Texas Dems Play A Classic: They're Once Again A 'Band On the Run'

DALLAS, TX — The past is starting to look a lot like prologue in the fight over who gets to vote, how, where and when in Texas.

Knowing they'll lose in their opposition to Senate Bill 7 by a GOP legislative majority, Democrats seek to outmaneuver what they cannot outvote by leaving the state. That denies those left behind of the quorum they need to conduct business. Plans at the moment suggest that opposing Democrats from the Texas House will charter planes to fly to Washington. D.C., today in advance of the special session resuming Tuesday.

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The plan has already thwarted Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott and his conservative colleagues in the Legislature once this year, and it may do so again. In May, the Democrats' walkout effectively ran out the clock on the regular session and kept the bill from a vote.

Even the newest, watered-down version of the proposal passed this weekend by committee contains the kinds of voter restrictions that would do Jim Crow proud. As written, the bill provides cover for partisans as "poll watchers," curtails 24-hour and drive-thru voting initiatives and tightens the rules for voting by mail, as well as prohibiting election officials from pre-emptively mailing applications to voters for mail-in ballots.

The Dems' gambit is largely a stalling tactic, since the current session has 27 days remaining and the governor can continue to call 30-day special sessions at will. The apparent strategy is that if there's enough clamor and public outrage, the proposal will either be withdrawn or significantly watered down of its most Draconian provisions.

But the Dems no longer have surprise on their side. And Abbott, who vetoed legislators' funding as payback, has already shown he's not afraid to resort to whatever means his office provides to literally force his opponents' capitulation.

All of this has historical precedent dating back to then-Gov. Rick Perry's 2003 fight with "The Killer Ds," a group of Democrats who fled the state rather than be steamrolled by the first Republican majority since Reconstruction. At issue then was a heavily gerrymandered redrawing of Texas districts that helped cement the GOP domination of the Lone Star State to this very day.

Ultimately, Perry and his conservatives prevailed, because in this game of siege-in-reverse, Democrats simply cannot stay gone forever. And none of this is lost on Abbott or Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Unless the progressives in flight can find an ace to play, the outcome is assured, with only the date of the Democrats' defeat yet to be put in ink.

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