These days, perhaps the most efficient way to spot a nervous Republican is to keep a close eye on the travel plans of Dick Cheney. This week, for instance, the vice president flew to Montana to raise funds for the beleaguered Conrad Burns. And today, he headed to West Texas to lend a hand to one Republican who probably never expected to need the Cheney touch: Rep. Henry Bonilla of Texas.

This June, when the Supreme Court considered Tom DeLay’s mid-decade redistricting of Texas, Bonilla’s district was the only one the court rejected. That part of the map violated the Voting Rights Act, the court ruled, because it had moved nearly 100,000 Latino voters to another district, making it impossible for Latinos to elect a “candidate of their choice.” Now, the district has been redrawn and its Latino voting power more or less restored, forcing Bonilla to confront a very embarrassing fact: The GOP’s only Mexican-American representative, and a longtime poster boy for the party’s Hispanic outreach, doesn’t actually appeal to Hispanics.

Bonilla’s story is pretty interesting. He’s the grandson of a Mexican migrant worker, and a former TV newsman. After he was elected in 1992 – to a sprawling West Texas border district - Republicans thrust him into the limelight. He landed a coveted appropriations committee spot, and was elevated over more experienced colleagues to chair the agriculture sub-committee. In 1999, President Bush tapped Bonilla to help his presidential campaign, and Bonilla played a prominent role at the GOP conventions in 2000 and 2004.

However, although Bonilla was presented as the face of a newly diverse Republican party, he turned out to be a familiar kind of politician. Hitching his wagon to the party’s brightest stars, so to speak, Bonilla became known as a close ally of Tom DeLay, a dealmaker, a handy fundraiser, and a reliable procurer of pork. But although he did a good job of cultivating the party leadership, he didn’t impress his district’s Hispanic voters, who made up around two-thirds of his constituents. In 1996, Bonilla received around 25 percent Latino support. That figure declined steadily, until in 2002 he barely managed to fend off Democrat Henry Cuellar, scraping back into office with 51.5 percent of the vote – and, according to a Department of Justice analysis, merely 3.5 percent Latino support.

So when Tom DeLay decided to redraw Texas's electoral map in 2003, Bonilla was one of the main beneficiaries. An email from a DeLay staffer to his boss noted that “helping Bonilla” was one of “our three goals.” The only way to actually help Bonilla, however, was to break up the increasingly active Latino voting community in his district and fill it with more white voters. At the same time, however, the party wanted to preserve Bonilla’s image as a model Hispanic Republican. So they drew a new district in which Latinos comprised the majority of the voting-age population, but not the majority of voting-age citizens. One GOP legislator later explained the logic this way: “Frankly, we’re trying, as a party, to recruit Hispanic members…”

When this plan was submitted to the Department of Justice for approval under the Voting Rights Act, lawyers quickly spotted its cynicism. In a memo obtained by the Lone Star Project, they noted that Bonilla had “never been the choice of the Hispanic community,” and only remained in office thanks to his incumbent status and the Anglo voters who turned out for him in high numbers. They concluded that under the DeLay-driven plan, Latino voters would “simply no longer have any ability to elect their candidate of choice,” a result that violated the Voting Rights Act. However, DoJ political appointees overruled these objections, and the map was approved. When the Supreme Court rejected Bonilla’s district, it noted sternly that the map “took away the Latinos’ opportunity because Latinos were about to exercise it.”

Now Bonilla is running in a revised district with a Latino majority in an open primary. If Democrats can hold his vote to less than 50 percent, he’ll be forced into a December runoff. For that reason, Bonilla may be regretting some of his more high-profile efforts to rise through the Republican ranks. For instance, Bonilla sponsored the ethics rule change allowing Tom DeLay to remain as majority leader after his indictment (he described DeLay as “one of the greatest leaders that this nation has ever seen”). Nor are some of Bonilla’s political endeavors likely to go over well with Latinos. This year Bonilla was one of a handful of Republicans who delayed passage of the Voting Rights Act, objecting to a provision providing access to bilingual ballots. He voted for the House’s punitive immigration bill, which would have made it a felony to assist illegal immigrants. One of his rare forays into Hispanic issues was to chair the so-called American Dream PAC, which aimed to help more minority candidates win office. As it turned out, only 8.9 percent of the PAC’s considerable largesse – mostly raised from industries with a stake in the business before Bonilla’s subcommittee -- went to minorities. The rest went to candidates like Sen. Phil Gramm, various administrative expenses, the Texas redistricting effort, and the Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust. Bonilla explained that it had been difficult to find "good, solid minority candidates to expend the funds on."

If Bonilla wins re-election, it'll be because of his well-stocked campaign chest and the disorganization of the six Democrats who are jostling to oppose him. And if he loses, it’ll expose the glaringly obvious flaw in the plan by Rove, Mehlman, et al, to bring Hispanics into the Republican fold: It’s not that easy to win lasting support from minorities if you don’t have their interests at heart.