Texas Democrats fled the state to oppose GOP redistricting. Why this one stayed behind.

USA Today

3 days ago

In 2003, Texas Rep. Richard Peña Raymond battled a Republican redistricting plan all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, he's doing it again. But as fellow Democrats fled the state, he stayed.
AUSTIN – State Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, a South Texas Democrat, has spent the past week prowling near-empty halls in the Texas state Capitol, talking to any Republican lawmaker who would listen and trying to avert a U.S. Supreme Court showdown.
On the nearby House floor, Republican lawmakers maneuvered to try to launch a rare mid-decade redistricting effort. They've drawn up a new map of U.S. House districts that could give the GOP five more seats and help the party maintain control of the narrowly-divided chamber.
Most of Raymond's Democratic colleagues left Texas in an attempt to bust the quorums needed for the legislature to pass the measure. But he stayed behind, trying to cajole, convince, pressure or plead his way out of the crisis.
For Raymond, it's déjà vu all over again.
In 2003, when Texas Republican lawmakers again tried to redraw districts outside the norms of the once-a-decade process that follows each new Census, Raymond was on the redistricting committee and became an ardent voice of the opposition. When the measure passed, he was named as a plaintiff in a lawsuit that ultimately ended in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
This time, he said, the stakes are even higher.
'Two-thousand-three was a big deal. We went through a lot,' Raymond, 64, told USA TODAY from his first-floor office at the Capitol. 'I could see that that was history making and what's going on right now will be history making.'
Midterm battle prompts Texas showdown
The current showdown began when President Donald Trump and White House officials urged Texas Republican leaders to redraw voting maps to add five new Republican-friendly seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. State Democrats traveled to Illinois – some even to New York and Massachusetts – to prevent Republicans from reaching the two-thirds quorum in the 150-member legislature needed to conduct business.
If Texas Republicans succeed in adding five GOP seats to the U.S. House, the Trump-friendly chamber could allow the president to continue one of the most aggressive and disruptive agendas in modern presidential history. A Democratic majority in January 2027 opens the door to Congressional investigations, legislative paralysis − even a third impeachment.
Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to arrest the absent lawmakers and the U.S. Justice Department has said it will also try to track down the AWOL representatives. And on Aug. 8, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the state Supreme Court to oust 13 Democratic lawmakers from office over their absence from the Capitol, arguing they abandoned their seats when they fled the state.
The GOP's Texas power play has set off a redistricting arms race as blue state leaders move to create more Democratic-leaning House seats to counter Texas, and lawmakers in other red states, including Indiana and Missouri, consider joining the fray. Vice President JD Vance met with Indiana lawmakers on Aug. 7 reportedly to urge them to redraw maps and Florida Republican leaders have said they, too, will form a committee to begin redrawing districts.
In 2003, Texas Republicans also tried to redraw maps three years after Census data was released, prompting state Democrats to retreat to a Holiday Inn in Oklahoma, just over the state line from Texas and out of reach of troopers who could force them to return.
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Raymond fought the bill in committee then joined his colleagues in Oklahoma. During committee hearings, he was at times the lone Democrat, objecting to Republican motions and grilling witnesses about the legality and fairness of gerrymandering maps for partisan gain. His goal was to get his comments and questions – and their replies – on the official record.
'Just really putting them through the ringer to build the court record,' he remembered. 'I was very, very involved in it, from the beginning to the end.'
Lawmakers ultimately approved the new maps. But lawsuits were filed and the case wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 5-4 decision upheld the Texas redistricting plan but ruled part of it violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Latino voters. A proposal to split Laredo, Raymond's hometown, in half was removed.
'It was a 50-50 victory, but a victory nonetheless,' he said.
'Try to talk to everybody'
On Aug. 8, Raymond walked the short distance from his first-floor office to the second-floor House chamber. He wound his way around desks, chatting with fellow lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, patting others on the back, joking with others.
There's a saying, he said, that's popular in the Spanish-speaking border city where he's from: Hablando se entiende, or 'Speaking to each other, you're able to understand each other.'
'I have always tried my whole career to try to talk to everybody, get to know everybody, all 149 other members,' he said. 'That hasn't changed.'
Raymond, a state lawmaker since 2001, is one of the more tenured Democrats in the legislature. Known as a moderate, he represents a heavily Latino district that fans out for several square miles from Laredo along the U.S.-Mexico border and is home to about 183,000 residents.
Last year, Trump managed a near sweep of Texas border counties, traditionally a Democratic stronghold, winning 14 of the 18 counties on or near the border, including Webb County, which includes Laredo.
Trump's wins along the border were the biggest for a presidential candidate in three decades, outpacing those by native Texan George W. Bush when he won the governorship in 2004.
The border's shifting allegiances make it politically risky for representatives of those districts to align too closely with national Democratic figures, such as Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is essentially harboring the Texas Democrats, said Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist.
It's no coincidence, Jones said, that five of the six Democrats who stayed behind last week were from border districts in South Texas. Raymond, who is up for reelection next year, also likely prefers to keep his distance, he said.
Republicans in Texas appear to be razor-focused on keeping the new redistricting maps unchanged, Jones said, despite the efforts of Raymond or anyone else.
'The idea you can stay behind and get maps drawn to be less impactful on Democratic representation is very unlikely,' he said.
Raymond acknowledged he's faced with a herculean task – not unlike Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill at Tartarus in Greek mythology. His deepest fear, he said, is that the issue will again end up before the Supreme Court – this time with a court much more malleable to the GOP agenda.
Still, he'll keep trying. When it gets to feel overwhelming, he said, he tries to remind himself that other members equally love their country and state – and are trying to make it better.
'I recognize that we won't always agree on how we get there, but I don't ever doubt that,' Raymond said. 'I always start from that common place.'
The session on Aug. 8 was brief: Eight minutes gavel to gavel. House Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Republican, recognized there still wasn't a quorum, chastised the missing members and adjourned until Monday, Aug. 11.
Moments after Burrows gaveled the meeting to a close, Raymond began talking to other lawmakers.
Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.
Contributing: Zac Anderson, USA TODAY.