This report is part of collaboration with WNYC’s “It’s a Free Country” to cover the 25 most captivating congressional races from around the country.

When the Republican-led Texas Legislature rearranged the state’s congressional districts in June, Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett recognized immediately that he’d face a tough road back to Washington.

The nine-term congressman, a staunch progressive in a sea of red, saw his Austin-based District 25 shifted into much more conservative rural territory, and found the only nearby opening for a Democrat in the newly drawn CD-35 stretching 80 narrow miles from East Austin to San Antonio.

State Rep. Joaquin Castro looked at that same meandering, Vietnam-shaped sliver of Central Texas, and saw the next step in his promising career and a chance to give its majority Latino population a new voice in Washington. A five-term veteran of the Texas House, Castro is seen as a bright-eyed rising star among state Democrats, one of the leading figures working to ensure Texas politics start reflecting the state’s changing demographics.

With Latinos accounting for 58 percent its voting-age population, the 35th was drawn as a so-called minority opportunity district — something groups have already sued in federal court saying the maps don’t include enough of. By pinning Doggett’s reelection hopes onto one of Texas’ few districts built for Latino representation, Texas Republicans scripted one of the most engaging rounds of political drama the state will see this year.

It’s a story of the state’s changing population, which is now 38 percent Latino and 45 percent white. When Gov. Rick Perry talks about Texas’ booming population, the huge numbers of people drawn here for jobs, Latinos accounted for 65 percent of that growth. Increasingly, political battles in Texas between youth and experience will, like this one, be between Latino and white candidates.

That it’s happening in one of the state’s few Democratic Congressional districts is a testament to how effective Texas Republicans have been at fending off the change.

Stretching from San Antonio north to Austin, CD-35 is one of five new districts accounting for some part of Travis County.

“That’s what the Republicans want. They tried to draw it to where it was a battle between an Anglo congressman and a Hispanic challenger,” said Travis County Democratic Party Chair Andy Brown, who says it’s the same strategy that put Doggett in an even more oddly shaped district, stretching far to South Texas, in 2004. Doggett won that race, and this time around Brown said, Democrats know the score. “I think that Travis County’s going to stick together, and won’t be divided that way,” he said.

But Austin-based Democratic consultant Harold Cook, who isn’t working for either campaign, said Doggett hasn’t faced an opponent as formidable as Castro.

“The strongest candidate who could have run against Doggett is the one who is,” Cook said. “This is going to be a different challenge.”

While Doggett makes himself more accessible in San Antonio, and Castro meets voters in Austin, both are also fighting the new redistricting map in court — Castro as a member of the House Mexican American Legislative Caucus, and Doggett with his own federal suit. In a June statement, Doggett called the map a “Republican slap at Hispanics,” but state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, another San Antonio Democrat, has blasted Doggett in the press, claiming that self-interest is the real goal behind his challenge.

“It seems that Congressman Doggett is out of sorts with minority advocates,” Martinez Fischer told the Austin American-Statesman in July, before Doggett’s suit was combined with, among others, one filed by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus.

“There’s a pretty good chance the courts are going to alter the map,” Cook said, though there’s no way to tell just how it might change. A three-judge panel is hearing arguments in early September, and though candidates have till mid-December to file for the 2012 election, the court could bump back that deadline. “They have signaled that they want this done,” Cook said. “If they find this map to be illegal, they will not run under this map.”

But for now, Doggett and Castro are working with the only map that’s on the books, hoping to woo campaign contributors enough to make a statement when the next campaign finance reports are released this fall.

“Best I can tell, everybody has done the expected thing — they’re just kind of playing out the script,” Cook said.

Part of that script has included commentary about the race, and as conservative columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. put it in a column last week, “The problem is, the 35th district wasn’t drawn for someone like Doggett.”

Doggett’s current district doesn’t have much in common with the redrawn CD-25 approved this year by the Texas Legislature. (Texas Legislative Council maps)

Carlton Carl, a Democratic operative working in the Doggett camp, said the fight over CD-35 marks the convergence of Texas Republicans’ two major goals when they sat down to draw new maps.

“Congressman Doggett is not alone in thinking that Gov. Perry, [U.S. Rep.] Lamar Smith and Republicans in the Legislature seriously gerrymandered the state to accomplish several things: one, to minimize the influence of the growing Latino population and black population, and to try to defeat Lloyd Doggett.

“Why have they tried to beat him for so long? Because he’s a strong effective advocate for working families, for immigration reform, for civil rights, for voting rights,” Carl said. “Congressman Doggett is running against the Republicans who tried to cut him out of Congress, not particularly his challenger in this district.”

Jason Stanford, a Democratic consultant working with Castro’s campaign, has a different read on how the race has gone so far: “Primarily it’s been Lloyd Doggett complaining about how the Republicans redrew the district, and Joaquin Castro talking about growing jobs,” Stanford said.

Castro’s supporters have said Doggett can’t bring detailed plans to match what Castro has in store for the district. Doggett’s camp says the Congressman’s record stands for itself, that he’s always worked hard for the things people in CD-35 need. Philip Martin, a Democratic blogger in Austin, compared each candidate’s voting record and foundCastro was the more liberal of the two candidates — but in a Texas House that’s more conservative even than the U.S. Congress today.

“These are two of the top 10 boom cities in America, and they’re about an hour away from each other. The potential for another boom there if these cities start working together is pretty startling,” Stanford said. “If he’s so interested in fighting Republicans, I don’t see why he doesn’t go and do that in his own district.”

That’s still a possibility for Doggett: even if the courts don’t give him a more hospitable map, there’s a chance he’d run in CD-25 — his current district that’s been given a facelift. In that district, he’d face one of a few well-funded Republicans already vying for their party’s nomination there, but he may decide it’s the more winnable option.

Carl said CD-35 is still where most of Doggett’s current constituents live, so it’s unfair to paint him as a party-crasher.

“He feels that he should continue to seek the support of the people he has represented as long as he’s been in Congress,” Carl said. “They can change the numbers on him, but basically he’s running for reelection to represent the same people.

This report is part of collaboration with WNYC’s “It’s a Free Country” to cover the 25 most captivating congressional races from around the country.