The real District 30 is manned by longtime Dallas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. Johnson was elected to the house in 1992 following a stint in the Texas Senate. Johnson's district is centered in southern Dallas and includes downtown. Her Dallas office is in the 3100 block of Maple Avenue, near the Observer office and the Crescent Hotel, something that would be impossible to guess judging from House of Cards' drive into Jones' storefront office.
Netflix appears to have found an outcropping of row houses somewhere in Dallas — something we're sure has nothing to do with the fact that the show is filmed primarily in Maryland. As you can see in the photo, though, everyone drives a pickup truck — except the Underwoods' motorcade — helping the show strike another blow for verisimilitude. Then there's Jones herself, who's been prepping the seat she sits in for her daughter Celia. Cicely Tyson, thanks largely to the wig she's wearing, certainly evokes Johnson, who also has a thing for helping out her family members — as evidenced by the end of the '00s scandal that found the congresswoman distributed 23 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships to her family members. Johnson would eventually repay more than $31,000 to the foundation.
On the show, Jones aims to build a public breast cancer screening facility inside an existing VA hospital. Not only does she want to do that, she wants the clinic to be run by Planned Parenthood. Admittedly, House of Cards exists in a universe completely detached from reality — President Underwood has, apparently, gotten away with two murders so far in the show's run — but there is no way, not even with help from the president himself, as Jones eventually secures, that anything even remotely connected to Planned Parenthood would get built with public money in the state of Texas.
Johnson's office hasn't released a statement about her on-screen near doppelganger, but the congresswoman herself seemed amused with the portrayal on Twitter.
Today, I learned #ClaireUnderwood is eyeing my seat in #TX30 @HouseofCards I'll be sure to tune in this weekend for season 4.
— US Rep E.B.Johnson (@RepEBJ) March 4, 2016