regular session, might a similar tactic work for the senators during the special session? Or might the Republicans alter the Senate’s rules in order to smooth passage of the bill? The players in Messing with Texas have to decide whether these desperate times might call for such desperate measures.
Roles
- 42 Total
- 31 Texas State Senators
- 19 (R), 12 (D)
- 1 Lt. Governor (R)
- 10 Press
- (8 local, 2 national)
Playable with as few as 12.
Game Length
The Instructor's Manual includes schedules for standard, brief, and extended gameplay. Those specify 7, 9, and 11 class periods and include days for game prep and a post-game debriefing.
Ideal Courses
The game is specifically designed for use in introductory or advanced courses in a variety of topics including:
- U.S. or Texas History
- American Politics
- Texas State and Local Gov.
- Political Theory
...
Game Materials
Gameplay relies upon three types of provided materials: a Game Book for everyone, individual role sheets for each character, and a detailed Instructor’s Manual.
The game book begins by introducing Reacting to the Past and offering a historical background for the topic. After that, it lays out the details of the game and the roles and factions involved. A final section provides a set of primary source documents from the time period that players use as sources of evidence and support for their arguments during the game.
Players have access to the same types of information that senators would have relied on in 2003. The primary source collection includes legal texts such as relevant portions of the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act as well as Supreme Court rulings on voting rights. It also includes demographic data about Texas and its rapidly changing population; speeches from leaders in both parties; testimony from political scientists; legal briefs from Civil Rights groups; and public comments from Texans who attended hearings about redistricting.
The role sheets for each politician character provide their 2003 Senate biography, a set of party and individual victory objectives, a description of any special abilities for the character, and strategy advice for success. Each one also lays out the topics for a pair of speeches that the player should give during specified rounds (and turn in as a formal paper). Those paper/speech assignments also point the player to particular primary sources in the game book that are relevant for their topics. Role sheets for the press characters, meanwhile, describe the news outlets that they represent and offer advice and instructions for invesitgating and reporting on the events happening during the game.
The Instructor’s Manual provides an overview of the game, advice on teaching with the Reacting to the Past pedagogy, and lots of detail about managing every aspect of the game. This includes options for role distribution across larger or smaller classes, expanding or shrinking the game to fit a certain schedule, and an extensive set of handouts for use during the game.
As this game is still in development, all materials are available entirely free of charge for the students, instructors, and institutions.
Roles to Play
All together there are 32 politicians in the game: 19 Republican Senators, 12 Democratic Senators, and the Republican Lt. Governor who oversees the Senate.
The game also includes 10 press characters. Most of them represent newspapers from different regions of Texas. A few represent national news outlets. The press characters offer a way for the politicians to get their viewpoints and ideas into the public discourse and they help move the game along by asking difficult questions of both sides.
Of course, an exact classroom of 42 students is not necessary for successful game play. The game can be run with as few as 12 players. For larger classes, options like pairing students together to share roles can be used to spread the roles across a larger roster. The Instructor’s Manual has a full set of details on how to divvy up the roles based on the number of players and how to adjust the game based on those numbers.
A few of the Game's Roles
Lt. Governor David Dewhurst
According to the Texas Constitution, the Lt. Governor presides over the Senate, giving him a great deal of power over that body. That makes Mr. Dewhurst the leader of the Republicans in the game.
Senator Leticia Van
De Putte
Representing parts of San Anotio and Bexar county, Senator Van De Putte is the leader of the Democrats in the Senate and chair of the Senate Hispanic Caucus.
Matt Drudge
Drudge represents the non-traditional press. In the game, he has the power to boost readership of news articles and rumors by linking to them on his website.
Rep. Tom DeLay
Representative DeLay (R- TX) isn't a playable character in the game. However, as one of the most powerful and well-funded Republicans in Congress, his ideas about redistricting and partisan politics loom over much of the game.
About Reacting to the Past (RTTP)
Reacting to the Past is an active-learning pedagogy of complex role-playing games. In Reacting games, students are assigned the roles of historical characters facing a specific historical event or controversy. They then work through their own version of the historical events, debating with one another and engaging with primary source material from the time. For additional introduction to the pedagogy, you can take a look at the What is Reacting page from the Reacting to the Past Consortium’s website.
Contact:
If you have any questions about the Messing with Texas game or you'd like to see the game materials, feel free to reach out to the author:
Professor Adam Costanzo at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
adam.costanzo@tamucc.edu
Image Credits: "Texas Senate Chamber" by ctj71081 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.; Awol Democrats Found: Bob Daemmrich/CapitolPressPhoto; Tom DeLay – Public Domain; Matt Drudge – Source: posted to Flickr by John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0.; Sen Leticia Van De Putte - Source: Wikimedia Commons User: Ernesttubb (CC-SA-3.0); Lt. Governor David Dewhurst - Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC-2.0)
