I don’t live in Texas, but I am endlessly amused by their politics. Today, outraged over Republican redistricting efforts, the Democrats in the legislature just… disappeared. They walked out and went AWOL as a means of preventing the House from meeting to pass the redistricting legislation.
From the Houston Chronicle:
Outnumbered by House Republicans determined to pass a congressional redistricting bill, all but a few Democrats went into hiding today to keep the House from meeting. The House’s GOP leader responded by ordering state troopers to find and arrest the missing lawmakers.
… House Democrats said they were taking a stand for fair treatment of the minority party. They blamed U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Sugar Land, for pushing the Texas House to take up redistricting against the wishes of Democrats and some GOP state lawmakers.
“We refuse to participate in an inherently unfair process that slams the door of opportunity in the face of Texas voters,” they said in a statement read by state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston.
The crisis erupted this morning when, less than 30 minutes before the Texas House was due to convene, the Democrats told the House leadership in letters that they would be absent. They asked the parliamentarian to lock their voting machines until they returned.
“I do not know where they are,” said Tamara Bell, chief of staff for House Democratic Caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam.
Only three Democrats remained; all are Craddick allies whom fellow Democrats have dubbed “cross dressers.”
… The lawmakers had prepared for the trip Sunday night and packed clothes to allow them to stay away for four days, a legislative source told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. That would put them past the deadline for preliminary passage of major pending bills that have been termed a priority by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“We’re leaving, and we’ll stay gone ’til Thursday,” one member from South Texas, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the San Antonio Express-News.
The latest group of quorum-busters planned to leave the state to avoid having state police detain them and forcibly return them to the House floor, if necessary.
“DPS or the Rangers can’t exactly come get us if we are outside of Texas,” said one legislator.
Several sources said some of the members were to board a plane leaving from a Central Texas airport to rural Oklahoma. A separate group would fly to New Mexico, while a third group left by bus for New Mexico, according to the sources.
I am constantly amazed by Texas – I know some people there and they are the friendliest, most wonderful people I know. And yet, it also produces such detestable and scary people as Dubya. It has incredible open spaces, and the most polluted city in the nation.
And the politics are an entertainment genre in and of themselves.
