GOP leaders huddle as Dems delay game (Texas redistricting)

AUSTIN -- For the Democrats and the Republicans participating in the legislative stalemate over congressional redistricting, this is a test of time and of will.

Eleven Democratic senators fled to Albuquerque, N.M., on July 28 to break the state Senate quorum, halting passage of a Republican congressional redistricting plan. The senators vowed to stay away at least until the special legislative session ends Aug. 26. But they cannot remain gone forever.

"I don't know how it will end. I know it will end," said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, dean of the Senate. "I assume we must return sooner or later. We've got members out here at great personal hardship: new babies, sick parents, jobs, clients."

And when the Democrats return, the Republican leadership has the votes to push a redistricting plan through the Legislature, claim victory and declare the Democratic efforts as having been for naught.

"At some point, the missing Democrats have to return to Texas. When they do, a fair redistricting plan will be approved," said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

But just as Texans' panicky Runaway Scrape ended with Sam Houston's victory in the Texas Revolution, victory for the runaway Democrats may come with having bought some time.

Although the Democrats have shut down the Legislature, they have not halted the day-to-day operations of state government. The functions that affect average citizens are continuing, so neither side is feeling strong constituent pressure to break the impasse.

And with each passing day, Democrats make it more difficult for Republicans to pass all the legal hurdles necessary before a new congressional redistricting plan can be used in the 2004 elections.

"The clock is ticking. The end game is: At what point does the clock run out on the Republicans' ability to pass a redistricting plan and have it in place for the next elections?" said Jeff Montgomery, a Democratic pollster unaffiliated with the boycotting Democrats.

Once a redistricting bill is approved by the Legislature, it must be reviewed by the U.S. Justice Department under the federal Voting Rights Act, a process that normally takes 60-90 days. The legislation also is subject to federal lawsuits under the act. When state legislative districts were redrawn in 2001, four months elapsed between the maps' adoption by the Legislative Redistricting Board and final federal court approval.

Democrats believe that if they can delay the close of this process beyond the Dec. 1 start of primary election candidate filing, a federal court will be unlikely to order the new plan used in 2004. That also will give them the chance to fight the redistricting plan all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before the 2006 elections.

In an effort to thwart that Democratic game plan, House redistricting sponsor Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, already has filed legislation to delay the primary filing deadline past Jan. 2. Some Republicans also are talking about moving the congressional primary past its scheduled date in March 2004.

Jim Ellis, a political aide to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, said even if the Democratic strategy succeeded for 2004, the Republicans would win a victory for future decades. Noting that the GOP House majority now has a margin of just 12 seats, Ellis said the Republicans want to use gains in Texas as part of a plan to build a 30-40 seat majority such as the one that allowed Democrats to control the House for almost four decades.

"When you've got those kinds of margins, it's going to take a national tide to sweep you out," Ellis said. "We're looking to build a long-term majority."

The Republican leadership has been unable to politically pressure the Democrats to return to Austin, partly because each Democrat is in a strongly partisan district. Former Gov. George W. Bush won the state in his 2000 presidential bid by 61 percent of the vote, but he carried only two of the Democratic senatorial districts by small margins. Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore received more than 65 percent of the vote in five of the senatorial districts.

So Dewhurst and the Senate Republicans last week sought to pressure the Democrats with threats of $57,000 in fines if they do not return before the current special session ends. The Democrats said they do not believe they will ever have to pay those fines and that the action steeled their resolve.

Exactly how the game will play out over the next several weeks is uncertain. But Democrats and Republicans interviewed by the Chronicle outlined some scenarios:

· The Democrats win lawsuits in state court in Austin and federal court in Laredo.

The state suit would prevent the Senate Republicans from having the Democrats arrested and returned to the Capitol to force a quorum. The federal lawsuit would require the Senate to maintain a tradition of requiring a two-thirds vote to debate legislation. That would give the Democrats the power to block redistricting on the Senate floor. Both lawsuits are seen as long shots but are the Democrats' best chance at total victory.

· When the current special session ends, Gov. Rick Perry calls a third special session on redistricting. The Democratic senators can then stay in Albuquerque, return to the Senate to allow the debate to proceed, or in a final act of defiance, return to Texas and force the Senate Republicans to have them arrested and brought back to the Capitol.

The senators are delaying a decision on what action to take in a new special session until Perry calls one, as he has said he will.

· When the senators return, the House Democrats boycott as they did in May when they went to Ardmore, Okla. That boycott killed a redistricting bill in the regular legislative session.

With a House boycott requiring a walkout of at least 51 legislators, the chances of making it work again are slim. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam wouldn't say a boycott is likely, but said it "is not a pipe dream."

Democrats hold a 17-15-seat majority in the Texas congressional delegation. Republicans argue they should have the majority because they control every statewide elective office and hold a legislative majority. Democrats counter that five districts vote Republican in statewide elections but re-elect Democrats to the U.S. House.

A three-judge federal panel -- two Republicans and a Democrat -- drew the current map in 2001 after the Legislature failed to adopt a congressional redistricting plan after the decennial U.S. Census, which gave Texas two additional congressional seats. The judges said their plan was designed to protect incumbents of both parties. The U.S. Supreme Court approved the map.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has ruled the federal court map is valid until after the 2010 Census. But he also said the Legislature has the right to adopt a new plan if it wants.

Perry has made no secret that he did not call any special sessions on redistricting in 2001 because Democrats controlled the state House. He said no plan could pass the divided Legislature. But now that the Republicans control the House and Senate, Perry said, the Legislature can pass a redistricting plan.

