bttt !!
Separated at birth ?
Leticia Van de Putte/Linda Ronstadt
Posted on 08/21/2003 4:32:36 PM PDT by MikeD
AUSTIN — Before the so-called Texas 11, before the Killer Ds, even before the Killer Bees' 1979 dash from the Legislature, there were 13 Reconstruction-era bolters. And their treatment when they returned apparently marked the last time state senators took dramatic action to punish a quorum-breaking colleague.
The last time, that is, until last week, when Republicans imposed hefty fines on 11 Democratic senators who remain in New Mexico to halt action on a redistricting effort designed to send more Republicans to Congress.
Some see parallels to the 1870 clash, which led to one senator's expulsion.
"Whenever political power turns over ... the party losing its grip on power fights with every tool available to keep control as long as possible," said political scientist Cal Jillson of Southern Methodist University. "Those coming to power seek to stomp on the fingers of those holding on to the edge of the ledge.
"That's the situation in Texas now."
Others say the differences between Texas in the Civil War's wake and today are too immense to draw comparison.
"The issues there were really in many respects much more profound," said Tucker Gibson, chairman of the political science department at Trinity University. "Texas was part of a losing side in a war. The psychology of the people was a defeated people. You had this gut, visceral hate for the arbitrariness of many of the carpetbaggers who came in."
In the current battle, he said, "My sense is right now among the electorate that first of all, a large number of them don't understand what this issue is about."
University of Arkansas at Little Rock history professor Carl Moneyhon, who has written about Texas' Reconstruction era, sees parallels but says the 1870 blowup was "much more complex."
"I guess you could say it's very comparable. What you've got is a minority that believed that the majority was doing something that the people of Texas did not want, and in a sense they used parliamentary procedure to block the will of the legislative majority," he said.
Still, he added, the current exodus "seems beyond what would be expected ordinarily. The polarization that took place after the Civil War makes some sense. One group lost a war, the other group won, and they did produce a very radical change in terms of enfranchising black people."
During the 1870 special called session, the boiling-point topic was the state militia.
The senators who left the chamber went to a nearby Capitol committee room to discuss strategy, according to Volume 2 of The Texas Senate, a history edited by Patsy McDonald Spaw, secretary of the Senate.
The Senate sergeant-at-arms sent to retrieve them "flung himself through" a committee room window because the senators had locked the door, according to Spaw's history. He finally convinced them to return.
The "Radical Republicans" had the absentees arrested, then excluded from their seats all but four necessary for a quorum, according to the Handbook of Texas Online. The term radical was applied to those who "were more willing to accept black suffrage" and take action against postwar violence, Moneyhon said.
Several of the quorum-breakers were held under arrest for three weeks so the Radical Republicans could pass their legislation, the handbook says.
One of the senators — E.L. Alford of La Grange — was expelled after an investigatory committee found he "did, in contempt of the Senate, violently resist said arrest, and did forcibly close the shutters" of the committee room, according to Senate history.
During the current stalemate, which has dragged on for three weeks, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst suggested at one point that the absent Democrats could face expulsion if they return to Texas and don't honor an arrest warrant for their return.
Republican senators decided to penalize their absent colleagues through fines and loss of office privileges until they pay the fines.
Political science professor Earl Black of Rice University said levying fines is unusual and collecting them would be "very, very difficult." But he added, "What's really extraordinary is the fact that those Democratic state senators are choosing to leave for an entire (30-day special) session. ...The big story is the refusal of a major party to take part in the legislative process."
The Killer Bees of 1979, who hid out in a West Austin garage apartment for several days, killed a presidential primary bill when then-Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby dropped the measure.
House Democrats, nicknamed the Killer Ds, won a redistricting battle this past May, when they stopped a congressional redistricting bill before a legislative deadline in the regular session.
But now the standoff continues in special session, and Richard Murray, director of the Center for Public Policy at the University of Houston, said such "political warfare" can be a tough thing to get past.
"One of the problems about warfare," he said, "is once you get started down the funnel, it's difficult to extricate yourself."
MD
The Texas Constitution provides for replacing vacancies, too. The Governor needs to declare those seats vacant and start the wheels in motion to find some people who will do the job for which they were hired - representing their constituents.
Did anyone else notice this? This was about voting rights for blacks in the wake of the War Between The States. The article doesn't say the quorum-breakers were Democrats, but if the "Radical Republicans" had them arrested, it's not likely they were members of their own party.
I don't have a complete time-line of the period, but this must have been during Reconstruction. Resentment against Reconstruction is what made Texas predominantly Democrat shortly thereafter, and it remained that way for 130 years.
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