Posted on 08/28/2003 5:33:09 AM PDT by Libloather
Dems get little salve from judge
Frustrated Whitmire almost bolts for home
By RACHEL GRAVES, ARMANDO VILLAFRANCA and R.G. RATCLIFFE
Aug. 28, 2003, 12:06AM
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- After getting little comfort from a judge they hoped would advance their cause, 11 Democrats boycotting the Texas Senate in a partisan standoff vowed Wednesday to stay away even as one of them acknowledged he had been on the verge of heading home.
The senators took Sen. John Whitmire of Houston to task at a closed-door meeting Wednesday evening, after he expressed impatience with the continuing impasse and indicated his bags were packed to leave.
"I'd like to say they decided to spank me, but I won't," Whitmire later told reporters.
The 11 came to Albuquerque July 28 to block action on a Republican-backed congressional redistricting plan by breaking Senate quorum. Today, they enter their second month of self-imposed exile facing Labor Day weekend away from home.
They prevailed against redistricting for the time being when a second special legislative session ended Tuesday but fear that they will be arrested and forced to the Capitol if they are in Texas when Gov. Rick Perry calls a third session, as he has vowed to do.
Although they painted Wednesday's action by a Laredo federal judge as a victory, the senators admitted growing frustration and fatigue.
After the meeting Wednesday night, Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said she asked Whitmire to explain himself, and he did.
"John Whitmire is a rock," Van de Putte said.
"All of us are somewhat frustrated," she said. "We miss our families, we miss our friends."
Earlier, though, Van de Putte was overheard saying "Whitmire has poured us out" as she and others reacted angrily to Whitmire's comments in an Associated Press story about his frustration.
"Because there was no special session I thought it was a reasonable risk that I could go to Houston and check on matters and be back on Tuesday," Whitmire said after meeting with his colleagues.
He said he changed his mind later in the day because of the risk of arrest. Twenty-one members of the 31-member Senate constitute a quorum, so the Senate could take up legislation if even one of the Democrats returned or was forced back to the Senate chamber.
The senators said they would suspend their daily news conferences until Tuesday, and that many of them planned to leave Albuquerque for undisclosed locations over the holiday weekend.
In Laredo Wednesday morning, U.S. District Judge George P. Kazen told lawyers for the senators that he believes their lawsuit seeking voting rights and free speech protections is largely frivolous, but he left the final decision to a three-judge panel.
The Democrats found a grain of hope in Kazen's decision. "Even if he said it was a shred of merit, it got us to the next phase," said Sen. Royce West of Dallas.
Kazen said he believes the Republican push for mid-decade congressional redistricting is wrong and a waste of taxpayer money. But he criticized the Democrats for fleeing to Albuquerque to break the Senate's quorum.
"We're almost like the Middle East. We've got these two camps over here, and it's total victory or total surrender," Kazen said.
In Austin, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, claimed the court decision as a Republican victory.
"Today's decision in federal court is an important step in ending the impasse over redistricting, and it's clear from my conversations with the lawyers from the attorney general's office that Judge Kazen was extremely skeptical about virtually all the Democrat senators' claims," Dewhurst said.
"It looks like we can all see a light at the end of the tunnel on redistricting, being able to address the people's business and moving forward," Dewhurst said.
Democrats in Albuquerque did not share that expectation.
"We will not return under threat of arrest," said Van de Putte.
Neither Perry nor Dewhurst said anything Wednesday to dispel that fear.
"There will be congressional redistricting this year," Perry said Wednesday during a visit to Houston.
Republicans are pushing a redistricting plan that would give the GOP a majority in the state's delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats now have a 17-15 edge in the delegation.
Democrats have blocked redistricting three times so far this year, once in the regular session when more than 50 state Representative fled the Capitol to break the House quorum, and in each of two special sessions.
Several of the senators had planned to fly to Laredo Wednesday morning for the court hearing. They canceled the plans late Tuesday after hearing rumors of a plan by Perry and other Republicans to call a third special session while the Democrats were in Texas and then force them back to the Capitol.
Dewhurst dismissed Democrats' concerns that the Senate sergeant-at-arms or his deputies would be lying in wait to bring them to the Capitol if they showed up in Laredo.
"We did, between the staff and myself, discuss last night whether we should consider the possibility of arresting the Democrats when they came into Laredo," he said.
They decided against that, he said, because they were confident of the state's legal position in the hearing.
Kazen refused to grant the Democrats' request for a restraining order to prevent their arrest. But he also urged Perry not to call a session until the three-judge panel hears the Democrats' lawsuit in about two weeks.
"Let's chill out for a while," Kazen said.
Dewhurst last week called for a "cooling-off period" before the next special session. But he said he could not recommend that without some assurance from the Democrats that they will return to the Senate for the next special session.
The Democrats had hoped to find a friendly judge by filing the lawsuit in Laredo. Kazen was appointed by former Democratic President Carter. But the judge made it clear from the start of Wednesday's hearing that the only reason he was not throwing the case out was that federal case law requires voting rights questions to be answered by a three-judge panel unless the lawsuit is wholly frivolous or fictitious.
Redistricting failed in the first special session because the Senate was operating under a traditional rule requiring a two-thirds vote of the 31 members to bring a bill up for debate. All 12 Democrats and one Republican said they would vote against bringing up redistricting.
Eleven of the 12 Democrats, just enough to break the Senate's quorum, fled after Dewhurst announced that the two-thirds rule would not be in effect during the second session, meaning that the Senate's Republicans probably could pass a redistricting bill with a simple majority.
In their lawsuit, the Democrats allege that the change in procedure violates the federal Voting Rights Act, designed to protect the voting strength of ethnic minorities.
But Kazen said the Voting Rights Act is meant to protect voters and should not apply to Senate procedures.
Graves reported from Albuquerque, Villafranca from Austin and Ratcliffe from Laredo. John Williams contributed from Houston.
They got his 'mind right'. Cracks are forming as their own RAT lawsuit keeps them in New Mexico. What a plan...
The state of Texas DOES NOT miss them one bit. For all I'm concerened, they can stay in "self-imposed exile" forever. I posted an article earlier this morning where they are using another of their favorites, playing the race card. Public opinion is starting to turn against them.
I say arrest ALL Democrat politicians and send them to Guantanamo with the Taliban.
They're all guilty of something.
So we fled the state
Now all we do is race-bait
As long as trial lawyer cash flows in, we win
I don't want to grow up, because then you see
I couldn't be an Albu-turkey
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