Absent Democrats deny quorum at start of second special session.
Holdout continues to delay a vote on GOP elections bill
Republicans in the Texas House were unable to secure a quorum Saturday as Democrats again denied them the members they need to push forward a heated elections reform bill that they have been blocking since May.
House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, gavelled the lower chamber in for the beginning of a third session this year, quickly announcing that not enough legislators were present to proceed. The House was promptly adjourned until Monday afternoon.
Democrats in the House fled the state last month to block Republicans from passing the voting measures, which they describe as a blatant attempt to suppress votes, especially those of minority voters. In response, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has called a second 30-day session to pass the legislation, on top of a raft of other unfinished GOP priority measures.
The Democrats’ holdout has infuriated Republicans, who for nearly two decades have controlled all branches of the Texas government. Texas is one of several Republican states to push for new voting restrictions this year in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud.
“God, we’re staring right now at a raging ocean of division and hostility in this chamber,” Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, said during an invocation. “There are rela
tionships that are shattered, cords of trust that had been broken.”
But it’s unclear how long the minority party can keep its fugitive coalition together. Some Democrats were expected to return as early as Monday; Republicans only need 100 of 150 members present to vote on legislation. Other Democrats planned to stay in the nation’s capital to continue advocating for federal voting protections that could supersede state restrictions.
“There’s going to be a group of us that will stay here in Washington, D.C., to continue to push for that,” Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, said Saturday on MSNBC. “But we can’t hold out much longer.”
A total of 81 House members checked in Saturday, including eight Democrats, leaving the chamber 19 members shy of a quorum. Of the eight Democrats, six had stayed in Texas during the first special session and were spotted at least once on the House floor.
The two who returned to the House for the first time since the July 12 quorum break were state Rep. R.D. Bobby Guerra, a Democrat from Mission who had reportedly re-entered the state last month to undergo surgery on a torn rotator cuff, and state Rep. Eddie Lucio III of Brownsville. State Rep. Harold Dutton, a Houston Democrat who had returned to Austin for part of the special session, was absent.
Lucio told reporters Saturday that he expects more Democrats will return to Austin and give the House enough members to reach a quorum soon. Republicans would need 10 more Democrats, on top of the nine Republicans who were absent Saturday, to reach the 100 members needed to conduct business.
Nine of the 82 Republicans in the lower chamber were missing from the floor Saturday, including Houston-area state Reps. Gary Gates and Dan Huberty.
The start of the new session came hours after a group of House Democrats sued Abbott, Phelan and state Rep. James White, R-Hillister, accusing the Republicans of violating their constitutional rights through attempts to secure their return to Austin.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in an Austin federal court, alleges that Abbott, Phelan and White used public statements and other means to “coerce, threaten, (and) intimidate” the Democrats and deny them various rights laid out in the Constitution. It did not cite any specific examples.
Though 22 House Democrats were listed as plaintiffs on the lawsuit, two members — state Reps. Shawn Thierry and Nicole Collier — said they had not authorized the petition. Republicans have characterized the lawsuit as frivolous and bashed Democrats for including members who had not signed off on it.
“This doesn’t *seem* like a positive development for the lawsuit but maybe that’s just me,” Phelan spokesman Enrique Marquez tweeted.