WASHINGTON — Texas lawmakers who staged a dramatic walkout to quash a GOP election bill in Austin got a hero’s welcome Tuesday in Congress, where fellow Democrats want to leverage their example of feistiness into progress on voting rights at the federal level.
“They are such an inspiration for us,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who has led Senate Democrats’ effort on voting rights, after meeting with Texas state lawmakers. “What happened in Texas is the ultimate example of attempts to limit people’s freedom to vote. Last I checked, Texas is all about freedom.”
About 15 Democrats from the Legislature will share a triumphal visit to the White House on Wednesday to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris, the administration’s point person on voting rights, bringing a letter signed by all 80 Democrats in the state House and Senate thanking her and President Joe Biden for their outspoken opposition last month to Senate Bill 7.
“My purpose is to say in very clear terms how diabolical the Republican scheme in Texas is to make it harder for people to vote,” said state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus. “To me, the answer is clear. The only way to stop the Republicans is for the federal government to act.”
Five members of the Texas delegation joined U.S. Senate Democrats at their private weekly lunch in the ornate Mansfield Room.
The two-day showcase gives the Texans a chance to lobby holdouts on federal voting rights legislation — chief among them Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who opposes a bill approved by the Democratic-controlled House that would preempt state laws that scale back mail-in balloting and set other obstacles.
Manchin does, however, support another top Democratic priority, to reinstate federal oversight of elections.
Under the landmark Voting Rights Act, Texas and other states with a history of discrimination were required to get “preclearance” from the Justice Department for decades before changing any election rules, from moving a polling site to purging the rolls of deceased an ineligible voters.
In 2013, the Supreme Court neutered that law, ruling the formula for picking which states deserved the intense federal scrutiny had become outdated.
Congress could set a new formula. But GOP lawmakers have balked.
“The only way to stop them is through strong federal legislation in the form of HR 1 and a renewed Voting Rights Act,” Turner said. “Because we know Texas has a long history, including a recent history of discriminatory voting laws and discriminatory redistricting plans. And not just discriminatory with effect but discriminatory with intent, as had been found by federal courts.”
The Texans will meet privately with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif..
State Reps. Gina Hinojosa of Austin and Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio and others emerged from the meeting with Klobuchar exhilarated and beaming. But she was already an ally.
“We are trying to get Manchin,” Hinojosa said, noting a coordinated effort in state capitols around the country to undermine Democrats’ and minority voters’ clout. “We’re in the trenches in Texas. ... We and our constituents desperately need them to pass federal voting rights legislation, because as a minority party in Texas, we can only keep this from happening for so long.”
As some of the Texans schmoozed senators, a handful headed to Manchin’s office for a meeting with aides.
They didn’t get on the senator’s own calendar, and even the aides kept them waiting a half-hour.
At the same time, Turner and Reps. Rafael Anchía of Dallas and Nicole Collier of Fort Worth, who chair the Mexican American Legislative Caucus and Texas Legislative Black Caucus, respectively, were chatting up Georgia Sens. Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff among others outside the Democrats’ luncheon, where they were special guests of Schumer.
The two Democratic senators breaking ranks are Manchin and Arizona Sen Kyrsten Sinema.
Neither attended lunch, so they missed the Texans’ pitch.
“Hearing it directly from members who were on the ground and in the fight, being able to give a history of where Texas has been ... certainly put things in context for them,” said Sen. Carol Alvarado of Houston, the senior Democrat in the Texas Senate, briefing reporters afterward.
The Texans didn’t bother setting up meeting with their own senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.
“They haven’t reached out to me to my knowledge,” Cornyn said after the GOP lunch in the equally ornate LBJ Room nearby.
Like the state lawmakers from the other party, he sees little common ground on voting rights.
“It’s not a federal issue. That’s the problem is that our Democratic friends want to take over the state’s responsibility in a way that I believe is unconstitutional,” Cornyn said, asserting that intrusion in local elections is no longer justified.
Noting that two-thirds of Texas voters cast ballots last fall, Cornyn said, “The Voting Rights Act has been the most one of the most successful federal laws ever passed. ... Anybody who wants to vote can cast a ballot as long as they’re legally qualified to do so.”
Cruz ducked into an elevator after lunch, ignoring reporters’ questions.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has vowed to revive SB 7 in a special session in coming months. He derided the walkout as a “stunt.” But Democrats hint they have other tactics still available if Republicans persist in trying to undermine minority voting rights.
Turner was a legislative aide 18 years ago when state lawmakers fled the state to delay an especially partisan redistricting effort.
“Hypothetically,” Turner said, that’s still an option, but “it’s also hypothetically possible that Congress could pass strong voting rights legislation, and that Republicans in Texas would come to their senses and stop trying to suppress minority votes.”
SB 7 scaled back Sunday morning voting hours, which would affect the “souls to the polls” tradition in Black churches.
It also allowed a single court to invalidate an election on suspicion of fraud, even without evidence that enough votes were tainted to tip the outcome — a provision known as the “Trump amendment” because of former President Donald Trump's baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
GOP sponsors have already backed away from some provisions since the Democrats’ walkout.
“We’re outgunned. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have the fight,” said Rep. Martinez Fischer of San Antonio. “I’m not sure if Sen. Manchin’s ever been told that the voter discrimination that occurs in Texas isn’t accidental, it’s intentional.”
Two bills are at issue in Congress: HR 1, the For the People Act, which overhauls campaign finance rules, greatly expands public funding for federal campaigns, and sets federal standards for how elections are run.
The bill would trump 19 state laws that restrict voting by mail, set a national standard for no-excuse absentee voting and a sworn statement in lieu of the ID required by 27 states, including Texas, among other things.
The bill has cleared the Democratic-controlled House. Schumer has promised to hold a vote in the Senate by the end of June, though it’s dead on arrival in the 50-50 upper chamber, where it takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
“Hope springs eternal,” said Turner.
Manchin and other Democrats refuse progressives’ demands to scrap the filibuster. But he is open to the other major voting rights measure: HR 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late congressman and civil rights icon.
That would restore preclearance scrutiny by the Justice Department. The House hasn’t yet voted on it and that bill, too, would face a GOP filibuster.
“Manchin has made clear he wants bipartisanship, but bipartisanship has broken down in this country,” said state Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who succeeded Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, before the meeting with Klobuchar. “Some time ago. Sadly enough. On most issues of common sense.”
