For their walkout, Texas Democrats get national attention — and partisan retribution at home

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When Texas House Democrats returned to the Capitol after walking out over the GOP’s new congressional map, they were cheered by supporters as bulwarks of democracy — then promptly bulldozed by Republicans fed up with their protest and intent on further marginalizing the minority party.

“They will be lucky if they get out of this special session without it being a whole lot worse than it would have been had they just stuck around,” Rep. Tom Oliverson of Cypress and chair of the House Republican Caucus, said last week. “If they had any leverage at the start of the last special session, it’s all gone.”

Democratic lawmakers cast their two-week walkout as a victory for sparking a national movement among blue states for retaliatory redistricting, and for buying time to evaluate a legal challenge to the Republican gerrymander, which aims to net up to five more GOP seats among Texas’ 38 congressional districts. The Democrats said it was just the first chapter of their fight, which they intend to continue by working to kill the new lines in court.

But the move also unified typically factious House Republicans, who are now solidly behind a speaker some once decried as “liberal,” and more emboldened to steamroll any Democratic resistance in the remaining weeks of the special session to pass every conservative priority on the agenda — and then some.

“Democrats did a really good job of getting Republicans united,” said Arlington GOP Rep. Tony Tinderholt, who commended Speaker Dustin Burrows’ handling of the walkout after previously opposing his rise to the speakership.

Republicans moved quickly to drive the map through both chambers of the Legislature within a week of the Democrats’ return. But they also wasted no time advancing a host of conservative priorities that Democrats vehemently oppose, including bills cracking down on the manufacturing and distribution of abortion pills and requiring transgender people to use the bathroom aligned with their sex assigned at birth in government and school buildings.

Those measures stalled in the House during the regular session. And while Gov. Greg Abbott, who controls the special session agenda, had put them on the to-do list from the start, Democrats’ protest has only increased the GOP appetite to push them all through as retribution for the walkout.

“Now we’re not even going to negotiate,” Oliverson said. “We’re just going to slam it through, too bad.”

Democratic lawmakers condemned the expected retaliation but stood by their walkout, arguing that electoral representation was important enough to fight for, no matter the immediate costs.

“This is the linchpin,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Gene Wu of Houston said Friday. “If we don’t beat this, if politicians in red or blue states just are free to redistrict after every election cycle to make sure that there’s as little dissent as possible — that’s bad for everyone. It’s bad for America.”

Fines and new punishments

The moment Democratic lawmakers fled the state earlier this month, Republicans began clamoring for retribution — from burying Democrats in fines and stripping them of their committee vice chairmanships to kicking them out of their duly elected offices.

By the time Democrats returned two weeks later, Abbott had called a new special session with virtually the same agenda that stalled in the first, and Burrows was promising to muscle through every item on the call, “and even some more.”

Legislation Democrats oppose was put on a fast track to passage, with the so-called bathroom bill and abortion pill clampdown both set for a hearing last week as soon as the map cleared the House. Burrows said he expected to complete the governor’s agenda by Labor Day weekend, almost two weeks before the 30-day session times out.

“There’s a definite loss from a negotiating standpoint on many other bills that we did not want to see hit the floor,” said Rep. Terry Canales of Edinburg, a Democrat who did not participate in the walkout.

The House adopted the new map along party lines on Wednesday, releasing Democratic lawmakers from the around-the-clock police escort Burrows had imposed to ensure their attendance.

Just over an hour later, Abbott expanded the session agenda to include punishments for lawmakers who “willfully absent themselves” to block the passage of legislation.

New penalties are needed, Abbott said in a press release, “to ensure that rogue lawmakers cannot hijack the important business of Texans during a legislative session by fleeing the state.”

Republican lawmakers have filed bills in both chambers that would declare a member’s seat vacant if they are absent for seven consecutive days without permission. The proposal swiftly picked up enough joint and coauthors in the House to pass the chamber, with several key Republicans in leadership signing on. And another measure — designated House Bill 18, signaling it has Burrows’ blessing — would limit political donations to lawmakers who leave the state to stall legislative action, with stiff fines for violators.

The absent Democrats were already subject to daily fines while they were away on their latest quorum break. The final tally amounted to $9,354 for each member, including $500-per-person penalties for every day of the walkout and certain costs incurred in securing their attendance.

“The fines are, for sure, going to be a big issue,” Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Allen, said. “We’re not going to just let those go away.”

Upon the Democrats’ return, Burrows said the House would remain a chamber where “the minority has the right to be heard.” But he underscored that it would also be one where “the majority has the right to prevail,” and by the end of Wednesday, he was heralding a “new chapter of Republican unity” ushered in by the map’s passage.

“These past few weeks have not been easy, but the House members who showed up for work every day have shown a dedication to their constituents that will not be forgotten,” he said. “I am proud to have led my colleagues in this important achievement.”

“I’m tired of being blamed as the minority party”

Democrats argued that the map would unconstitutionally suppress the vote of Black and Latino Texans and needed to be defeated in court. They said their protest was necessary to inspire a national response to what they framed as an attempt by President Donald Trump to stack the deck in next year’s midterm election and hold onto Republican control of the U.S. House.

“The quorum break was successful, I think, beyond our wildest dreams,” Wu said last week, pointing to California’s moves to adopt a new congressional map with five new Democratic districts that could cancel out the expected GOP gains in Texas. “The public now sees [Republicans’] corruption. They see where the swamp actually is.”

Still, the intensity of Texas Republicans’ efforts to drag Democratic lawmakers back to the Capitol reached new levels during this year’s walkout, with Republicans working to eliminate quorum breaks, the minority party’s last tool of resistance.

“Republicans have gone so far that they are nothing more than bullies,” Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, said Wednesday as she clutched a permission slip from Burrows allowing her to leave the chamber. “I’ve never seen this kind of venom and retribution for a group actually advocating for minority voices, and I think it’s pretty self-defeating and disruptive.”

Democratic lawmakers recognized that their protest would prompt Republican backlash and grease the path for legislation they opposed.

But they put those outcomes on their Republican colleagues, arguing that Democrats were fighting for fair representation using time-honored strategies, and that they ultimately showed up knowing the map — and other socially conservative priorities — would prevail on the floor.

“I’m tired of being blamed as the minority party for the wrong actions of the majority,” Johnson said. “It is not my fault that the party is now based on cruelty. The people that get punished with this political agenda right now in the special [session] are the most vulnerable people in Texas that I am defending at every point I can.”

In a shift, some Democrats also began holding Burrows, who they propelled to the speakership in January, responsible for the map’s passage and the partisan retribution. Wu, the House Democratic leader, said he didn’t think “the people will want us to support him again.”

“We all took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to flagrantly violate it or to test its limits,” Rep. Vince Perez, D-El Paso, said on the floor last week. “It is shameful what is happening here, Mr. Speaker, and with this, I can no longer in good conscience continue to support you.”

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