Rotten in the State of Texas
In an effort to short-circuit a republican effort to redraw the voting map of Texas, senate democrats from the state have fled to New Mexico. Their republican counterparts have since branded them 'chickens,' accused them of shirking their elected duties, and secured warrants for their arrest. I have one word for all but one Texas republican: cheaters.
According to the Washington Daily, the story begins in the early nineties, when Texas democrats redrew district voting maps to skew the outcome in their favor. The republicans took it to court and a panel of three federal judges redrew the map with a slight but less overt bias for Texas democrats. A Supreme Court ruling allows judicial intervention when the legislature cannot agree on a map. Maps drawn by judges tend to be significantly less partisan than those created by legislative bodies with a clear majority.
Texas republicans, at the urging of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove (which means President Bush), have been pushing for redistricting since republicans won control of the Texas legislature for the first time in over 125 years. They claim that the current map doesn't accurately reflect the voting habits of Texas constituents. They have a point here--in the 2000 election, the majority of voters selected republicans for national offices. However, the republican-proposed redistricting shifts a significant and disproportional number of districts from the democratic column to the republican column, allowing republicans to gain a much stronger stranglehold on the House of Representatives in DC, where Texas democrats currently outnumber Texas republicans.
When this issue was proposed in a regular legislative session in May, Texas' house democrats fled to Oklahoma. This prevented a quorum and without a quorum, republicans were not allowed to bring the legislation to the table. After the democrats returned, DeLay urged Texas' governor to call a special session. He did, and a vote was held on the issue of redistricting. The republicans lost by one vote when a republican sided with the democrats and they failed to get 65 percent of yes votes for passage.
You would think this would be the end of the issue. Instead, the Governor immediately called for a second special session, at great expense to the taxpayers. The Lt. Governor suggested that he would change the 65 percent requirement to 50 percent, thus guaranteeing the measure would pass. Senate democrats subsequently absconded to New Mexico, to prevent a quorum and effectively preventing the legislation from being discussed. Texas' governor says he will continue calling special sessions until the issue is resolved to his satisfaction. Democrats say they will remain in New Mexico as long as necessary to thwart this republican power grab.
While republicans may accuse the democrats of cowardice, I think it's an issue of refusing to play with a cheater. Would you play poker with someone who decided midway through the game that because a four-of-a-kind was so difficult to get, they should only have to get three cards to constitute four-of-a-kind?
Let's hope this time that Tom DeLay doesn't use his influence illegally to commandeer federal resources like he did last time, in an attempt to force democratic state legislators back to Texas. Let's also hope that there are enough honest republicans who consider preserving the fabric of American democracy far more important than maintaining a majority in the government and attempting to turn our bicameral legislation into a one-party dictatorship. While the Texas debacle has garnered the most attention, it's not the only state where republicans are trying to expand and preserve their narrow majorities by redrawing district maps in a way that blatantly favors republicans, all with the guidance of right wing extremists like Rove and DeLay.
4:13:23 PM 
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