State GOP reinforces ‘women matter’

AUSTIN — Texas could have tried to beat Alabama to become the first state in the nation to ban all abortions this year, taking a shot at overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the Republican leadership in Austin hit the brakes.

It was staunch pro-life Rep. Jeff Leach, RPlano, who put a stop to the Texas version of the bill, which would have authorized criminal charges against any woman who has an abortion.

“I think it’s the exact wrong policy to be criminalizing women who are in that extremely difficult, almost impossible situation,” said Leach, a chairman who refused to let the bill out of his committee. “We don’t need to be going after these women.”

That sentiment voiced in April was just one example of a new message that Texas Republicans tried to send in the 2019 legislative session after a wake-up call in the November midterm elections. Hundreds of thousands of educated, suburban Republican women had

crossed party lines to vote for Democrats, who picked up 12 seats in the Texas House and came within three percentage points of winning their first statewide election since 1994.

House Speaker Dennis Bonnen explained the Texas GOP’s predicament in a speech to young Republicans in February, just as the legislative session got underway.

“The clearest indication of the November election — and this is horrifying — is intelligent women said we’re not interested in voting for Republicans,” Bonnen said. “We have to remember that women matter in this state. … The reality is that if we are not making women feel comfortable and welcome to telling their friend or neighbor that they voted for Republican candidate X, Y or Z, we will lose. And we should lose, truthfully.”

‘Not draconian’

That push fueled bipartisan legislation to strengthen legal protections against sexual assault. The Legislature rallied around a bill to eliminate a backlog of untested rape kits. Republicans and Democrats teamed up to strengthen laws against “revenge porn.” Lawmakers made groping a person for sexual gratification an arrestable offense, a proposal that they rejected in 2017. Under current law, the maximum penalty is a $500 fine.

All of those bills are on their way to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for his approval.

Aside from the abortion ban legislation that Leach quelled, three other controversial anti-abortion laws were spiked in the Texas House, bringing a harsh rebuke from advocacy groups to Republicans who have been reliable allies in the past.

“Women, especially in the suburbs, we want to show them in a very pragmatic way that we’re not draconian in focusing on issues that punish women,” said Nancy Bocskor, director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at Texas Woman’s University and a former Republican fundraiser.

Educated suburban women tend not to be single-issue voters, she said — the issues that matter to Republican women most are those that protect people and families.

Returns from the last three statewide general elections show the need for urgency from Republicans.

About 57 percent of Texas women voted Republican in 2014. But that began to change in 2016 with a near split in the presidential race, according to CNN exit polling. Women split again in the 2018 governor’s race, and 54 percent of Texas women voted for Democrat Beto O’Rourke over U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who ultimately won the election.

“Republicans may have taken women voters for granted to the point where when they need them to hold the line politically, they may not be there if they don’t make appealing to women voters an emphasis,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political professor and analyst from the University of Houston.

But the women-friendly legislation this year won’t stop the Democrats from shaming the Texas GOP for failing to pass anti-workplace harassment legislation, which was the crux of the #MeToo movement. Legislation that would have given employees of small businesses an avenue to file harassment complaints with the state never made it to a floor vote, nor did bills on civil damages for sexual assault or harassment.

“The main driver of the #MeToo movement was workplace harassment. Unfortunately, we didn’t take any meaningful action to address it,” said Rep. Erin Zwiener, DDriftwood . “Everyone should be able to live a life free from feeling they are someone else’s prey.”

Other issues dog the state. Texas has the worst uninsured rate in the nation for women of childbearing age and a high maternal mortality rate of 14.6 deaths per 100,000 live births — which is even worse for black women at 27.8 per 100,000 live births. Republicans in the Senate stopped short of expanding Medicaid for low-income mothers to a year after giving birth, up from two months. Data shows about half of women who die within a year of pregnancy do so after two months.

Republican members in each chamber also voted to ban government contracts to affiliates of abortion clinics, cutting off health care services to centers that provide STD testing and cancer screening.

Dems target suburbs

Republicans with the biggest vulnerabilities are in the Dallas and Houston suburbs. Eight Republicans there scraped by in their reelections , winning with margins of less than 5 percent — including one Houston incumbent who won by just 47 votes — making them prime targets for Democrats in the 2020 election.

Leach is one of them. He won his election in the suburbs of Dallas by 2.3 percent against a stay-athome mother who has worked with foster children. In this legislative session, he has spoken often about issues directly affecting women, convincing the House to move funding that used to support the movie industry to women’s health programs.

Leach was also a key backer of lengthening the statute of limitations for child sexual assault victims to sue their abusers. That bill, which was sent to the governor last week, was spurred when Leach’s wife came to terms at the age of 35 with her own sexual abuse by a family member that began when she was 12 years old.

She gave a rare and moving speech to a legislative committee supporting the bill. Although she had no intention of suing, the statute of limitations to file a civil case against her abuser expired when she turned 33. Leach asked a fellow Dallas area Republican, Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, to extend the statute of limitations until victims are 48 years old .

However, Goldman amended the bill to exempt any organizations involved from that extended statute of limitations, a change made at the behest of special interest groups. That drew opposition by advocates for sexual assault victims and gymnasts who were sexually abused by former sports doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted after sexually abusing hundreds of young athletes under the guise of medical treatment.

Ultimately, with the help of Austin Democrat Sen. Kirk Watson, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, Goldman agreed to extend the longer statute of limitations to both abusers and their organizations for a total of 30 years.

Another of Leach’s main efforts this year was an anti-abortion bill to force civil penalties on physicians who perform abortions and fail to care for a baby born alive after a botched procedure, which is already illegal. Although state health officials have no evidence of such situations happening here since the state began keeping records in 2013, he argued the bill would ensure Texas protects the defenseless.

Other Republicans have also championed bills affecting women, including Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-Dallas, who passed a bill that creates criminal penalties for those who send a person unwanted nude or sexual photos. That legislation passed with the help of Houston Republican Joan Huffman. Republicans supported Democrat-sponsored legislation such as a bill that would require college administrators to flag the transcripts of students disenrolled for disciplinary reasons including sexual assault.

Too early to tell

Other bills fell short, though, including expanding postpartum coverage under Medicaid, giving small business employees a state agency to file sexual harassment complaints and eliminating the sales tax on women’s menstrual products.

It’s too soon to accurately interpret what voters tried to communicate in the 2018 election, said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project and co-director of the University of Texas-Texas Tribune poll. Until then, he said it makes sense that Republican leadership would react by paying more attention to material issues rather than ideological ones.

“That’s a big question mark about whether Republican voters are going to feel like the majority party delivered enough for them,” he said.

Leach said he’s confident in Republican’s chances to win women voters back after a disappointing 2018.

“We did lose women in this election, but I refuse to believe we can’t get them back. If we do a good job of messaging what we accomplished this session, we can and will win them back,” he said.