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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003May12.html

Quote:

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 13, 2003; Page A01

AUSTIN, May 12 -- Moving with exceptional stealth and tactical coordination, more than 50 Democratic state lawmakers in Texas packed their bags and quietly slipped out of the state under cover of darkness late Sunday and early today.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry immediately dispatched police to track down the missing legislators, arrest them and bring them back to do the state's business -- even asking neighboring New Mexico if the Texas Rangers were empowered to make arrests there. (New Mexico's attorney general -- a Democrat -- said no.) But all signs were that the legislators were on the lam -- some, perhaps, fleeing to Mexico -- putting them beyond the reach of Lone Star justice and of GOP ambitions.

The walkout deprived the 150-seat Texas House of a quorum and effectively shut down its legislative work just as lawmakers were preparing to vote on a contentious Republican plan orchestrated by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) designed to add five to seven seats to the 15 the GOP controls in the state's 32-member congressional delegation.

Even as they abruptly doomed dozens of major bills pending in the Republican-led legislature, the Democrats defended the absences as a principled move forced on them by a tyrannical new Republican majority.

The Republican redistricting plan is "a power grab by Tom DeLay, pure and simple," 53 of the 59 missing Democrats said in a statement released this morning, as news of their absence consumed the Capitol and spread through the state. "We won't be present today -- or any day -- that the House plans to consider this outrageous partisan action."

The missing Democrats requested of the House parliamentarian, "Please lock my voting machine until I physically return to the House floor."

Republicans publicly derided their foes for running away from a fight -- a very serious accusation in Texas. The "Democrats' actions are by no means heroic; they are the very definition of cowardice," Susan Weddington, the state's Republican Party chairman, said in a statement. "There is nothing principled about deserting your post and betraying the people of Texas."

No group of Texas lawmakers had attempted anything so audacious in 24 years, and even in the raucous political climate of the nation's second most populous state, the walkout by 59 of the 62 House Democrats caught almost everyone by surprise.

This morning, a wildly partisan atmosphere seized the state Capitol -- a handsome domed building, topped by a statue of the Goddess of Liberty, that stands slightly taller than the U.S. Capitol. Aides to Democratic legislators said they suspected their phones had been tapped to track down their bosses, on orders of the Republican leadership. Meanwhile, state troopers in broad-brimmed hats roamed the halls, quizzing press officers and legislative assistants as to the lawmakers' whereabouts.

Although the immediate cause for the Democratic protest was the redistricting plan, the walkout was the culmination of what has been an extraordinarily venomous session of the Texas legislature -- and a milestone in a tectonic political shift in the state.

Republicans, who in January took control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time in 130 years, have used their new majority to push through a conservative legislative agenda using tactics Democrats regard as heavy-handed to the point of brutishness. On tort reform, school financing, home insurance and other issues, the GOP has pursued its agenda aggressively, refusing Democratic input in a state that has been run with a certain degree of bipartisanship in recent years.

A target of the Democrats' discontent has been new Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick. The longtime lawmaker has pushed for items on the GOP agenda with little regard for the Democrats' sensitivities. Congressional redistricting was the most contentious of those issues, and the final straw for many Democrats. "I'm not concerned if [redistricting] splits the House up," Craddick told the El Paso Times last week. "To be blunt, on the Republican side, the leadership has changed and so has the agenda."

He added that the redistricting bill would go to the floor, where "the fight will be loud, and the Republicans will win." The bill would carve up a number of congressional districts held by Democrats, in some cases creating bizarrely shaped boundaries connecting seemingly unrelated parts of the sprawling state, and slicing up neighborhoods. For instance, in Austin, a city of 678,000 and one of a dwindling number of Democratic enclaves in the state, a single downtown street would be divided into four congressional districts, one of them tortuously connected with the Mexican border about 300 miles away.

Legal scholars say it's unclear how the courts would rule on the GOP redistricting effort should it pass. Redistricting usually is only done immediately after a census each decade and Texas's latest plan was completed two years ago.

The Democrats' walkout was timed to derail what they viewed as the Republican juggernaut. Democrats said they would be gone through Thursday, the deadline for passing bills and sending them to the Senate.

The legislative session is scheduled to last three more weeks. Republicans suggested today that they might call a special session for the summer to revive redistricting and other critical legislation undone by the walkout. Defiant Democrats said that if that happened, they would simply slip away again.

Today Craddick ordered that the House chamber be locked down so that no members could leave, although arriving members could enter. Only three of the 62 House Democrats had showed up by midday, and on the House floor more than half the desks were unoccupied. The mostly Republican lawmakers on the floor milled about aimlessly.

Rumors of a possible Democratic walkout began to circulate around the Capitol late Friday. According to the San Antonio Express-News, which first caught wind of the walkout, the Democrats initially planned to hide out near Austin, but then feared they would be caught. The revised plan called for members to be picked up by a "team leader" at various locations around the state. Some would then leave the state by airplane and others by bus, heading for Oklahoma and New Mexico.

