Footnote to the Cheney hunting accident

Evidently, no one has noticed that Kenedy County, Texas, the site of the Cheney hunting accident, is one of the lowest-population counties in the country. The Census Bureau counted 414 residents there in April 2000 and estimates that there were 407 in June 2004. Only two of Texas's 253 other counties have lower populations (2004 estimates): King County (323) and Loving County (52), the lowest-population county in the United States. Kenedy County is small enough that I would imagine everyone there knows the Armstrong family, owners of the ranch on which Cheney was hunting. To judge from news accounts, Kenedy County has its own sheriff but is under the jurisdiction of the district attorney of Kleberg County (31,357), which is just to the north and is the home of the headquarters of the King Ranch. Both counties are heavily Hispanic: Kenedy County, 78 percent (314 out of 404), and Kleberg County, 68 percent (21,242 out of 31,357) — if I'm reading the Census spreadsheet correctly.

In November 2004, Kenedy County cast 85 votes for John Kerry (50 percent), 82 for George W. Bush (49 percent), and 2 for other candidates (1 percent). Kleberg County, where 9,973 votes were cast, went 54-46 percent for Bush.