Gina Hinojosa was fuzzy on where she was. But she was sure she wasn’t in Texas anymore.
The Texas state representative had fled her state with fellow Democrats on Sunday to deprive Republicans of the quorum they needed to pass an aggressive gerrymander that could potentially hand control of the U.S. House to the GOP next fall.
She knew she was somewhere in Illinois, where Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker had invited the Texas lawmakers in a show of solidarity. But when this reporter inquired what town she was in, she had to ask someone.
Why We Wrote This
Democratic lawmakers from Texas have decamped to Illinois in an effort to block a Republican gerrymandering bill back home. For now, it’s working – but the pressure is growing in their “fort-like” exurban hotel, hundreds of miles away from their families and lives back home.
“St. Charles” came the answer – an exurb a good hour west of Chicago. It’s a cute town, but the “fort-like convention hotel” she describes isn’t the kind of place most people would want to spend months hiding out. For a last stand, it isn’t exactly the Alamo.
Since Texas Republicans had threatened to arrest the Democrats if they attempted to flee the state, their escape plan was a closely held secret. Ms. Hinojosa had to pack before she even knew their mode of transportation, opting for a simple carry-on suitcase rather than a larger bag she might have to check. She’d stuffed it to the gills, but hadn’t considered how unpredictable Chicago weather could be. Already, a looming cold front had caught her off-guard.
“I have no long sleeves, so I’m gonna have to figure out how to prepare for it,” she says.
This isn’t Ms. Hinojosa’s first time fleeing the state to try to block a GOP power grab. In 2021, she helped lead House Democrats’ jailbreak to protest a restrictive voting law that statehouse Republicans were pushing through. That standoff, part of a 150-year tradition of quorum breaks, lasted 38 days, ending when a handful of Democrats eventually abandoned their colleagues and went back, giving Republicans the quorum they needed to pass the legislation.
Ms. Hinojosa says that while that walkout ultimately failed to stop the bill, it was still successful. The attention the Democrats generated “shamed [Republicans] into gutting their own bill,” she says, by removing controversial provisions such as a section that would have ended Sunday morning voting, when Black churches traditionally push parishioners to the polls, and another provision that would have let local judges overturn election results.
She describes this bill in similar terms. Two of the seats Republicans plan to eliminate are minority-opportunity districts, while two others that would become much harder for her party to win are held by Hispanic Democrats.
But unlike the 2021 voting bill, which had many pieces that could be modified (some of which the GOP stripped out more because of concerns that courts could deem them Voting Rights Act violations), this partisan redistricting bill has less room for compromise. It’s a simple map, already hammered out by Republicans for maximal gain. Either Democrats hold out long enough to block it, or Republicans pass it – and likely gain seats.
Hardball politics and threats
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has formally asked the Texas Supreme Court to remove House Democratic Minority Leader Gene Wu from his job in retaliation for the move, claiming he “forfeited” his office when he left the state, while threatening to do the same for every Texas Democrat who doesn’t come back. If any step foot in the state, Republicans have pledged that Texas Rangers will arrest them and haul them to the capitol to achieve a quorum.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said he’ll move to expel the Democrats from office if they don’t return by Friday, and launched an investigation into whether former Rep. Beto O’Rourke was breaking the law by raising money to help cover each member’s $500-a-day fine for missing a voting session. Legal experts say neither threat appears to hold much water. Even if these Democrats are somehow expelled, they’d likely be replaced in special elections by other Democrats who could continue the fight.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who is facing off with Mr. Paxton in a heated GOP Senate primary, called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help bring the lawmakers home, and to investigate whether accepting money from groups like Mr. O’Rourke’s constituted “bribery or other public corruption offenses.”
Senator Cornyn specifically asked the FBI to help figure out the lawmakers’ whereabouts – though they’re not that hard to find. On Wednesday morning, the hotel received a bomb threat.
“There was a threat. We are safe. This will not deter us from fighting for America,” Representative Wu texted the Monitor.
Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters
The question is whether Democrats can actually hold out long enough to block the map. In 2021, members stayed away for just over a month before a handful broke ranks and went back to Texas, giving Republicans enough votes for the quorum they needed.
This time, Democrats would have to stay away for months – but there’s a clearer end point. Candidate filings for Texas open up on Nov. 8, and the filing deadline is Dec. 8, a date Ms. Hinojosa knew off the top of her head because it’s also her birthday.
If Republicans want the new map for the next election, they’d likely need to have it in place by early November, and definitely by early December.
Still, that’s a long time for Democrats to last. And just a few defections could doom the effort.
A nationwide fight
For now, Democrats have only pledged to ride out the current special legislative session, which ends in late August. But Governor Abbott is likely to immediately call another special session.
“This is a day-by-day situational fight,” says Ms. Hinojosa, repeatedly declining to say how long her caucus has discussed staying away from Texas.
Even if Texas Democrats are ultimately successful in thwarting their state map, the larger fight isn’t over. Vice President JD Vance visited Indiana on Wednesday to pressure reluctant Republican lawmakers to redraw their congressional map, possibly turning a 7-2 GOP advantage into a 9-0 edge. Republican lawmakers in Missouri are already moving to axe a Democratic seat, Nebraska Republicans are considering turning their lone swing district into a safe Republican one, and Ohio Republicans are in the middle of a redraw that could eliminate three more Democratic-held seats.
Democrats are vowing to fire back with gerrymanders of their own, but they face bigger hurdles. Governor Pritzker keeps making veiled threats to redraw Illinois’ map, but it’s already gerrymandered about as far as Democrats can manage. New York Democrats would need to repeal a state constitutional amendment to redraw their map – and even then it wouldn’t take effect until 2028.
California is Democrats’ best opportunity, and Democratic leaders there are pushing to temporarily sideline their state’s independent redistricting commission. But voters would have to agree to it in this November’s election, a potentially tough sell. And even if Democrats manage to squeeze five or so more seats out of their state’s map to match the five for Republicans in Texas, Republicans are likely to come out ahead from gerrymandering nationally.
This is why playing defense in Texas is critical for Democrats – no matter how tedious the holdout starts feeling once the initial burst of energy and media attention fades.
“It’s hard for a bunch of Type A personalities to be so isolated, I’ll tell you that,” Ms. Hinojosa says with a laugh. “I don’t want to be away from my son. I don’t want to be away from my husband. But I do this work because of my son. … When you think about all the ways Texans, Americans, have had to sacrifice to defend our country, to protect our freedoms, it’s not a lot to ask for us to be away for this time.”
Whether that sentiment can sustain these lawmakers for months, hundreds of miles away from their families, work, and lives remains to be seen.
