Fletcher’s eventful freshman year in Congress
Houston lawmaker got bipartisan bill passed but faces GOP attack on impeachment vote
WASHINGTON — Rep. Lizzie Fletcher’s first bill — a measure meant to cut away federal red tape and speed up disaster recovery funding — passed the House nearly unanimously, with just seven votes against it and some of the chamber’s most conservative members joining the freshman Democrat in pushing the legislation forward.
The next day, Fletcher voted to impeach President Donald Trump — a move Republicans are dead-set on making sure overshadows all else Fletcher has done in her first year in Congress.
It was a fitting end to the year for Fletcher, a moderate from west Houston seen by some as the most vulnerable Democrat in Texas in 2020.
Fletcher mostly has kept her head down and tried to get work done, often side by side with Republicans, rather than draw the spotlight in an increasingly chaotic Congress.
She sought out committee assignments — transportation, science — that matter to Houston but rarely generate much attention.
“She’s pretty much the antithe
sis of AOC and the rest of the Squad,” Rice University political science professor Mark Jones said, referencing the liberal firebrand from New York, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Fletcher “doesn’t seek the headlines,” he said. “She’s focused on constituent services, the nitty-gritty of committees, passing legislation.”
But despite her efforts to reach across the aisle and stay above the fray, Fletcher — who represents a broad group of freshly elected moderate Democrats, many of them women, who helped the party take the House in 2018 — nonetheless was key to helping House leadership move impeachment forward in the first place.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the impeachment inquiry after moderates in swing districts voiced support for it. And those moderates, Fletcher included, largely held the party line when it came time to vote.
Within minutes of her casting it, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is targeting her seat in 2020, issued a statement saying, “Lizzie Fletcher’s vote to impeach President Trump destroys any chance she has for reelection and shows Texas voters she’s exactly like the rest of the socialist Democrats.”
But Fletcher didn’t come to Congress to impeach the president, and she wants her colleagues to know that.
The day after the vote, Fletcher approached U.S. Rep. Randy Weber, a Houston-area Republican, after a science committee hearing to explain her impeachment stance and let him know she still was looking forward to working with him on the energy subcommittee next year.
She had a similar exchange earlier in the year when she ran into U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, a Republican from The Woodlands, in the Washington airport and brought up the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement.
“Unlike some of my other colleagues who’ve been here a long time, I am here just this year,” Fletcher said in an interview. “And I am engaged in part because I felt like we could do better up here and … that I thought, you know, bringing this Houston attitude of being collaborative and innovative and more bipartisan would help.
“I put my name on the ballot because I want things to be different. I put my name on the ballot to make change,” she said. “And I think there are a lot of good people here that I’ve gotten to work with who were here for those reasons .”
‘Nuts-and-bolts issues’
Within days of flipping a district long held by Republican John Culberson in 2018, Fletcher joined Rep. Pete Olson, a Fort Bend Republican, to meet with Houston and Harris County officials to ask what they wanted her to do in Congress.
At the top of local leaders’ wish list: Help getting muchneeded disaster recovery funding faster. One easy way to do that, they said, was to scrap a Federal Emergency Management Agency rule that was delaying funding for projects in the city meant to guard against future flooding.
Under the rule, the city couldn’t do anything until it got the green light from FEMA — or risk losing the federal match. That means the city couldn’t even start buying the properties it needed to clear the way for projects until it had heard from FEMA — a process that takes months.
It was causing major delays in some big projects the city launched after Hurricane Harvey, including more than a year’s stalling of work on a canal where White Oak and Buffalo bayous meet, designed to curb flooding downtown. It’s the biggest mitigation project in the state with a $131 million price tag, $46 million of which the federal government is set to cover.
So Fletcher got to work on legislation that Olson cosponsored that would scrap those rules and allow local governments to get started. She got the rest of the Texas delegation on board and went even beyond that, drafting conservative North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows — an unlikely ally for a Democrat — as a cosponsor of the bill.
Fletcher and Meadows both are on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Fletcher had heard Meadows, who represents a state that has also been wracked by natural disasters, rail against FEMA inefficiencies during hearings.
She approached him after one and said, “Look, I’m working on this bill and I would love for you to work on it with me.” She was sure to get a Democrat from North Carolina — U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield — on board, as well, “so it was evenly bipartisan.”
Speaking on the House floor just before the bill sailed through on a 409-7 vote, Meadows gave Fletcher a shout-out on its name: the Hazard Eligibility and Local Projects Act, or the HELP Act for short.
“It’s always interesting to see how we can name these bills in the most creative ways to actually let them resonate with the voters back home,” he said.
“This totally helps out directly,” said Bill Kelly, Houston’s director of government relations. “Being able to do the property acquisition — it’s not a sexy issue. It is one of these nuts-andbolts issues.”
But those are the issues Fletcher largely has focused on. Her committee assignments and the caucuses she’s joined illustrate how she approaches work in Washington with an eye on Houston. She co-chairs a task force on trade in the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist Democrats, and is on the group’s health care task force as well. She’s also co-chair of the Natural Gas Caucus and a member of the Oil and Gas Caucus.
Her success in passing the HELP Act speaks to how quickly she’s learned the job of legislating, said Sean Theriault, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin who’s an expert on Congress.
“It’s not easy to get Democrats and Republicans to agree — even on things that make sense, like this bill,” he said. “It’s good for her. It’s not the be-all and end-all and it doesn’t mean she can walk on water, but it does mean she can put together a diverse and bipartisan coalition. It should be said, it’s no easy feat these days.”
Optimistic view
But Fletcher’s work hasn’t all been bipartisan. She’s stayed in line with Democrats on many of their signature bills that passed the House this year: legislation to expand background checks to buy guns, bolster voting rights and lower the cost of prescription medication, all of which passed on party-line votes.
The prescription bill was a key victory for Fletcher. The legislation would allow the government to negotiate lower prices for drugs in Medicare — something Fletcher campaigned on specifically in her run against Culberson.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee immediately posted ads on Facebook touting Fletcher’s support for the bill — a sign of how focused they are on helping her hold a district that could be up for grabs next year.
Republicans, however, will try to place her vote on impeachment at the center of her re-election fight.
“Lizzie Fletcher showed her true colors tonight,” Wesley Hunt, a Republican Army veteran running to challenge Fletcher, tweeted as she voted to impeach Trump. “Not moderate, not bipartisan, just another part of the problem.”
Cindy Siegel, a former Bellaire mayor also vying to take on Fletcher, similarly targeted the impeachment vote on Twitter, writing: “I am frustrated that Lizzie Fletcher, someone who vowed to be an independent thinker and work across the aisle, just voted with the Democrats to impeach a duly elected President. Her actions are inexcusable, and won’t be forgotten by the voters of TX-07.”
Fletcher clearly is aware of the potential risks her impeachment vote poses, and sent an email to constituents explaining it the day after.
The House impeached Trump on two charges: abuse of power for withholding military aid from Ukraine while pushing its government to investigate political rival Joe Biden and obstruction of Congress for stonewalling the impeachment inquiry itself.
Fletcher, who voted to impeach on both charges, was especially moved by the second.
“We have to understand that we’re operating in this institution. And that, to me, the effort to undermine the authority of this institution really undermines our entire system,” Fletcher said.
“We want government to be efficient, effective and ethical,” she said. “And I do think that the people I represent want checks and balances. … And I think a lot of those things have been put to the test in this administration.
“I think it is unfortunate and sad for our country that that is where we are and I think there was a lot of resistance for good reason of getting to that point,” Fletcher said. “But I did feel that the president’s actions really left no other choice than to address the abuse of power and the undermining of a coequal branch of government.”
Fletcher heads into her second year in Congress — which could end up being her last — with “a really fundamentally optimistic view about what we can accomplish,” she said.
“And I’ve seen it play out and we just need a lot more of that. But I think there are a lot of people here who share that view, too, and are willing and trying to work together.”