DeLay of Game

Dems run out the clock; crowd goes wild!

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

05/17/03 (rev.)

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/delay_of_game.htm

I thought, in the wake of the Willie Brown and the Vienna Sausages saga, that California had taken the title of "wildest and weirdest state government" from Texas. But since those halcyon days, California elected Gray Davis, a man who lives up to his name so well that he could make an intercontinental thermonuclear war boring, and Tom DeLay decided that state politics needed his special touch.

When it comes to wild and weird, Sacramento didn’t stand a chance. Texas once again stands alone, which makes life much easier for Molly Ivins. She covers state politics in Texas, and never has to wonder what to write about next.

Back in the day, the United States had a Constitution (George used it to try to toilet train the twins, I believe), and the Constitution said that every ten years, there should be a census, and congressional apportionment should be based on the results of the census. Now, in the Senate, this is a fairly straightforward process. "Idaho, are you still a state?" "Yes" "OK, -you- get two seats."

But in the House, this means redistricting. In some states (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, Vermont, Wyoming, any of the Dakotas, North South and Dodge) this remains straightforward, since they get one congressional representative because they are a) an official state of the union b) where nobody lives. Chairman of the reapportionment committee in these states is something of a sinecure.

But in some of the larger states, which is to say the 43 that have more than one representative in Congress, there’s usually some wrangling over how the lines should be drawn up. This has usually resulted in some of the biggest state-level political pissing matches in history every ten years or so, and this decade, it was Texas’ turn to toss bowling balls into the mine field.

In the year after the census, the lege was unable to come up with a plan that was fair, or even coherent, and after a big wrangle and various suits, a three-judge panel took over the task of drawing up lines that, whines from the Republicans notwithstanding, were generally agreed to be fair to both parties. Mind you, Republicans think anything that is fair to both parties is terribly unfair to them, so loud Republican whining was just their way of agreeing that it was fair.

Normally, that would solve the problem of reapportionment until the next time it came up, in 2011. Normally, the lege would have met, and after agreeing that they were deadlocked, gone ahead and endorsed the judicial apportionment.

But Tom DeLay, who is not a member of the Texas legislature, had other ideas.

Bug Spray DeLay wants to be the next Speaker of the House. Right now it’s Dennis Hastert, who is widely viewed as being a sock puppet for DeLay, but DeLay isn’t a behind-the-curtains kind of guy. He envisions himself as being more the big scary wall mask with the fires behind the eye holes and dry ice smoke roiling around kind of guy. He doesn’t like being inconspicuous.

Never mind that the last Republican speaker who was a glory hound blew up like a dead cow in the sun; the Republicans seem to think that having amoral loudmouths in the Speakership benefits the party. I won’t argue that with them.

So DeLay sat down with party strategists and drew up a redistricting map that would enhance Republican chances of gaining seats in the state Congressional delegation. Indeed, the DeLay plan would give the GOP an extra seven seats going in on the next election, assuming voting patterns were the same as they were in 2002.

Jim Kennemur of Texas was kind enough to send me copies of both the redistricting map drawn up by the three federal judges and used in the 2002 election (http://alt.cimedia.com/statesman/legislature/0424existingmap.pdf), and the version that Tom DeLay drew up for the lege to consider (http://alt.cimedia.com/statesman/legislature/0507redistrict_final.pdf)

At first glance, they look pretty much of a type. The first thing you notice is the big blocks, which are contiguous and fairly regular in shape. But with such maps, the devil is in the details.

A quick glance at the DeLay map shows that many of the Congressional districts – particularly the smaller ones – have grown an inordinate amount of pseudopods. These tentacles – one is only twenty feet wide and extends over 100 miles to engulf a small neighborhood far away – appear about eight times as much as on the judges’ map.

Those tentacles are pretty clear evidence of gerrymandering. It was pretty blatant. Other, more subtle changes could skew results even more. A district that went 51-49 Democrat last year could have one border moved 100 yards THIS way, and another border 100 yards THAT way, and suddenly it’s now 51-49 Republican. Some districts–those with Democratic incumbents – were merged, and care was taken to draw some districts so they excluded the incumbent Democrat’s home address.

In an honest legislature, it would go though commission hearings, followed by legislative committee, followed by floor debate. DeLay, the Majority Leader of the House and wanna-be Speaker, has little patience for that Robert’s Rules of Order stuff. He told the Republicans to wait until late in the session, and then just ram it through on a straight up or down vote, simple majority carries. (For those who have memories that extend past the last commercial break, Republicans once long ago, like 1999, championed supermajority votes – 60% or more – to pass any law or regulation. Now they want to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate. This, mid you, is the same party that wanted a balanced budget amendment and opposed "nation building" in 1999).

The Democrats weren’t even going to be allowed to voice an opinion. It’s the Bug Spray DeLay way of doing things. About as Democratic as a politburo meeting.

DeLay figured that if the lege passed his gerrymandered map now, right at the end of the session, a court wouldn’t be able to strike it down as being a blatantly partisan redistricting until after the 2004 election, which would be long enough for his purposes.

But the Dems in Texas had a trick up their sleeves, and more importantly, a spine up their backs. They knew that the lege required a quorum of 100 of the 150 members to be present in order to vote on ANYTHING. They only needed to convince 51 little assemblymen to stay out of the chamber between then and the state-constitution- mandated adjournment six days later, and redistricting would die until at least after the 2004 election, and probably until the next census.

Furthermore, they knew that since there was already a perfectly good districting alignment in place, their refusal to allow a vote wasn’t going to shortchange Texas in any way.

One little glitch: the assembly was empowered to send Texas Rangers (the cops, not the baseball players) out to round up missing members and force them to come to the assembly to vote.

So, quite literally in the dead of night, they convoyed out of Texas to the neighboring state of Oklahoma. Texas Rangers don’t have authority to arrest anyone in Oklahoma. And the Oklahoma governor allowed that he preferred that his state’s battles with Texas be limited to the football field, and wasn’t about to arrest the Democrats (who were holed up in a Holiday Inn) and ship them over the border like so many wetbacks.

You probably heard about it in the papers. The Republicans screamed and howled and called the Democrats chicken, and a suddenly interested population started paying attention. The Republicans, in their insulated arrogance, probably thought that was a good thing. At first. After all, they have the power to spin the story to their benefit, right?

Oh, the Republicans screamed bloody murder, and cranked up the propaganda machine to the highest level...

...and watched helplessly as it backfired, and the self-exiled Democrats became folk heroes.

DeLay, not for the first time in his career, had overreached. Most people saw through the Republican bluster to see the bully-boy tactics, the unfairness, the dishonesty, and the breach of legislative ethics that lay behind the redistricting scheme.

The deadline passed, and the Democrats returned to a heroes’ welcome.

Not only did the Democrats of the Texas legislature galvanize state Democrats, but it gave Democrats nationwide something to cheer about. Here, at last, were Democrats who were willing to put up a fight, to resist, no matter how hopeless the battle must have seemed.

DeLay started all this because he wanted some insurance seats to ensure his becoming the next Speaker of the House.

But the way it played out, he might have to be Minority Leader, and address Nancy Pelosi as "Ms. Speaker" Republicans offended a lot of fair-minded Americans with this latest stunt.

"Ms. Speaker."

Yeah. That’ll sound sweet, coming out of Bug Spray’s foul mouth.