Texas's 22nd congressional district

Texas's 22nd congressional district of the United States House of Representatives covers a largely suburban south-central portion of the metropolitan area. The district includes the majority of Fort Bend County, including most of the cities of Sugar Land, Missouri City, Rosenberg, Needville and the county seat of Richmond as well as the county's share of the largely unincorporated Greater Katy area west of Houston. In addition, the district also contains portions of northern Brazoria County, including Pearland and Alvin, as well as a small portion of southeast Harris County centered on Friendswood.

The district is represented by Republican Troy Nehls, who was elected in 2020 over two-time challenger Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni. Before 2006, the district had been represented by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay since 1985, and before that, former Congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul briefly in 1976 and again from 1979 to 1985. In 2006, 52% of poll respondents identified as Republicans, 32% as Democrats, and 16% as independents. The Cook Partisan Voting Index, which derives its data from the two most recent presidential elections, gave the district a 10-point Republican lean compared to the national average until its 2021 review, when it was lowered to only 4-points.

History

The district was originally created in 1958, replacing the abolished at-large district represented by Democrat Martin Dies, Jr. from 1953 to 1959. At the time, all of Texas's 254 counties had representation by one collective member of Congress. The new district was placed in Harris County, home to the city of Houston and previously represented in its entirely by Democrat Albert Thomas in the state's 8th congressional district, making Harris the first county in Texas since World War II to be divided into more than one congressional district.

The new 22nd district, largely made up of suburban territory outside of Houston along with southern portions of the city itself, was won by Democrat Robert R. Casey, a former Harris County Judge (a post equivalent to that of a county executive in Texas). The 8th and 22nd districts were separated by a boundary consisting roughly of what is now U.S. 290, the western and southern portions of Loop 610, and the portion of Buffalo Bayou east of downtown Houston including the Houston Ship Channel. All points south of this boundary were in the 22nd, while the remainder was in the 8th. These boundaries would remain effective until the 1964 elections.

After a federal court in Houston ruled Texas' congressional redistricting practices as unconstitutional in '' Bush v. Martin'', effective with the 1966 elections, Harris County was split between three congressional districts. In addition to the existing 8th and 22nd districts, a new 7th district was created on the west side of Houston and Harris County. The new 7th would elect former Harris County Republican Party chairman (and future President) George H. W. Bush, while Casey's 22nd district was made the most compact of the three, stretching from southwest Houston to southeast Harris County, including Pasadena and Clear Lake City, and also encompassing the Johnson Space Center.

Following the 1970 Census, the 22nd lost some largely African-American portions to the newly realigned, majority African-American 18th district (which would elect Democrat Barbara Jordan), while other areas along the Houston Ship Channel went to the 8th district, now represented by Democrat Bob Eckhardt and primarily concentrated in north Houston.

Those areas were replaced by portions of rapidly growing Fort Bend and Brazoria counties, home to growing Republican constituencies of white upper-middle-class families — natives and transplants alike — moving to jobs in Houston's growing energy sector, as well as at the Johnson Space Center and the Texas Medical Center, and drawn to affordable housing and top-rated schools in the area's burgeoning master-planned communities. A mid-decade redistricting in 1974 added southern Waller County, with a similar character to Fort Bend and Brazoria. As with most growing exurban areas in the Southern United States, these new areas also had large blocs of conservative white Democrats disenchanted with their party's support for restoration of civil rights promoted by the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson and the national Democratic Party. While Casey continued to win reelection in 1972 and 1974 without significant opposition, his resignation following his appointment to the Federal Maritime Commission in 1976, combined with increased suburban growth in the aforementioned counties, opened the door for a Republican upset in the special election that followed.

Three months after Casey's resignation, on April 3, 1976, Republican Ron Paul, a physician and Air Force veteran who had moved from the Pittsburgh area in the previous decade with his wife and settled in Brazoria County, won a special election to fill the remainder of Casey's unexpired term. Paul had been Casey's Republican opponent in 1974. While Paul lost the general election later that year to Democratic State Senator Bob Gammage by fewer than 300 votes, in 1978 he defeated Gammage in a general election rematch by a 1,200-vote margin, coinciding with the election of Bill Clements as Texas's first Republican Governor since Reconstruction. In 1980, Paul would go on to win a second term, defeating Democratic attorney Mike Andrews, a former Harris County prosecutor, by a narrow margin.

Following the 1980 Census, rapid growth in the Houston area resulted in most of the more Democratic areas of the 22nd being transferred to the new 25th congressional district, which Mike Andrews won in 1982 and would hold for six terms before pursuing an unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 1994.

The redistricting left Paul with a district comprising three major portions, all of which were strongly Republican. These included:

* all of Fort Bend County, by this time a booming suburban county anchored by the development of the First Colony master-planned community in Sugar Land, and also containing other booming suburbs including Missouri City, Stafford and Rosenberg.
* much of Paul's political base in Brazoria County, except for a tiny western portion around the communities of Sweeny and West Columbia located in the adjacent 14th district; and
* most of southwest Houston and Harris County along the Southwest Freeway, including the Westwood, Sharpstown and Fondren areas of Houston. This portion also included the Richmond Avenue entertainment corridor, The Galleria

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