The Texas Republican Who Settled a Sexual-Harassment Suit With Taxpayer Money Won’t Seek Reelection

What’s next for his gerrymandered district?

Tom Williams/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Texas Republican Blake Farenthold, who earlier this month made headlines following revelations that he settled a 2014 sexual-harassment lawsuit using $84,000 in taxpayer funds, announced Thursday that he won’t seek reelection for his congressional seat in 2018. 

In an emotional video posted to his campaign Facebook page, Farenthold apologized for his “angry outbursts” as congressman and for failing “to treat people with the respect that they deserved.” “I’d never served in public office before,” he said. “I had no idea how to run a congressional office, and as a result I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional.”

Farenthold’s district is likely to remain a GOP stronghold, at least through November, said Mark Jones, a political science fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice University. A handful of Republicans, including former county GOP chairman Michael Cloud and former Texas Water Board Development chairman Bech Bruun, announced their candidacies earlier this month. But the 27th Congressional District, which encompasses much of the Texas Gulf Coast and goes nearly as far inland as Austin, may not be around much longer.

This year, a federal court in San Antonio ruled that congressional and state house districts drawn by Republican lawmakers after the 2010 census, including Farenthold’s, were created with the intent to discriminate against African American and Latino voters. This despite Texas gaining more US House seats following the 2010 Census because of population growth—largely of voters of color.

It’s unlikely any changes will be made to the seat prior to the 2018 midterm elections, says Michael Li, senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, thanks to a Supreme Court decision in September that blocked enforcement of the lower court’s ruling until justices had time to review the decision.

The earliest the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case is June. By then it will be too late to make changes to Farenthold’s district—as well as neighboring districts—in time for next year’s elections, Li says.

Should the Supreme Court rule Fahrenthold’s district unconstitutional, redistricting could favor the Democrats, says University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. “I don’t know if it’s a winnable seat right now for the Democrats,” Rottinghaus says, “but it is definitely a seat that will change, and it will probably be a seat that flips.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate