The various states take various approaches to the upcoming Census.

California wants to count everyone here, for instance.

Texas is shooting for an undercount.

I’d be embarrassed to be Texas.

Don’t get me wrong — unlike most Californians who are sensible environmentalist never-Trumpers and aren’t fixing to move there next week, I love the Lone Star State. I’m like that bronco buster in the country song, just looking to get to “Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone.” I’ve fished for crappie and bass there, fired shotguns at skeet, hiked the Palo Duro Canyon, lunched on open-pit brisket at Smith’s Market in Lockhart, the official Barbecue Capital of Texas as ordained by the Texas Legislature. I’ve probably spent more time in Texas than Ted Cruz has.

I love a cousin’s description of anything huge in this world: “Why, Lawrence, it’s big as Dallas.”

So since big ol’ Texas savors bigness for its own sake, why don’t its political leaders want a big count of Tejanos in the 2020 United States Census?

Because the good ol’ boys who still run the state don’t want to give up their power, that’s why. And most of the new potential voters who have arrived, or come of voting age, in the decade since the last Census are not tax-weary Californians. They are young Latinos not particularly inclined to vote for a president who panders to white nationalists or a governor who says the more guns, the better.

There have always been pockets of resistance to reactionary politics in Texas. As New York City is not quite America, Austin is not at all Texas, if by that we mean shoot-’em-up right-wing extremism.

But Dallas is already blue, too, and San Antonio, and even Houston is deep purple. Texas political thinkers along the lines of Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro will be much more influential if every Texan is counted this year.

So the political bosses in what Ivins half-lovingly called the Leg — pronounced “ledge” — will fight the arithmetic in any way they can.

They’re already geniuses with a Sharpie when it comes to diluting the voting power of the UT students, bohemians and tech workers who live in Austin, for instance. If Massachusetts hadn’t long ago already invented gerrymandering, Texas would have. The six congressional districts that include Austin cut it up like a pie, taking in only small swaths of the city and widening out into the conservative countryside.

So, to postpone the inevitable future for a spell, Texas, unlike most other states, has decided not to spend anything at all promoting this year’s Census.

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California must do more to allow ex-offenders find work Although, as an NPR story notes, you’ve got to spend money to make money, and most states want the extra clout and cash that another congressional seat or two would bring, Texas lawmakers intentionally decided not to undertake a statewide effort ensuring all Texans are counted. It’s joined by only South Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana and Florida in its non-effort, aimed at an undercount.

California, you will be pleased to know, is investing $154 million of your tax dollars in making sure we scoop up more of every American’s tax dollars in return with a “campaign to reach the least likely to respond areas and hard-to-count communities throughout California.”

What with out-migration — all those conservative Californians moving to Texas, Idaho and Arizona, and liberal ones becoming tax refugees in Seattle — we might lose a congressional seat anyway.

I’m just glad we won’t go down for the count without a fight.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.