SAN ANTONIO - Democrats could gain as many as four new congressional seats and avoid a nasty primary fight between state Rep. Joaquín Castro and U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett if a federal court in San Antonio enacts the interim congressional map it proposed Wednesday.

The court's map would reunite much of Austin into one congressional district, giving Doggett back his Austin-based district. Texas Republican lawmakers had fractured his district in a bid to defeat the liberal icon.

The judges drew a new Hispanic-dominated majority-minority district that includes San Antonio's East Side, much of southern and eastern Bexar County, and goes north to just south of the Austin metropolitan area.

"It looks like a great district," said Castro, D-San Antonio. "It looks like areas I represented in the Legislature, so I'm excited."

The Legislature's redistricting plan had split Austin into five congressional districts, only one of which could be won by a Democrat, according to computer models. That set the stage for a vicious primary fight between Doggett and Castro to represent a Hispanic-dominated district that would stretch from San Antonio to Austin.

The court also made significant changes to the congressional districts represented by Republicans Quico Canseco, of San Antonio, and Blake Farenthold, of Corpus Christi. The Legislature had made changes in their districts to make them safer for the Republican incumbents, but the court's changes indicate the judges believe those changes reduced opportunity for minority representation.

No big Houston shifts

Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said he was pleased the federal judges restored districts for minority candidates to represent.

"The complete restoration of those districts will now let minorities elect the candidates of their choice," he said. "That is very significant."

The judge-drawn maps made no significant changes in the Houston area, focusing instead on the Dallas/Fort Worth area and the San Antonio-to-Austin corridor.

"I am pleased with the drawing of a new Latino seat based in Bexar County, the minority coalition district created in Tarrant County and the restoration of the Latino opportunity seats in South Texas and San Antonio-West Texas," said Rep. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston. "However, it is disappointing to see that Houston did not receive a new Latino-opportunity district."

Endorsed by all three federal judges who oversaw a redistricting trial in San Antonio earlier this year, the proposed interim map likely will be used to determine congressional boundaries for the 2012 election.

Deadline for comment

The three-judge panel had to create the interim maps because a trial in Washington, D.C., to determine whether the Legislature's plan conforms to the federal Voting Rights Act, will not take place until after candidates have to file to run for office.

Groups involved in the legal fight over the state's redistricting plan have until noon Friday to comment on the court's proposal. In their ruling, the judges did not disclose when they would make their final decision on the map.

Under the redistricting plan passed by the Texas Legislature, computer models show President Barack Obama likely would win only nine of Texas' 36 congressional districts; under the court's map, he likely would win 13 districts.

"I don't think that this alone is going to signal a Democratic resurgence, but for a party that's had no good news in a long time, the new maps across the board are good news," said James Henson, director of Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, who said the maps appear to be reflective of the demographic change across the state. "It's hard to look at this and not see that by creating minority opportunity districts, it creates Democratic opportunity districts."

State will appeal

Republican lawmakers slammed the court's proposed congressional map, saying the judges were legislating from the bench.

"The court issued a map without any explanation, but still, it seems apparent that the proposed map misapplies federal law and continues the court's trend of inappropriately venturing into political policy-making rather than simply applying the law," Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott, said in a statement.

Senate Redistricting Committee chairman Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, said Republican leaders were having "in-depth" discussions about how the state should respond to these maps and promised the state would appeal the maps and could seek an injunction from the Supreme Court to keep the maps from taking affect.

Any appeal, Seliger said, would center on the argument that the court had overstepped its authority.

Staff writers Brian Chasnoff in San Antonio and Gary Scharrer in Austin contributed to this report.

nhicks@express-news.net