San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
’20 losses for Dems sparked legislators’ push right
Abortions were effectively banned. Teachers were restricted in how they can teach about race. And gun rights were greatly expanded.
The reason for the Texas Legislature’s hard-right turn in 2021 can be explained in a number: nine.
After Democrats came within nine seats of taking control of the Texas House in 2018, they mounted a full-court press in 2020 but made no net gains. Conservative Republicans in turn focused on some of the hot-button measures that are important to the GOP base, triggering one of the most conservative legislative sessions in modern state history.
“Elections have consequences, I get it,” state Sen. Royce
West, D-Dallas, said during a debate over voting restrictions that Republicans ultimately failed to pass because of their own tactical mistakes. He described the session as the most conservative since he was first elected in 1992.
If Democrats had won those nine seats, conservatives said, none of those priorities would have had a chance and Democrats would have been in a stronger position to push for Medicaid expansion and criminal justice reform in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 death.
“They would be steamrolling us,” said Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, who authored a bill to prevent schools from teaching
“Now I think you have a speaker who would like to move some conservative legislation.”
State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands
“critical race theory,” a move Democrats worry will mean preventing teachers from talking frankly about race relations in Texas history.
Instead, it was Republicans driving the steamroller and pushing a conservative agenda that they believe voters made clear they backed.
“The door was opened by the voters,” said Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler. “We tried to walk as many of those priorities through that door as we could.”
Democrats swing and miss
Democrats have long believed that demographic changes will eventually bring them back to power in Texas, which has been controlled by Republicans for nearly two decades.
Their hopes were raised after the 2018 midterm elections, when Texas Democrats rode a “blue wave” driven in part by opposition to then-President Donald Trump. Democrats flipped 12 House seats held by the GOP.
But despite drawing national attention, spending a lot of money and generating large turnout in urban and suburban areas, Democrats weren’t able to build on those gains last fall. That left Republicans in control of the House for the 10th consecutive legislative session.
“In my view, Democrats had record in-state spending, record out-of-state spending, record turnout and they came up with nothing in the state,” Schaefer said. “So Republicans view that as an expectation from voters that Republican priorities will be priorities.”
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick struck a similar theme after November’s elections, vowing to push an agenda this year that “reflects the principles and values of the Texas conservative majority.”
Patrick on Wednesday hammered home that point during a talk radio interview with Mark Davis on 660 AM in Dallas.
“They lost the election, we won,” Patrick said in explaining his take-no-prisoners approach with Democrats.
Democrats have countered that if Republicans are so confident that they represent the majority of Texas voters, why did they seek to pass severe voting restrictions that they say target Black and Latino voters?
Still, there was no mistaking the hard-right turn by the Legislature this year.
One after the other, Republicans passed bills severely restricting abortion, allowing permitless carry of handguns, requiring professional sports teams to play the national anthem and threatening cities with penalties for “defunding the police” — all issues that poll extremely well among GOP primary voters.
“It’s happening because Republicans have control,” West said. “And they are wielding their power unapologetically.”
Patrick changes rules
With just 13 of 31 Senate seats, Democrats had little power to stop anything the Republicans were determined to pass.
Senate Democrats had even picked up one additional seat last
year to get to 13, which would have given them the ability to stop debates on most of Patrick’s priorities. But Patrick responded by pushing Republican senators to change the rules at the start of the session to require 14 senators to block a bill instead of 13.
Democrats are in the minority in the House, too, holding 67 of the 150 seats. But House rules allow Democrats more procedural maneuvers to slow or even kill legislation, as they were able to do with a dramatic late-night walkout that killed — for now — a GOP
package of voting restrictions.
They also helped stop legislation aimed at barring hormone therapy and other medical procedures for transgender children. Another bill pushed heavily by the Republican Party of Texas to bar cities and counties from hiring lobbyists also failed — the third consecutive session that idea hasn’t made it.
Republicans have had the majority in the House and Senate since 2003. But over the last 10 years, the margins have been decreasing with each election cycle. In 2015, there were just 11 Democrats in the Senate and 52 in the House.
Republicans say they were not trying to jam priorities through out of fear Democrats were getting closer and could flip the House in the future.
“That wasn’t something I was thinking about at all,” said state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park.
The reason that anti-abortion and pro-gun bills got through this year as opposed to previous years was because of the leadership, Toth said.
He said legislation such as the “heartbeat” bill — banning abortion at six weeks, when a fetal heartbeat has been detected — had long been pushed by conservatives in the House but didn’t get traction.
“Now I think you have a speaker who would like to move some conservative legislation,” Toth said. “I think that is why the dam broke now.”
New speaker leans right
When former Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, a moderate, presided over the House, leaders blocked many of the most extreme anti-abortion bills and the idea of permitless carry. Many of those ideas never made it out of committee, let alone to the governor’s desk. Straus stepped down in 2019.
Rep. Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who was elected speaker with bipartisan support in January, has proved more receptive to passing such conservative priorities.
“It’s fun for the first time,” said Toth, a social conservative.
Despite being frustrated by the Democrats’ minority status, Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, went so far as to thank Senate Republicans for what they were doing this session, particularly in trying to impose voting restrictions seen as suppressing the Black and Latino vote.
By going too far with their agenda, Republicans are generating more anger and frustration from Black and Hispanic communities that already are voting at higher rates with each election cycle. Going after their voting rights might only fire up more people to vote. Look no further than Georgia, where the once-red state backed Democrat Joe Biden and elected two Democratic U.S. senators after a purge of voters two years earlier.
As Miles said in April when the Senate first passed the voter restrictions that died last Sunday, “I want to thank you sincerely because what you are doing here tonight, is kicking a bear.”