Misery Loves Company
To the Editor:
Hayden Betts, writing for the Texas Tribune on Aug. 3, 2025 reported, “After significant quorum breaks in 1979, 2003, and 2021, Texas House Democrats are once again employing this nuclear option, fleeing the state Sunday to block passage of a congressional redistricting map that would give Republicans five additional seats in the U.S. House.”
Rep. Gina Hinojosa was interviewed by Austin CBS news Monday night; there was a video of Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos speaking to cameras in Chicago with Congressman Al Green; Rep Ann Johnson recorded a video of herself at an airport (a runway was in the background of her video) attempting to justify the need to break quorum.
A political science professor at the University of Houston has been quoted, “It’s a last resort for Democrats who have run out of options legislatively and even legally.”
None of the Democrats interviewed mentioned the “constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Dept. of Justice.”
I am reminded of NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher’s comment, “Truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”
The Texas Scorecard published an article under the headline “Four ‘coalition’ districts identified by the DOJ as unconstitutional are targeted for redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.” The article reports, “A July 7 letter from the DOJ Civil Rights Division to Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton urged the state to rectify “race-based” considerations used to create the specified districts or face legal action. It is the position of this Department that several Texas Congressional Districts constitute unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, under the logic and reasoning of Petteway (the Galveston County redistricting case),” the DOJ letter stated.
Abbott added redistricting to the special session agenda to avoid legal action and “rectify ‘race-based’ considerations used to create the specific districts.”
The decision in the U.S. Fifth Circuit’s 2024 ruling in the Petteway v. Galveston County redistricting case “reversed decades of precedent and established that districts based on “coalitions” of minority groups are not protected by the Voting Rights Act.”
According to Texas Tribune’s analysis of the proposed new districts, “Four of the five districts that Republicans have drawn with the intention of flipping would be majority Hispanic”. Also “To pick up new seats, Republicans have proposed to pack more Democratic voters into districts in the state’s blue urban centers, giving Democrats even bigger margins in districts they already control, such as those represented by Crockett, Rep. Joaquin Castro in San Antonio and Rep. Sylvia Garcia in Houston.”
If the objective of the quorum busters is to generate national media attention, how long will that attention last? And how much will it cost? House rules adopted in 2023 impose a $500-per-day fine on lawmakers who leave the state and indicate that campaign funds cannot be used to pay the penalties.
The 2003 quorum break was over a mid-term redistricting effort that was finally passed.
Ironically the quorum breakers fled to Illinois and New York--two states with the most gerrymandered maps in the union, which tells me these cowards are a perfect illustration of the adage ‘misery loves company.’ They didn’t stand up for their constituents, they sat down on a plane and flew away.
Cindy Rodibaugh Flatonia