"I believe that legislators, not judges, should draw district lines," Perry said. "Legislators are elected by their constituents to reflect their political will, and it is the will of a majority of the legislators to draw new lines."

DeLay aide Ellis said it is important for Republicans to erase a "footprint" that Democrats put on congressional district maps in 1981 and 1991. The 1991 map was described in the National Journal, a respected political publication, as the nation's worst "gerrymander" of that year, designed to hold Democratic seats while denying the Republicans any advancement.

Democrats argue that by taking seats and giving them to Republicans, the GOP redistricting plan violates the voting rights of minorities who live in the districts and whose votes provide the margin of victory for the Democratic incumbents.

Ray Sullivan, a former Perry aide, sees that as "one of the ironies" in the fight. "The Albuquerque Democrats are making this a racial issue," he said, while the districts they "are trying to save are the seats of old white males."

But the Democrats see a broader picture that goes beyond Texas and the battle over five to seven congressional seats. The Democrats won office in 2002 under a legal map, they say, and now the Republicans want to overturn the results of that election by redrawing the map.

"It started in Florida, and it's going on in California. There seems to be a Republican need to kick Democrats out of office by something other than fair elections," said Democratic political consultant Dan McClung of Houston, referring to the 2000 presidential fight in Florida and the recall election facing California Gov. Gray Davis.

House Democratic Chairman Dunnam said that makes the Ardmore and Albuquerque walkouts worthwhile even if the Democrats ultimately suffer a legislative defeat.

"It created a national dialogue on the abuse of power that is going on," Dunnam said.

Thanks for this link, hoaxbuster1 ! ...

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/legislature/6547680.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Posted on Sat, Aug. 16, 2003

GOP turns up heat on absent 11

By John Moritz
Star-Telegram Austin Bureau

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/HARRY CABLUCK

Gov. Rick Perry emerges from a closed meeting with Senate Republicans on Friday in Austin.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/JAKE SCHOELLKOPF

Texas Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, signs a Texan's T-shirt Friday at the hotel in Albuquerque where Shapleigh and 10 other Senate Democrats are staying.

AUSTIN - The threat of a $57,000 fine couldn't persuade the 11 self-exiled Senate Democrats to return to Texas, so their Republican colleagues decided Friday to up the ante.
They voted to take away the Democrats' prime parking places in the driveway that rings the Capitol, along with the parking places assigned to the Democrats' Austin staff members. The same goes for the state-owned cellphones assigned to three Senate Demo- crats.
Republicans said the gestures -- which also include limiting the purchasing of office supplies and access to Capitol meeting rooms -- prove they are serious about compelling the Democrats to end their 18-day standoff in Albuquerque, N.M., and return to Austin to finish redrawing the state's 32 congressional districts.
The Democrats in Albuquerque -- just as they did Tuesday when the Republicans remaining in Austin voted to fine them up to $5,000 for each day they are absent -- scoffed at the increased sanctions.
"Just as the fines were illegal and unenforceable, these additional punitive actions are illegal and unenforceable," said Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso, one of the 11 Democrats who effectively shut down the Senate by denying the chamber the two-thirds membership present to constitute a quorum.
But back in Austin just hours after the Republican senators voted to impose the latest sanctions, Democratic staffers were told they could no longer obtain such office necessities as copy paper or message pads.
The secretary of the Senate's office was instructed to cancel subscriptions to Democratic senators' hometown newspapers and to bar 88 Democratic staffers' access to state parking lots and garages.
Several staffers, who said they would either take the bus to work or make other parking arrangements, tried to take the sanctions in stride.
"As long as we can, we are going to be working for the people of our district," said Deece Eckstein, chief of staff for Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. "All of this other stuff is pure silliness."
But the Republican senators who voted to impose the sanctions insisted that they had to protect the institution's integrity.
The Republicans said that the Democrats' leaving the state sets a precedent under which any 11 senators could walk away any time they fear that they may be about to lose a floor vote.
"This is sad," said Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan. "There is not a single person here who wants to do this, and we should not have to do this. ... Our colleagues in New Mexico are setting a terrible example."
The Democrats broke the Senate quorum to protest Republican Gov. Rick Perry's decision to call a second special session on congressional redistricting just two years after a federal court implemented a plan that can remain in place until 2011.
Perry insists that the Legislature has the duty to draw the district lines and says the court-drawn plan, which resulted in the election of 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans, does not adequately reflect Texas' voting patterns. Republicans control both state houses and all statewide elective offices.
Before Friday's action on the Senate floor, Perry met in private with 16 of the Senate's 19 Republican members and the only Democrat still in Austin, Ken Armbrister of Victoria.
Armbrister voted against the sanctions.
Perry said after the meeting that although he is committed to pushing ahead with redistricting, the 18-day impasse has grown far beyond the question of congressional boundaries.
"The blue-collar worker out in the state of Texas most likely couldn't tell you a substantial amount about redistricting," Perry told reporters. "But they can tell you about going to work and the consequences of not going to work. And that is what's resonating with the people across the state of Texas today."
Shapleigh said the governor's comments show that the Republicans are out of touch. During the recent legislative hearings across the state, he pointed out, more than 90 percent of the 2,000-plus witnesses told lawmakers that middecade redistricting was unnecessary.
"The blue-collar workers in my district, many of whom are Hispanic and know what it means to have to fight for the right to vote, understand redistricting," Shapleigh said. "The blue-collar workers in my district are the ones who fight our nation's wars to protect the right to vote."

John Moritz, (512) 476-4294 jmoritz@star-telegram.com

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.