Texas Dems who staged walkout to quash SB7 in Austin get triumphal showcase in DC over voting rights

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats will break bread Tuesday with Texas lawmakers who staged an 11th hour walkout in Austin to block a controversial election bill in the Legislature.

The lunchtime showcase, ahead of a triumphal visit to the White House, will give the Texans a chance to bask in praise for their brashness, and to shame holdouts on federal voting rights legislation – chief among them Sen. Joe Manchin.

“We’re outgunned. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have the fight,” said state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio. “I’m not sure if Sen. Manchin’s ever been told that the voter discrimination that occurs in Texas isn’t accidental, it’s intentional. I don’t know how you ever find bipartisanship when one side is intending to silence your voice.”

It’s the full star treatment.

At the Capitol, the 10 Texans — seven from the state House, three from the Senate — will appear with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris will welcome them to the White House to compare notes and brainstorm ways to promote the party’s voting rights agenda.

The goal, said state Rep. Rafael Anchía of Dallas, chair of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, is to “sensitize people to the pattern of discriminatory voting laws that have been passed during the last decade in our state and then really asking for federal legislation that’ll protect voting rights in our state.”

The Senate’s 50-50 split makes Manchin’s vote crucial, and the West Virginia Democrat has scuttled a House bill that would preempt state laws that scale back mail-in balloting and set other obstacles.

President Joe Biden assigned Harris to spearhead the administration’s push on voting rights, and she’ll celebrate their resourcefulness in quashing Senate Bill 7 – at least for a few months – with the dramatic late night maneuver to break quorum.

Gov. Greg Abbott has vowed to revive the bill in a special session in coming months. Democrats hope the next version won’t be quite so aggressive, and warn they haven’t run out of tactics to protect minority voters.

On Tuesday, the Texans will meet with fellow Democrats in Congress to thank them for their push on voting rights, among them Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and to lobby those not yet on board.

“I’d like to visit with Joe Manchin… and make sure he understands what was going on in Texas,” said state Sen. Royce West of Dallas.

The group has no appointment with Manchin, though, nor with Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who oppose the Democratic bills.

Cornyn aides will take the meeting, his office said.

“I’m a big boy…. If I end up meeting with staff, that’s not beneath me,” said Martinez Fischer, though “if the shoe was on the other foot we would make every accommodation possible.”

Two bills are at issue in Congress: HR 1, the For the People Act, which overhauls campaign finance rules, greatly expands public funding for federal campaigns, and sets federal standards for how elections are run.

The Democrat-controlled House sent the measure to the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to hold a vote by the end of June, though it’s dead on arrival.

Even if Manchin relents, Democrats would have to vote to eliminate the filibuster. Lots of Democrats resist progressives’ demands to end that arcane procedure, arguing that would trigger years of rancor and regret, as soon as Democrats are back in the minority.

Manchin is open to the other major voting rights measure, though: HR4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

That bill, named for the late congressman and civil rights icon, would restore Justice Department scrutiny of Texas and other states with a history of discrimination. The Supreme Court ended decades of oversight in 2013 with a ruling that the way Congress picked which states deserved such scrutiny had become outdated.

The House has yet to send that bill to the Senate and it, too, faces widespread Republican opposition and a filibuster.

In a “dear colleagues” letter marking Flag Day on Monday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that even as Americans pay their respects to that “symbol of democratic freedom …the clock is ticking on our democracy with respect to the sanctity of the vote.”

She cited an “anti-democratic tide,” with Republicans pushing to curtail ballot access in some way in all but two legislatures this year.

HR1 would trump 19 state laws that restrict voting by mail, setting a national standard for no-excuse absentee voting. It would allow a sworn statement in lieu of the ID required by 27 states, and require states to provide same-day registration.

“Laws that have already been enacted would limit the timing to apply for and deliver a mail ballot; limit the number, location or availability of mail drop boxes; limit who can assist in returning a mail-in or absentee ballots; and tighten ID requirements and expand purges. H.R. 1 corrects for these voter suppression tactics,” Pelosi wrote.

In Texas, SB7 scaled back Sunday morning voting hours, which would affect the “souls to the polls” tradition in Black churches. But key GOP lawmakers in Austin now say the final draft didn’t represent what they really intended.

Another provision derided as the “Trump amendment,” reflecting the ex-president’s efforts to somehow nullify his defeat, made it possible to overturn elections on suspicion of fraud even without evidence that enough votes were tainted to affect the outcome.

Now, as Martinez Fischer put it, “they’re claiming amnesia on the provision.”