Stating the Case, Casing the States

Looks like things are about to get ugly in the Texas legislature, where 51 Democratic legislators are planning on leaving the state in order to break the chamber's quorum and bring all pending legislation to a halt.

"I guess we will be called obstructionists, or maybe worse. But we are making a statement," said the South Texas legislator. "If this is going to be the only way to stop bad legislation from being rammed down our throats, then so be it."

Legislative leaders have three weeks left in the regular session and major pieces of legislation still pending. The breaking of a quorum hasn't been used in more than 20 years as a parliamentary maneuver, officials said.

Such a move would require at least 51 members to be absent from Monday's session, scheduled to convene at 9 a.m., for House activity to be brought to a halt. The Texas House cannot convene without at least two-thirds of the membership, or 100 members, present on the House floor under legislative rules.

Republicans, in major legislative battles thus far, have used their majority among state representatives to aggressively push major legislation, such as the reorganization of state government, House Bill 2, and the school finance bill, House Bill 5. Those and other Republican-promoted measures must pass out of the House and be sent to the Senate by Thursday or risk dying.

Twenty-four years ago this month, a group of 12 Texas state senators defied then-Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby by refusing to show up at the Capitol. The "Killer Bees," as the 12 came to be known, hid out in a West Austin garage apartment while Department of Public Safety troopers, Texas Rangers and legislative sergeants-at-arms unsuccessfully combed the state for them.

Seems to me that this is a strategy you adopt only if one of two conditions exist: either 1) the legislation coming to the floor is truly abhorrent, or; 2) you have resigned yourself to a very long stay in the minority and have nothing to lose. In this case it seems the Democrats are going nuclear (or as nuclear as one gets within Robert's Rules of Order, anyhow) mostly over Texas House Bill 2, which would redraw the court-approved federal congressional districts to GOP advantage and grant much wider powers to Texas' constitutionally weak governorship. They see it as fulfilling condition 1 above, because passage would lead to condition 2. A less partisan objection is that the GOP is trying to push it through by the Thursday deadline, but the 418-page plan is so complex that even House Speaker Tom Craddick admitted, "I don't think anybody knows what's in this bill."

Umm, I'd say sufficient reason to table debate exists when even its supporters don't know what they are supporting. Anyhow, many of us get so focused on federal goings-on that we neglect state-level politics. Daily Kos pointed out yesterday that state politics today are the clearest predictor of national politics tomorrow, and that the playing is field is more Dem-friendly than the current state of DC suggests.

For political news from the individual states, I cannot recommend highly enough Kos' side project, Political State Report, which collects reports from bloggers about their own states and includes the interactive Electoral College Calculator. Great fun, if you're a borderline obsessive-compulsive political geek like yours truly. It will be permalinked in the sidebar over there, so hit it often as the campaign season gets cranking.