Perry calls third special sessionMove comes as 10 Democrats return to Texas
03:27 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 9, 2003
Gov. Rick Perry has called a third special legislative session that is set to begin Monday, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The decision follows two special sessions on congressional redistricting during the summer. Neither produced a new redistricting plan as Democrats in the Texas Senate blocked a floor vote on a proposal.
Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt didn't immediately offer details about the third session, but said the governor's proclamation would be issued shortly.
The announcement comes a day before 10 Senate Democrats who have been in New Mexico boycotting the Legislature were planning to return to Texas.
“The Senate Democrats are coming home,” the lawmakers who fled to Albuquerque on July 28 said in a statement. “Our return is an acknowledgement that the battlefield has changed.”
The holdout Democrats will travel to Laredo on Wednesday to attend a court hearing Thursday on their federal lawsuit challenging their Republican colleagues’ tactics and goal of redrawing congressional boundaries.
While in Laredo, the 10 senators also will meet with college students.
Also Online
Maps:
• Current Texas Congressional districts
• House map, passed 7/29
• Senate map, proposed 7/23More Politics They then will return to their families and their homes, while keeping a watchful eye on developments in Austin, said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, chairwoman of the Senate Democratic caucus.
The renegade Democrats, who have stymied GOP attempts to pass a new congressional map through two special sessions, said their goal of remaining beyond state lines until Republican Gov. Rick Perry quit calling further sessions no longer makes sense.
Last week’s announcement by Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, that he would join Republicans in establishing a quorum on the Senate floor as soon as Mr. Perry calls another special session means “we must return to the Senate to defend rural and minority Texans as best we can,” the 10 senators said.
Mr. Whitmire has said he broke ranks and returned to Texas to protect Senate traditions of bipartisanship and consensus that he said protect minority points of view, no matter what the issue. But the Democrats who maintained the boycott, calling themselves the Texas 11 Minus One, said Mr. Whitmire ignored a new assertiveness by GOP leaders.
“Despite his rhetoric, (Mr. Whitmire’s) move amounts to trading away the electoral voices of the millions of rural and minority Texans we are in Albuquerque to defend,” the 10 senators said.
“This betrayal by a former member of the Texas 11 … makes it imperative that we … return to Texsas to fight Whitmire and the Republicans to prevent this partisan power-grab. We intend to fight the passage of the Whitmire map.”
A spokeswoman said Mr. Whitmire “is disregarding their negative comments. … They’re his friends. They’re under a lot of stress.”
The 10 other Democrats will still stay out of Austin until Mr. Whitmire helps the Republicans reach the 21-member quorum needed to do business, Ms. Van de Putte said.
"We're not at risk of being captured," Ms. Van de Putte said. Meanwhile, in Austin, Mr. Perry met Monday with Republican leaders to plan another special session on the issue amid one remaining obstacle – getting agreement among the Republicans themselves.
At issue is a squabble between House and Senate Republicans over the shape of a West Texas congressional district that currently includes Midland and Lubbock.
Sen. Robert Duncan of Lubbock wants to keep the district largely intact. House Speaker Tom Craddick wants new boundaries in which Midland has its own district.
"There is no deal on West Texas," Craddick spokesman Bob Richter said Monday after a meeting of the state's top three GOP officials. Mr. Craddick, Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst met for about an hour in the governor's office.
Mr. Dewhurst said only that the governor could summon the Legislature back into a third special legislative session as early as this week, but he cautioned that the House and Senate still needed to break the deadlock over new congressional boundaries.
The Republican lieutenant governor predicted that lawmakers, who failed to draw a new map during a regular session and two 30-day special sessions, will return soon and complete the task of redrawing congressional boundaries. He said the session should last no longer than two to three weeks.
"I think we're going to reach agreement on a whole map" before the governor summons lawmakers back into special session, he said. "That's my goal."
Democrats have stymied Mr. Perry's efforts to force the Legislature to redraw congressional boundaries to boost the number of Republicans in the state's 32-member delegation. Democrats have 17 seats, and Republicans 15. Republicans hope to pick up at least five new seats in next year's elections under a new map.
In their lawsuit, to be heard by a three-judge panel in Laredo on Thursday, the Democrats say that Mr. Dewhurst violated minorities' voting rights in late July when he chose in the redistricting flap to dispense with a Senate rule in use since the 1950s. The rule says two-thirds of the senators must agree to debate a bill before it can be heard.
The Democrats say Mr. Dewhurst and the Senate needed to obtain federal approval for the change in parliamentary procedure because it could propel to passage a map they say would dilute the voting power of 1.4 million black and Hispanic Texans.
Republicans hold 19 of the Senate's 31 seats – two short of the 21 needed to take up a map if the two-thirds rule is followed.
The governor has indicated it is time for the Senate to end the two-thirds tradition and simply go by majority rule.
Mr. Whitmire said a big reason he returned to Texas was worry over loss of the rule, which he said would leave Democrats with no voice on education, the state budget, health care and abortion.
Bureau Chief Wayne Slater in Austin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
