The 1984 United States House of Representatives elections in Texas occurred on November 6, 1984, to elect the members of the state of Texas's delegation to the United States House of Representatives. Texas had twenty-seven seats in the House, apportioned according to the 1980 United States census.[1]
Texas underwent mid-decade redistricting due to the District Court case Upham v. Seamon. The U.S. Department of Justice objected to the boundaries of District 15 and District 27 adopted by the Texas Legislature in 1981 under preclearance established by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[2] The court's modified districts were used in 1982, and the Legislature modified other districts in 1983, keeping the court-modified districts in place.[3]
Democrats maintained their majority of U.S. House seats from Texas. Still, they lost four seats to the Republicans, who rode the coattails of president Ronald Reagan's re-election.[4] The Republicans in those four seats, as well as two other freshmen Republicans, would later become known as the Texas Six Pack.
Incumbent Democrat Phil Gramm resigned after being removed from his seat on the House Budget Committee by Democratic leadership. He subsequently switched his party affiliation to the Republican Party and ran for his old seat in the ensuing special election.[7] He had been planning to switch parties even before this occurred.[8]Ronald Reagan had won the district in 1980, and Gramm's opponents cast the race as a referendum on Reganomics.[9] Gramm won the race outright, avoiding a runoff and returning to Congress as a Republican.[10][11] He retired at the end of his term to run for U.S. Senator.[12]
Incumbent Democrat Abraham Kazen ran for re-election. He lost in the Democratic Primary to Albert Bustamante.[6] Kazen was one of only three incumbent members of congress to lose a primary in 1984.[14]
Incumbent Democrat Tom Vandergriff ran for re-election. Mid-decade redistricting had made this district slightly more favorable to Democrats.[15] The previous iteration of this district, which Vandergriff narrowly won in 1982, would have given Ronald Reagan 67 percent of the vote had it existed in 1980.[16]