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Did Texas Democrats have a long-range plan when they fled Austin to stop votes on a pair of election bills?
It doesn’t seem so, according to Heritage Action for America Executive Director Jessica Anderson. She spoke with Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) Vice President of National Initiatives and Policy Director Chuck DeVore and state Sen. Bryan Hughes during a TPPF forum on Monday, July 19, about the walkout and its consequences.
The majority of Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives left the state on July 12 for Washington, D.C., preventing the House from achieving a quorum to vote on one of two voting bills.
While the Democrats have vowed to remain out of the state until this current special session ends, Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will call another one if needed – and another one after that.
“I really have been grappling with it myself because I don't know that Texas Democrats got on that plane with an end game in mind,” Anderson said. “I truly think they were there going 24 hours at a time. And that's evidenced by, I think, some of the communications and PR nightmare that they just stumbled into. And so, in a lot of ways, their end game is not with just Texas. It's with this larger federal overreach.”
The Democratic representatives have openly stated that pushing national voting rights protections is their priority and have generally acknowledged that they cannot stop the Texas legislation from moving forward.
DeVore noted the messaging coming out of Washington, D.C. hasn't been the most favorable, with a photo showing members on a private jet without their masks per Federal Aviation Administration regulations and now reports of six legislators developing COVID-19.
However, all representatives had been vaccinated prior to boarding and the private chartered flight did not require masks under those circumstances.
State Rep. Gene Wu admitted the Democrats “got sloppy” and are paying a price. Even though they were all vaccinated, the use of masks in such an enclosed environment was recommended.
“Let our mistake be the object lesson,” Wu said. “Being vaccinated doesn't always stop you from spreading the virus.”
Hughes said the Democrats’ decision to abandon their jobs and leave the state has not played well in Texas.
“Folks care about that. It's a visceral reaction that different districts are different, but certainly suburban districts, swing districts, every day people get that you should stay and show up for work,” he said. “So, this is a factor. I think it's going to bring pressure on some of our friends to come back and get us between them and their constituents. But I believe the longer they stay, the more difficult."
Hughes said when the Democrats return, they'll "stay as long as they have to" to get things done.
Anderson predicted that the Democrats will have to return to Texas sooner or later, with sooner the odds-on favorite. The legislators will have to deal with their personal issues and careers away from Austin, she said.
“I mean, this is 30 days that Texas lawmakers that have other part-time or full-time jobs are away from it,” Anderson said. “So, it's not only their job as the Legislature, but their job back home and supporting their family. I don't know of a single job where you could take off 30 days and not have retribution.”
Hughes said the bills under discussion — Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 3 — have been unfairly labeled as restricting the rights of people to vote.
In fact, the bills would expand early voting hours, mandate that people can get off work to vote early, allow people who are in line to early vote to cast a ballot even after voting hours end, and let voters correct problems with mail-in ballots.
They do call for a crackdown on vote-harvesting, Hughes said.
“And that's basically what this is about, common-sense reforms based on complaints we've heard from the people of Texas, red, yellow, black and white, around the state of various political parties and regions,” he said. “Problems they've complained about we are trying to address.”
Hughes said people need to read the bills on the table in the special session. There is a real problem with voters being tricked into casting ballots, he said.
“In so many of these cases, the folks who brought the complaints happen to be minorities. They happen to be African Americans or Latinos,” Hughes said. “And so, should we ignore their cries because they don't fit the narrative coming out of Washington? So, this bill and the security measures in this bill are in response to complaints, to sworn testimony. We've heard from folks around the state, many of them people of color, just said, 'This is how they tried to cheat me. This is how the ballot harvester misled me, told me I was voting differently than I was.' These complaints come from all across the state and many of the vulnerable voters who are being taken advantage of are people of color. And we're going to stand up for them.”
Anderson said the current squabble in Texas is part of a bigger fight over who will control elections.
“It's been remarkable to see the national Democrat response to the state bills that have moved through Georgia, through Iowa, Florida, Arizona and now Texas,” she said. “And it seems that this trend of the progressive left trying to smear the bills, providing very misleading statements, as the senator just laid out of the very facts of what the bills do. I mean, we saw this at the very beginning of the year when the left responded to the Georgia bill (that) was passed."
Anderson said the bill had the same goal, making it easier to vote and harder to cheat.
"And everyone in the entire progressive left, including those in the Democrat Party, said, 'Oh, these bills are Jim Crow 2.0,'” Anderson said. “It's going to make it impossible for Georgians to vote."
She said when people read the bill, they'll see that it provides an easier way for people to get to the polls.
"It increases access on the weekends,” she said. “And so, this trend, I think that we see from the national sphere of trying to smear the state bills, Texas is really the latest pawn in their larger goal of trying to fabricate, if you will, this sort of a crisis that just flat out doesn't exist in the states right now.”
Democratic leaders like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi want the federal government to oversee all elections, the panelists said.
Anderson said it is “a systematic takeover of state elections” that needs to be rejected.
“So, even if Texas is successful in passing their election integrity and accessibility bill, you know, in the next 30 days, it will be completely null and overcome by HR 1,” she said. “It would strip any state's voter integrity laws, voter I.D. It would provide a pathway for illegal immigrants to show up to this country on a Friday and be able to vote on a Tuesday. And there are no safeguards to ensure the sanctity and the integrity of the ballot box."
Anderson said they have made clear what their end goal is.
“So, the construct that the progressive left has created is to say states have no authority on their election laws. Local and state officials are moot. They're completely taken out of the picture. And you have a federalized bureaucratic progressive Democrat D.C. hybrid that now is in charge of all election laws across the country, regardless of any laws currently on the books. So that is their priority," Anderson said.
She said Democrats are growing “desperate” while also worrying about losing the support of moderates like Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and others from red-leaning states.
DeVore said most Texans agree with the measures included in the bills.
“So, what I find fascinating is that if you look at the polling here in Texas, something on the order of 89% of Texans believe that we should have a voter I.D. for people who go to vote in-person,” he said. “And then if you ask about mail-in voting, in whether or not we should try to have the same safeguards for mail-in votes as we do for in-person voting, 81% percent of Texans believe that that's not an unreasonable thing to put in your driver's license number.”
DeVore, who served in the California State Assembly from 2004-2010, said same-day registration can be a very dangerous thing.
He said the state does very poor maintenance on voting lists, with dead people remaining, as well as people who left the state and others not legally allowed to vote. That was especially worrisome in 2020, when a huge percentage of Californians voted early.
Despite these claims, the 2020 general election has been widely characterized by bipartisan elections officials as among the most secure in American history, with virtually no evidence of widespread illegal voting.
“I know that in California, which is the kind of the template for what they're trying to do federally, it's not a complete honor system. And what ends up happening is voters, when they register to vote, simply check a box that they swear or affirm that they are eligible to vote,” DeVore said. “And, of course, there's never a check on that.”
She called on people in Texas and other states where election laws are being debated to contact their legislators and let them know they support them.
Hughes, a Republican representing the First District, served in the state House of Representatives from 2003-2017. He is in his second term in the state Senate and is the chairman of the Texas State Affairs Committee.
Before Anderson was tapped to lead Heritage Action for America – the elections arm of the Heritage Foundation, in DeVore’s words – she worked at the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration. She also has written for the Wall Street Journal, The Hill and USA Today and has been honored for her work and knowledge.
“So, she's someone who has shown an amazing talent for politics and public policy from a very early start of her career,” DeVore said.