By DINA ARÉVALO and FRANCISCO E. JIMÉNEZ
SAN JUAN — As more than 50 state lawmakers continued their protest against a Republican effort to change voting laws in Texas, local Democrats gathered across the Rio Grande Valley Friday to show their support for the group.
By flying to Washington on Monday, the lawmakers — some of whom are from the Valley — effectively broke the Texas House of Representatives’ ability to establish quorum, thereby preventing Republicans from calling a vote on what some consider one of the most restrictive voting reform bills in the country.
House Democrats have pledged to stay in D.C. for as long as it takes to kill the bill. But killing the state legislation isn’t their only goal.
The 50-odd lawmakers have been keeping busy this week meeting with some of Washington’s highest-ranking officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and key Democratic swing voters, such as Sen. Joe Manchin, who has thus far shown reluctance to support national voting reform legislation.
The Texas Democratic delegation is hoping to spur federal lawmakers to pass national voter reform so that moves like theirs — leaving the state to halt the state legislative process — will no longer be necessary to safeguard voting accessibility.
As the move has gained national attention, the House representatives have drawn heated criticism from their GOP opponents. Among that criticism has been a threat by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to arrest the Democrats upon their return to the state.
As a result, community and Democratic leaders from across the Valley gathered Friday to reiterate their support for the lawmakers as their fight stretches into the weekend.
In San Juan, the Tejano Democrats and La Unión del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, held a news conference Friday afternoon to show their support.
Meanwhile, on Friday morning, the Cameron County Democratic Party held a virtual press conference with some of the county’s top leaders, members of the media, and state Reps. Alex Dominguez and Eddie Lucio III.
HIDALGO COUNTY
Dozens of people gathered inside of Azure Bistro to listen to speakers share their thoughts on the ongoing voting rights legislation.
“I think it’s very important that our state legislators in Washington D.C. understand that what they’re doing is very important,” Juan Maldonado, Hidalgo County Chairman of the Tejano Democrats said. “We stand with them in this fight and in this issue. That is the number one purpose of this event.”
Maldonado said he has been in constant contact with the state reps, and said that it’s important to let the representatives know that they have the support of their constituents.
“We want to make sure that they understand that they do have that support,” Maldonado said. “We would like very much for people to understand that el voto de la nuestra gente es su voz. The vote is your voice, vote. This, I think, is going to trigger the next election to a major turnout from our communities.”
Among those who spoke during the event was Texas Democratic Party Chair and former Cameron County Judge Gilberto Hinojosa. He shared Maldonado’s sentiments.
“It’s important that we support our state reps in Washington D.C. right now fighting to make sure that Congress passes some laws to protect our citizens’ right to vote,” Hinojosa said.
He said he has been talking to the state representatives every day, including his daughter state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
“We’re talking to members on the phone every day,” Hinojosa said. “Every day we’re communicating with them. We’re amplifying a lot of the messaging that’s going on in DC. We’re very involved with what they’re doing right now.”
Danny Diaz spoke on behalf of LUPE Votes, whose mission is to ensure that their communities have political power. He said his organization takes issue with the proposed voting restrictions because it would make it more difficult for the people he represents to cast their votes in future elections.
“We know that our community is working really hard — two or three jobs,” Diaz said. “We’re a working class community — a poor working class community in many ways. People don’t have time to be thinking about this deeply every single day. We wanted to get together with community leaders to spread the word with members of the press to get our points across.”
CAMERON COUNTY
Over in Cameron County, Jared Hockema, the county’s Democratic chair, hosted the virtual press conference with Dominguez and Lucio, who remain in Washington.
Joining them were the majority of the Cameron County Commissioners’ Court, as well as Sheriff Eric Garza, County Clerk Sylvia Garza-Perez and Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez.
“What we’re doing here today is really just trying to bring awareness to what has become the most critical issue that we’re facing I think as a state and as a nation,” Mendez said.
“And that is really just access to voting rights and ensuring safe and fair elections for everyone,” he said.
As the group spoke, they made clear that the Democrats’ fight against Senate Bill 1 is a fight against voter suppression.
“This bill is not about voter ID, which seems to be a lot of the basis for the hate mail I’m getting,” Lucio said. “This bill is about voter suppression.”
Hockema was even more explicit, outlining the various ways the proposed legislation would change elections in Texas.
“If you look at what’s proposed in SB1, you have severe criminal penalties for small mistakes. If a teenager registers to vote 31 days before their 18th birthday instead of 30 days, that’s a felony,” Hockema said.
“If a voter doesn’t want a poll watcher to look over their shoulder and see how they vote, that’s a felony. If a judge tells somebody who’s disrupting the polling place to get out and stop it, that’s a felony,” he said.
Hockema said the bill would also cost the state more than $100 million in required upgrades to ballot equipment. In Cameron County alone, that figure would be around $5 million, he said.
Dominguez said the legislation — and the special legislative session Abbott called in order to try to pass SB1 — is nothing more than an attempt by the governor to force residents to comply with his demands.
“(Abbott) is someone who wants to order the people around … that they do the things that he wants them to do by force. He doesn’t represent the things that the people of Texas and the United States represent. He is lost,” Dominguez said in Spanish.
And that’s precisely why the House Democrats chose to break quorum by flying to Washington. They hope to put enough pressure on federal lawmakers to enact voter protections at the national level, superseding attempts by Abbott and the Texas GOP to enact restrictive legislation at the state level.
“I think there are two big bills that are married to one another right now. That’s the transportation bill and the John Lewis Act,” Lucio said, referring to two bills currently before the United States Congress.
The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, in particular, seeks to codify certain election protections that were struck down from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013.
When asked if their presence has been making a difference among their federal colleagues, both Lucio and Dominguez said yes, though it still remains to be seen how much of a difference.
“The optics of us being here and being able to have the stage that we have has obviously given them reason to pause and to reconsider their non-action to this point,” Lucio said.
“I think the needle is moving,” Dominguez said.
The two lawmakers remain undeterred — both by their mission in Washington, and by the political and legal threats they face once they return home.
“I used to be a Texas history teacher and never in the history of Texas was a piece of legislation, a bill, so good that it needed the governor of Texas to order more than 50 members of the House of Representatives to be arrested,” Dominguez said.
“I’m not afraid to be arrested,” he said.
Lucio echoed a similar sentiment.
“We just committed five months of hard work to the legislative process and here we are again with no end in sight doing what we think is right — our fundamental right to vote. I’m not running from a fight,” Lucio said.
“I’ve never run from a fight. This is me fighting. This is us fighting.”
