While Texas Democrats killed the GOP’s massive election bill in a dramatic midnight flurry, Republicans helped sow the seeds of their own defeat days — even weeks — earlier.
Just before a midnight deadline on Sunday, Democrats in the Texas House led a mass walkout, leaving the House without enough members to hold a vote on the controversial elections package that was a top priority for the Republican leaders of the Legislature.
Now top Republicans are finger-pointing over what went wrong when they had what appeared to be a certain victory in their hands. Instead of a bill going to Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature, lawmakers are headed back to the drawing board.
“I can’t even blame it on the other party for walking out,” said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Republican from Montgomery County who runs the Senate. “They got an opportunity to walk out because of the deadlines.”
Though Patrick suggested that House Republicans helped derail the legislation by taking too many days off and delaying it, Democrats say the walkout was also a response to Republican maneuvers in the Senate.
As much as Democrats were angry at the election bills, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said that as recently as Tuesday of last week they had no plan for how they would attack the legislation that aimed to cut early voting hours in many large urban counties and take away the authority of local elections officials to enact their own strategies to drum up turnout.
But as the week went on, Democrats say the Republicans in the Senate disrespected them by withholding information on the final version of the bill and with the timing of its unveiling — which was calculated to eliminate even token input from Democrats.
It became increasingly clear, Martinez Fischer said, that his party was “being cut out” of negotiations on the bill. He and his colleagues knew they’d have to come up with a strategy to respond to the new, heavier hand Republicans were applying.
The four-day delay
Starting May 19, the House and Senate met in what is called a conference committee to work out major differences on Senate Bill 7, which had been amended in both chambers before they passed it. Some of the differences were striking. The Senate’s version, for instance, called for cutting early voting sites in some Black and Hispanic communities, which wasn’t in the House version.
But while the public and the three Democrats on the conference committee did not get to see the final wording of the bill until Saturday, a Republican on the committee claimed to have seen it four days earlier.
Republican senators on the committee had received copies of the legislation as early as Tuesday, according to a tweet from State Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway.
When the text was finally made public — and Democrats on the conference committee saw it for the first time — it included the 20 pages of new language that had not been vetted by the House or the Senate.
A deal without Democrats
On Thursday, Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican from northeast Texas who was the lead sponsor of the bill, told Hearst Newspapers that a deal had been struck with House Republican leaders.
“We have an agreement in principle,” he said.
But that was news to Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat from Edinburg, who was on the conference committee and was supposed to be part of the negotiations.
“I’m on the conference committee and this is NOT true,” Canales said on Twitter when it was first reported that a deal had been struck.
The lone Senate Democrat on the panel, Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson, said she hadn’t been given “any details regarding this bill” before it suddenly appeared on the Senate floor for a vote with the 20 new pages.
Republicans followed that by releasing a conference committee report the next day that included signatures of the Republicans but none of the three Democrats, an unusual tactic even in the partisan Texas Legislature.
A thwarted filibuster
Democrats in the Texas Senate were increasingly concerned about the changes in the bill including one provision that would limit early voting on Sundays — a move Democrats said was directly aimed at Souls to the Polls, a campaign to encourage Black voters to go vote as a group after church.
“It showed intent,” said State Sen. Royce West, a Democrat from Dallas.
West said by not even mentioning that provision to Democrats before publishing the bill, Republicans signaled the final weekend of the session would be anything but amicable.
Democrats on Saturday huddled in the third floor of the Texas Capitol in a conference room to plan a full-out filibuster on Sunday when Senate rules dictated that the bill would be introduced for a final vote in that chamber.
“I thought we were ready,” said State Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, who as chair of the Democratic caucus was chosen to lead the effort to stall the bill.
But instead of waiting overnight, Republicans launched a pre-emptive strike. Just after 6 p.m. on Saturday — a few hours after the Democrats opposing the bill had received a copy — Hughes moved to suspend the Senate’s rule requiring a 24-hour waiting period before taking it up.
State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said the GOP caucus didn’t know the Democrats were planning a filibuster, but were determined to move up earlier to prevent any trouble on Sunday.
The Democrats went ahead with their plan.
It wasn’t a formal filibuster, but starting at 10 p.m. the Democratic senators would talk as long as they could to slow the bill down.
Sunday dawns on Democratic outrage
Just after midnight, every Democrat in the Texas Senate began taking turns peppering Hughes with questions about the bill and objections to the new text and the surprise launch.
The debate lasted eight hours before the Senate voted 18-13 along party lines, jamming the bill through at just after 6 a.m.
State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., a Democrat from Cameron County who has been in the Senate since 1991, said he had never seen a debate that lasted until sunrise the next day.
House members watching the Senate began poring through rule books for anything they could use against the bill.
“Essentially, in these final days, it seemed like that Republicans just wanted us to sit in our chairs, take our medicine and vote when it was time to vote,” Martinez Fischer said.
It was around 2 p.m. that Democratic members representing Black and Hispanic communities first started talking about a walkout that could halt the proceedings and kill the bill, Martinez Fischer said.
At 5:30 p.m., as the House prepared to take up the legislation, Democrats called a sudden caucus meeting in the back corner of the chamber in a conference room. But they had a visitor, House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who went along to discuss both SB 7 and the session at large, members said. He left about a half-hour later.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, said frustrations had mounted as Republicans introduced the bill, which was now “20 times worse” than the legislation that the House had approved, she said.
Breaking quorum is an exceedingly rare obstructive tactic, and “if it had been the SB 7 that left the House, we wouldn’t have walked,” Crockett said.
By 9 p.m., Democrats were gathering their things and stepping out of the chamber. Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie and the head of the House Democratic Caucus, gave members the final order to go at 10:35 p.m.
Phelan announced what was going on shortly after they left.
“Today, on the second-to-last day of session, a number of members have chosen to disrupt the legislative process by abandoning the legislative chamber before our work was done,” Phelan said.
Patrick blamed the House Republicans for not taking up the bill sooner. Bettencourt said by not dealing with SB7 a day or two earlier, House Republicans were inviting trouble.
But for Democrats, the Senate was asking for it by ignoring its own rules, adding 20 pages to the bill, and cutting out Democrats on the conference committee.
“With Republicans trying to move toward their nuclear option, we had to be prepared to respond in kind,” Martinez Fischer said.
jeremy.wallace@chron.com
cayla.harris@express-news.net
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