Texas Democrats know they may lose redistricting protest, but hope to spark a national fight

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ST. CHARLES, Illinois — If Gov. Greg Abbott is determined to pass a gerrymandered congressional map, Texas Democrats know he has the votes and the power to eventually get his way.

But for the dozens of Democrats who left the state this week in protest of the map, it’s not just about winning — it’s about fighting.

Away from their families and regular jobs, Texas Democrats, most of whom are hunkered down in a suburb about an hour west of Chicago, are facing $500-per-day fines, civil arrest warrants and threats from Republican state leaders to remove them from office.

Now five days into the walkout, they plan to stay away until at least the end of the special session on Aug. 19. When they return, they face the possibility of being stripped of their leadership positions and even further marginalized in a chamber where they are already outnumbered. And no matter how long they stay away, Abbott can just call another special session to pass the map.

But it will all be worth it, they say, if they can lay the groundwork for a national fight over redistricting and ensure enough voters across the country understand what they frame as an attempt by President Donald Trump to stack the deck in the midterm election next year.

“It takes an act of defiance like this to wake up the country and let them know that our democracy is being stolen right in front of our eyes,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio in an interview. “If we’re going to be the spark that lights that fire, then we’re doing our jobs.”

When House Democrats last walked out in 2021 to stop new state voter restrictions, lawmakers were on the lam for over a month before the caucus fractured and enough members returned to restore quorum. Republicans quickly pushed the measure through, but Democrats say they were successful in drawing national and congressional attention to the topic and removing some of the worst parts of the bill.

This time around, they’re seeking to block a congressional map redrawn in the middle of the decade to create five new GOP seats next year, putting them at the front lines of an issue with national stakes: control of the U.S. House for the last two years of Trump’s term.

Those implications have elevated the Texas Democrats decamped in Illinois and elsewhere, stiffening their resolve and garnering them nationwide attention and support that they hope can help sustain their movement in a way that was missing four years ago.

“It’s not, Houston, we have a problem,” Martinez Fischer said. “It’s, America, we have a problem, and we need to rise up.”

The walkout, meant to deny Republicans the quorum needed to conduct legislative business and bring the House to a standstill, has also set off a possible national redistricting war. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has promised to draw more blue seats in his state if Texas approves its plan, and national Democratic leaders are looking to reshape maps in Illinois, New York and Maryland.

The effort reflects a push within the Democratic Party, particularly after last year’s disastrous election results, to re-establish itself to voters as a party of fighters willing to meet Republicans on their level.

“We are going to match Donald Trump’s energy when it comes to redistricting,” U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth said Monday. “Democrats we have shown up to a gunfight with nothing but good intentions and dull knives, and that era is over. We are not going to unilaterally disarm, and that is what’s different this time around.”

The message was reiterated repeatedly this week, with top Democrats from Illinois, New York, California and Massachusetts all joining the Texas delegation in pledging to stand up to the Trump administration, which is also pressing other red states to redraw their congressional maps in favor of the GOP ahead of next year’s midterm election.

“The Trump-Abbott gerrymander is a test case for the rest of the country,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said Tuesday alongside Texas Democrats. “What Republicans are trying to do in Texas is a model for other red states to lie, cheat and steal their way to victory.”

Democrats began floating the possibility of a walkout as soon as Abbott put redistricting on the special session agenda in July at the behest of Trump.

But in discussions over Zoom and in person before the session began, they decided that the stakes of the issue hadn’t yet been communicated to the public in a way that would explain a nuclear act. Some also held out for a committee process that might allow them to temper any draft map, or for a GOP proposal less aggressive than Trump had demanded.

Then, the Republican-led redistricting committee unveiled a map last week that would dismantle several Democratic districts to squeeze out five new red seats. While Republican lawmakers said the map was drawn purely to maximize partisan advantage — which is legal, according to the U.S. Supreme Court — Democrats saw a plan that would achieve that edge by suppressing the vote of people of color in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

“The power grab by Trump and Abbott doesn’t just have the goal of getting five more seats in Congress,” Rep. Ramon Romero Jr. said Tuesday, the eve of the Voting Rights Act’s 60th anniversary. “It has another goal, a goal more sinister than that, and that is to make people believe that their vote doesn’t really matter. That’s why it’s all of our fight.”

With Republicans moving to approve the map at a quick clip, the determination to deny quorum solidified among Democrats in the 48 hours before they got on a chartered plane headed for Chicago. Others made their way to Albany to meet with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and to Boston for a state legislative conference.

Democrats say they’re buying valuable time by walking out, drawing attention to the issue among voters and getting other blue states involved — even while recognizing that Texas’ map is likely to get passed and will need to be fought in court.

“The spotlight has been turned on,” Rep. James Talarico of Austin said in an interview. “I’m hoping this courage that my colleagues and I have shown will be contagious, and it’ll inspire other legislators in blue states to respond with their own redistricting attempts.”

Using their hotel complex as a base camp, Democrats have done scores of media interviews out of their cramped rooms and a small park off the Fox River in Illinois; hosted news conferences with federal, state and party leaders at local union halls and blue state capitols; and met with Democratic governors and elected officials from across the country.

Talarico, who is mulling a run for U.S. Senate, said he did 25 interviews in the first 24 hours of the quorum break, ranging from TV and traditional platforms to podcasts with ranging ideological bents. His TV hits alone reached 9.8 million viewers across the country, he said, not including thousands of others on social media.

Republicans appear to have more paths toward maximizing their representation in Congress in a redistricting war with Democrats. Redrawing congressional maps in the middle of the decade will be harder for the handful of blue states that have clamped down on partisan gerrymandering by handing their redistricting authority to independent commissions.

Still, Texas Democrats see the support blue state and national Democratic leaders have expressed for retaliatory redistricting as a sign that their gambit is working.

“This, I think, is well on its way becoming a national fight, and that’s what’s going to be important if we’re going to counter” the GOP, said Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, who led the 2021 quorum break.

Republicans blasted the Democrats who left, arguing that they abandoned their office and were refusing to participate in the legislative process because they did not like the inevitable outcome. Critics also mocked the contingent for seeking refuge from Texas law enforcement in Illinois, which is heavily gerrymandered in favor of Democrats.

But Democrats said that by denying the House a quorum, they were doing the very job their constituents had elected them to do and were now demanding they follow through on.

While the 2021 walkout required Democrats to do a lot of explaining to their constituents about what a quorum break was and why they were doing it, Rep. Diego Bernal of San Antonio said, “this time around, they were telling us that their expectation was that we would use everything at our disposal to try and stop it.”

Democrats also said they don’t take the decision to leave lightly. Talarico noted that there’s an abundance of GOP legislation that Democrats stay and fight against in the chamber. They reserved the most drastic option for what he framed as “direct attacks on democracy.”

“We have to love democracy, even when we lose,” he said. “But we do that because we always have a chance to win the next election. And if this happens, we won’t — and so we have to take an extreme step to stand up for our constituents and for all Texans.”

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