Even time abandons outgunned Democrats
By 11 p.m. Tuesday, the volume of proposed amendments had become something of a running joke at the Texas House desk where members file them and efficient staffers queue them up for consideration.
The total topped 100, more than enough to keep the debate on campus carry of concealed handguns going until past the midnight deadline for getting it to a vote. It seemed Democrats — a large majority of whom oppose campus carry — had time on their side.
Time, in the form of legislative deadlines such as the one that loomed Tuesday night, often is the outmanned Dems’ best and only friend.
So it was kind of jarring — with about 20 minutes to go and all of those pending amendments — when a prolonged dais discussion on a point of order ended with this from Speaker Joe Straus: “Members, the question occurs on passage of Senate Bill 11. Record vote has been requested. Record vote is granted. Clerk will ring the bell.”
The voting bell rang 18 times, the voting board lit up, and Straus announced the outcome.
“There being 101 ayes and 47 nays, Senate Bill 11 is passed to engrossment,” he said, culminating the vote that sent the bill to a final Wednesday vote that sent it back to the Senate for consideration of House changes.
How, one must wonder, did this happen? Where did all those time-eating Democratic amendments go?
Confused (nothing new for me), I followed Straus from the floor in an effort to get unconfused. What happened? I asked.
“It passed,” the ever-friendly Straus said.
Yes, as a wily legislative veteran, I had figured that part out. It was the how and why that escaped me at the moment. How’d all those amendments suddenly go to amendment heaven?
“Teamwork,” Straus said by way of almost being helpful.
“They were withdrawn,” he said of the vanishing amendments. Why? “So we could vote the bill,” he added, again telling me
something I had figured out.
What apparently happened was the Dems, satisfied the bill had been watered down, were about to be run over. Circulating on the floor was a motion, signed by 29 Republicans, that, under House rules that require just 25 signatures, could have cut off debate and forced a vote on the bill. It’s a seldom-used, just-this-side-of-nuclear option that overcomes stall- ing tactics.
On the House floor shortly after midnight, Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, who had made impassioned floor remarks (the only kind he knows how to make) against the bill, lingered long enough for me to corner him. What happened? I asked.
He cautioned against concluding that the Dems had cratered. What they did do, he said, was all they could.
“I think it’s recognizing the way things work here in the Texas House,” he told me, “the process, the rules, the clock.”
“I think the Democrats did an excellent job today of working the clock, and I think they put up an excellent fight on things that were important to us,” Turner said. “There were some bills that we did not get to that we did not want to get to.”
“Never assume the Democrats gave up on campus carry. Demo- crats did not give up on campus carry,” Turner said. “The Zerwas amendment waters it down. The bill will go to conference, and we will continue to have our input in the process.”
The Zerwas amendment refers to one added by Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, that allows regents, by a two-thirds vote, to limit where on campus concealed carriers can carry. (Current law allows concealed carry outside of campus buildings, but not inside.)
That’s not an insig- nificant concession. It’s unknown if the Senate will concur. Another significant amendment stripped a provision that allowed private universities to bar concealed carry, something that Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, a leader of the anti-campus carry forces, hopes will add new opposition to the idea.
Early Wednesday, shortly after the vote, the Dems, he said, had waged “a very valiant fight” that killed bills further down the agenda.
“As you know, with 98 votes on the floor of the House, Republicans can do anything, anytime, anywhere,” he said, adding, “If Republicans wanted to celebrate Christmas in April, they have the votes.”
And he noted they easily had the votes to stop the debate and force a vote.
Did the Dems give up? No. They did the best they could. That’s pretty much all Dems can do in the Texas Capitol these days.