1966 Texas Senate election

none December 2025 December 2025 1966 Texas Senate election Texas Legislative Popular No 1964 Texas Senate election 1964 1968 Texas Senate election 1968 All 31 seats in the Texas Senate 16 November 8, 1966 Democratic Party (United States) 31 30 1 1,071,981 83.40% Republican Party (United States) 0 1 1 201,459 15.67% 300px Senate results by district#92C5DE Democratic hold #CA0120 Republican gain President pro tempore Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party (United States) 0.33% 1.26% The 1966 Texas Senate election was held on November 8, 1966, to determine which party would control the Texas Senate for the following two years in the 60th Texas Legislature. All 31 seats in the Texas Senate were up for election to either two- or four-year terms, due to mid-decade redistricting to rectify egregious malapportionment among Senate districts. This had been spurred by the U.S. Supreme Court decision Reynolds v. Sims. These districts greatly increased the voting power of the state's growing urban and suburban areas. Republicans won a seat in the Senate for the first time since 1924, and Barbara Jordan became the first African American member of the chamber elected since the 1890s, and the first African American woman ever elected. Background Democrats had controlled the Texas Senate since the 1872 elections. Since the implementation of Jim Crow voting restrictions in the early 1900s, Democrats had held unanimous or nearly unanimous control of the entire state legislature. These legislators were almost exclusively White men, with White women and Hispanic men winning office from time to time.May Janice C. The Evolution of the Texas Legislature: A Historical Overview https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/texas-legislature 18 September 2025 Texas State Historical Association en No African American had won any election to the legislature in the entire 20th century up to this point.Bickerstaff Steve Gerrymandering Texas Texas Tech University Press 2020 978-1-68283-073-4 Heath C. Robert Lubbock 81–82 Redistricting Several senate districts had wildly disproportionate populations, with ratios as large as 9:1 in the most extreme cases.Brooks Raymond May 18, 1961 Filibuster Ends: Fuller Again Redistricting Loser https://www.proquest.com/docview/1527763194 May 2, 2023 The Austin Statesman A3 1527763194 The Texas Constitution explicitly limited counties to a maximum of one senator each, even if their populations would have called for more than one in an equally-apportioned system.28 May 1961 Redistricting For Texas https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-houston-chronicle-redistricting-for/199458702/ 12 June 2026 The Houston Chronicle2 June 1961 Editorial: Redistricting Ups Harris County Though Proportions Not Perfect https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-houston-chronicle/199475088/ 13 June 2026 The Houston Chronicle Due to this, any attempts to challenge the maps on these grounds in state courts were denied.November 8, 1961 Equitable Redistrict Try Failure https://www.proquest.com/docview/1527812988 live https://web.archive.org/web/20230503001500/https://www.proquest.com/docview/1527812988/8CC924351DB445B8PQ/20 May 3, 2023 May 2, 2023 The Austin Statesman A5 1527812988 Voting rights advocates shifted their efforts to federal courts, and after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Reynolds v. Sims, the judges overseeing the challenge to the state's legislative maps in Kilgarlin v. Martin issued a summary judgement striking down them down. They refused to impose their own maps, however, leaving that role to the state legislature, who passed new maps in their 1965 legislative session. Despite challenges to the map for the House of Representatives, no substantial court challenge emerged against the map for the Senate. The new maps passed by the legislature marked a drastic departure from the previous balance of power in the chamber despite efforts to gerrymander the new maps to favor non-Hispanic White Democratic incumbents. These changes were most pronounced in the state's urban areas. Harris County gained three Senate seats, Dallas County gained two, and Bexar County gained one. Dallas, Bexar, and Tarrant Counties also gained portions of an additional district each.Bickerstaff, Heath 2020, pp. 84–85 Results Democrats maintained near-complete control of the chamber, but they lost one seat to the Republicans, breaking the unanimous control they had held since the 1928 elections. Barbara Jordan became the first African American elected to the Senate during the entire 20th century.https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth113809/m1/593/ Texas Almanac, 1968-1969 1967 The Dallas Morning News 1967 Dallas, Texas 591 en The new districts led to an immediate shift in the geography of political power in the state, greatly benefiting the state's urban and suburban areas by increasing their representation.May Janice C. September 23, 2025 The Evolution of the Texas Legislature: A Historical Overview https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/texas-legislature 2026-07-09 Texas State Historical Association en References Category:1966 Texas elections Category:Texas Senate elections Category:November 1966 in the United States Texas Senate election