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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Hunkered down in a New Mexico Marriott with the 11 Texas Democrats whose heroic stand against Tom DeLay's power grab is going into its second month.
Aug 27, 2003 | The future makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives may depend on 11 Texas Democratic state senators holed up in a New Mexico Marriott. For 30 days, they've been exiled in Albuquerque, denying Republicans the quorum necessary to pass redistricting laws that would eliminate between five and seven Democratic congressional seats. And though the state Legislature's session theoretically ended today, that doesn't end the Democrats' plight: If they set foot in their home state, Republican officials will have them arrested and forcibly brought to the statehouse, where their presence will allow Republicans to prevail.
The political smackdown that is now lurching into its second vicious month is being fought over complex procedural rules governing how the Texas state Senate does business. The stakes, though, couldn't be clearer: Directed by Karl Rove and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the Texas state Senate is trying to remake the state's electoral map to guarantee Republicans more congressional seats. Ordinarily, states redraw their electoral maps every decade. Texas last redistricted in 2001, and Republicans defended those maps in a Supreme Court challenge brought by civil rights groups who said the maps broke up Hispanic neighborhoods, dispersing their electoral influence.
In 2002, though, Texas elected 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans to the House. Several of the districts that elected Democratic congressmen otherwise voted strongly Republican, but that didn't assuage DeLay's rage at his party's failure to seize a wider margin in the closely divided House. Since Republicans swept statewide offices in Texas in the same election, DeLay and Rove saw a chance to increase their power. "I'm the majority leader," DeLay told reporters, "and we want more seats."
If Rove and DeLay succeed, not only will the Republicans have an advantage in the 2004 congressional elections, but DeLay, having given the new Republicans their seats, will presumably have their support should he make a bid to become speaker of the House.
Today marked the end of the second special session called by Gov. Rick Perry to work on redistricting. Thanks to a quirk in the state constitution that requires three-quarters of state senators and congressmen to be present in their chambers before business can be done, the Democratic exile has so far stopped Republicans from pushing through their new electoral maps. Democrats say the new maps would decimate minority influence by packing blacks and Hispanics into a few districts while diluting their influence in others -- a strategy that will likely lead to the election of one or two new minority congressmen while assuring that between five and seven current House Democrats lose their seats.
But the so-called Texas 11 can't go home yet. If they do, the moment they're in the air, Perry could call yet another session, and the Democrats wouldn't have time to escape once again. Indeed, though there's lots of activity this week both in Austin and Albuquerque, nothing has really changed.
The Democrats are counting on a court hearing in Laredo, Texas, on Wednesday to begin clearing the way for their return. They've filed a lawsuit arguing that the state Senate, by throwing out a long-standing rule requiring two-thirds of the body to agree to bring measures up for debate, is violating the Voting Rights Act, since it scrapped the rule in order to pass maps that they say would disenfranchise minorities. The senators hope that, at the very least, the judge in Laredo would issue a restraining order prohibiting the state Senate from ramming through redistricting legislation pending a trial. Such an assurance would allow the Texas 11 to return home, at least for the time being.
