Texas House Democrats fled the state to block a GOP-favored congressional map. Here’s what Bexar County’s Democratic House members are saying.
SAN ANTONIO — Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state Sunday in a bid to block passage of a new congressional map designed to give the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House next year, raising the stakes in what’s poised to be a national fight over redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm election.
The maneuver, undertaken by most of the Texas House’s 62 Democrats, deprives the Republican-controlled chamber of a quorum — the number of lawmakers needed to function under House rules — ahead of a scheduled Monday vote on the draft map.
The 150-member House can only conduct business if at least 100 members are present, meaning the absence of 51 or more Democrats can bring the Legislature’s ongoing special session to a halt.
In a statement, Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus accused Gov. Greg Abbott of “using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal.”
There are just over two weeks left of the Texas Legislature’s special session, during which Abbott has also asked lawmakers to take up measures responding to the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods, stiffer regulations for consumable hemp, and contentious GOP priorities such as cracking down on abortion pills and the bathrooms transgender people can use. The prospects for those items, along with the new redistricting maps, were immediately thrown in doubt by the Democrats’ departure.
‘We need everybody on deck,’ Democrats say
State Rep. Josey Garcia, who represents San Antonio’s far west side, said this is a Texas issue that is “soon to be an American issue.”
Garcia, the first woman and active-duty veteran to serve in the Texas House, joined more than 50 of her Democratic colleagues on Sunday as they departed from Texas.
Garcia shared a video statement asking Texans to join lawmakers in their fight against what she called an attempt to erase seats that represent Black and Latino communities.
“Texans spoke up unanimously, from Republicans and Democrats, to conservative Christians or Muslims,” Garcia said. “They all spoke up in unity and asked for us to stop this power grab of a gerrymandering act to express five more Republican seats for Donald Trump.”
In her statement, Garcia said this issue doesn’t end with Texas.
“What’s happening here in Texas is going to spread across the nation. We’ve already seen it occur in North Carolina, and Texas Democrats won’t stand for it,” she said.
Republicans plan response to Democrats’ exit
Democrats have excoriated the mid-decade redistricting plan — which was demanded by President Donald Trump ahead of a potentially difficult midterm election for Republicans — as a political power grab that would unconstitutionally suppress the votes of people of color.
But locked out of power in the Legislature, Democrats have few tools at their disposal to fight the effort, even as they promised to delay the map’s adoption and to use that extra time to educate Texans on what they framed as an attack on democracy.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote on social media Sunday that Democrats “who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately.”
Other Republicans called for House Speaker Dustin Burrows to take aggressive action against members who are not present when the chamber gavels in Monday at 3 p.m.
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