Today, New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid said lawyers for Perry asked her if Texas Rangers might be allowed to make arrests in New Mexico. Madrid, a Democrat, said no. "Nonetheless," she added in a statement, "I have put out an all-points bulletin for law enforcement to be on the lookout for politicians in favor of health care for the needy and against tax cuts for the wealthy."

Researcher Karin Brulliard contributed to this report.

Holy cow!!! It is politics time in Texas. I can't believe the majority party would be so darn arrogant to try to re-draw voting districs in their favor and when they are totally shut down and out, they send the police to arrest elected representatives. Were they gonna force them to vote at gunpoint?

I don't know. Bipartisan is not the way I would have described the situation in the mid '80s when I was a Texas resident. Democrats gerrymandered every chance they got, and even tried to ramrod it through a couple times when they were not supposed to. Texas politics are... different...

IIRC, when a few of the more cantankerous Repubs got uppity about it, their seats were declared abandoned, and the seat went vacant. The county could schedule a special election to fill it, or they went without representation until their next election. Either way, the Democrats had one less opposition vote to whatever was on their agenda. I, for one, would like to see all 59 seats declared abandoned, giving them a taste of their own medicine, but I doubt even Texas Republicans have the balls to do it...

Thorfinn is right, you know. The deals are made and sealed in high-dollar restaurants, hotel suites, high-rise office conference rooms, or on a plane. Only then do these deals become bills that are "debated" in the Legislature and passed.

Ok, maybe it isn't really quite that bad, but the way the Legislature is established by the Texas Constitution (which has at this point probably 200 amendments) only those who are independently wealthy can afford to become a State Representative or State Senator.

Actually, this kind of power play over redistricting is common here, even at the city level of government. Unfortunately, this will ultimately be settled in the Texas Supreme Court.

My advice to the Democrats: go back to the Legislature floor, vote against the redistricting--even if you will lose, then begin campaigning now to win a majority of seats in the next Legislature and redistrict again. Sad, but the only people you are hurting right now are yourselves.

Not true. Democrats will lose so many seats with the redistricting that they can't make up for it at the polls. I say politically it's brilliant.

Gerrymandering however is a shame and is broken. It ain't just in Texas. In every state, when one party gets enough of a majority, it redraws the districts. This wastes our tax dollars just as surely as congressional junkets. Plus, in no less than three very convoluted cases, the Supreme Court has developed a line of jurisprudence on gerrymandering that is often cited as the dumbest string of meaningless conditions and "tests" in the law.

Odd how when things are done according to the rules the paper makes it sound like they are actually breaking them. I also like the way the article implies or appears to imply that the "republicans" seized control of the government...I do believe they won it in a public electoral process...the very same way the Dems won it the last time they were in power.

All in all I believe that if they desert their post to avoid a loss, they should be disenfranchised and replaced. It was their choice to give up their seats by walking out while they were insession...no different than if I walked out of my work place because I didn't like a policy.

TL nothing is stopping a single citizen from voting for the democruds after the redistricting...hell I live in a completley democrud dominated state....and yet...we managed to get a repug governor....

[ 05-13-2003, 11:09 AM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

Actually I think every single state should be redistricted..into geometric shapes...squares or rectangles or some such...no special wandering districts to gove one group or another a bigger voice...let the chips fall where they may.

First let me say I am neither dem or repub. I like to joke I am a socialist libertarian because I beleive that most drugs and prostitution should be legal and that goverment should provide services like healthcare or education.

So partisanship aside, I agree that the dems running away seems irresponsible, but its not like they do this everytime they are losing. They chose this battle.

It just takes me for a loop that the police were sent out looking for these people. Aren't there missing children to look for? Rapists and murderers on the loose? It doesnt seem right.

I do apoligize for my choice of news link if you find it slanted. I have read some other articles on this that were less slanted. I chose this one randomly to help start a discussion on the issue and I liked the writing style. A friend of mine pointed out the Washington Post has a reputation for being overly Liberal (aka less republican) so perhaps I could have found a more neutral toned article. oh well...

Quote:

Originally posted by MagiK:
Actually I think every single state should be redistricted..into geometric shapes...squares or rectangles or some such...no special wandering districts to gove one group or another a bigger voice...let the chips fall where they may.

LOL :D !

Better yet they could use a random generator like the one to make maps in the civilization games!

I still think the 'Pubs should show some balls and boot some of the "Congressmen" whose jobs will probably be lost through redistricting, anyway. If I were a Texan, and my Congressman took it on the lam, I would seriously consider getting a group together and suing him for any of several offenses, including dereliction of duty, breach of oath of office, getting paid for services not rendered, etc.

Actually, instead of redistricting, I think I would pay good money to get enough congressmen to stay home so they never get a quorum...

We could then take it one step further, and if a district doesn't send a representative, they don't have to pay taxes...

Freedom would be breaking out all over the country...

[EDIT]
Apropos of nothing, what would happen if the congressmen never turned up? What if their bodies were never recovered? Would there be no quorum until the next general election, or can missing persons be replaced?
[/EDIT]

[ 05-13-2003, 12:06 PM: Message edited by: Thorfinn ]