‘Bathroom bill’ may shape campaigns
Group promises to target Texan Republicans deemed soft on conservative social issues in primaries
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Though “bathroom bills” targeting transgender people fizzled in deep-red states across the U.S., the issue is still white hot in Texas, where the legislature is heading into a special session prepared to revive it and conservative groups are vowing revenge on Republican lawmakers who don’t approve it.
Whether Texas eventually enacts a law requiring transgender people to use public restrooms according to their birth-certificate gender, the issue is looming large over Republican primaries set for March. Powerful business entities, from Apple to the NFL, oppose such a bill as discriminatory, but insurgent candidates have promised to brand lawmakers who dare reject it — or try to remain neutral in the face of so much outcry — as soft on social issues dear to conservatives.
The Texas Senate had passed a strict bathroom bill version in March, but the more-moderate House — led by vocal bathroom bill opponent Republican Speaker Joe Straus — balked and approved a watered-down version applying only to public schools. The Senate rejected that. A stalemate may yet prevail if neither side budges during a 30-day extra session that GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has convened starting Tuesday.
The Conservative Republicans of Texas political action committee says it’s ready to pounce on those who don’t support the strict proposal that mimicked a 2015 North Carolina law that sparked so much uproar and threats of costly boycotts that lawmakers eventually rolled much of it back. No other state has approved such a law.
“To the extent that someone chooses to lock arms with Joe Straus and promote his liberal agenda for the state, and work with him to kill conservative legislation, we’re going to be looking for and back a primary challenger to that individual,” said Jared Woodfill, a Houston attorney who is the group’s president.
Woodfill’s PAC donated nearly $2 million US between the 2010 and 2016 election cycles to 100-plus Texas legislative candidates and other conservative causes, and plans to spend lavishly to target moderate Republicans up for election in 2018.
On the other side are business and civil rights organizations, gay rights activists and many religious leaders who see the law as harmful to transgender residents and bad for the state’s economy. But such groups, generally, have been less active in Texas’ GOP primaries.
“The mainstream faith communities in this state cringe when they hear that violent, hateful language so they vacate the field and leave it to extreme people,” said Bee Moorhead, executive director of Texas Impact, which represents religious congregations from across the faith and political spectrum.