Ayes of Texas Are Still on Hold

By vanishing from the Capitol, by going on strike, Texas Democrats exposed themselves to ridicule Tuesday. Republicans slapped their faces on milk cartons as if they were missing children. U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, said the ploy -- “to turn tail and run” -- contradicts everything Texas stands for.

It was, said Republican Gov. Rick Perry, a “childish prank.”

It was also a success.

For a second day, 51 Democratic legislators remained hunkered down in a small town in southern Oklahoma. They chatted with constituents who had baked cookies and made the drive from northern Texas to show their support, met to discuss school finance and other issues and talked on their cell phones while wandering the grounds of a hotel.

For a second day, they prevented Republican leaders in the Texas House of Representatives from establishing a quorum, leaving a divisive legislative session at a standstill.

Far more important to the embattled Texas Democratic Party, however, was the sympathetic response it received across the state. Middle-of-the-road analysts and independent activists and lobbyists placed the blame for the fiasco on conservative Republicans who have wrested political control of Texas from the Democrats.

Newspaper editorial pages, including those typically supportive of the GOP, also lent their support to the Democrats. The Dallas Morning News, for example, encouraged Republicans to “play by the rules.”

In interviews, moderates and independents claimed Tuesday that Texas Republicans were not forthcoming about their politics during last year’s election campaign. Democrats failed to capture a single statewide election, giving the GOP control of the governor’s mansion, the Senate and the House for the first time since the 19th century.

“But Republicans in Texas campaigned as moderates,” said Samantha Smoot, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit group that fights for religious freedom and “individual liberties.”

“They campaigned as pro-public education. They made a pledge that they wouldn’t cut services to kids. And since the legislative session started we have seen the exact opposite. The most conservative wing of the Republican Party is clearly in charge, and has said so. They are using the budget crisis as a tool for dismantling programs that they ideologically dislike.”

The history of Texas politics is peppered with famously independent and abrasive personalities. But the state also has a long history of bipartisan cooperation, noted Cal Jillson, an independent, nonpartisan professor of political science at Southern Methodist University.

When President Bush was governor, his alliances with Democrats -- including then-Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, one of the most powerful figures in modern Texas politics -- aided Bush’s ascension to national prominence. Indeed, after the contentious presidential election of 2000, President Bush took to this very House floor in Austin to tell the American people that he would bring that spirit of cooperation to Washington.

Critics question whether Bush followed through on that pledge. Still, any semblance of civility in Texas has vanished, Jillson said.

Seeking to shore up the budget without raising taxes, Republicans have proposed dramatic cuts in social services, including removing 250,000 poor children from the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Several controversial bills backed by the GOP are rolling through the Legislature. One gives social conservatives on the state Board of Education -- the same activists who once protested a photo of a woman with a briefcase because it undermined family values -- the ability to reject new school textbooks. Another requires students to observe a moment of silence each day, and some Republicans have openly referred to the measure as the “school prayer bill.”

“There is a social agenda that is moving through the Texas Legislature,” Jillson said. “There is some awe at what the Republicans have been able to do.”

Democrats say what led them to boycott the Legislature was a proposal to reconfigure Texas’ congressional districts, a proposal pushed by DeLay. Democrats currently hold a slim majority of the state’s congressional seats, and the proposal would link far-flung regions of the state to allow the GOP to take as many as seven seats from Democrats in the next election cycle.

When the new districts were placed on the agenda Monday without a public hearing, Democrats walked. In a plan they kept hidden from their closest aides, 58 of the 62 Democrats in the House fled the Capitol, keeping the 88 members of the Republican majority from establishing a quorum. Democrats say they plan to stay in Oklahoma past a Thursday deadline for most legislation to be sent to the Senate.

Using a provision in the state Constitution, Republicans dispatched the Texas Rangers and troopers to arrest the Democrats. But the Democrats remained at a hotel Tuesday in Ardmore, Okla., where Texas’ jurisdiction does not apply.

“We have a message for Tom DeLay: Don’t mess with Texas,” Texas Rep. Jim Dunnam, a Democrat from Waco, said in Oklahoma.

DeLay, speaking to reporters in Washington, dismissed the suggestion that he is to blame for the shutdown.

“This is not spring break,” he said. “It is time to get back to work.... You should stand and fight for what you believe in and not turn tail and run.”

DeLay said he shared his redistricting plan with President Bush at the end of a GOP leadership meeting last week. Bush liked the plan, DeLay said.

Three Democrats returned to Austin on Tuesday; one was arrested. Troopers arrested state Rep. Helen Giddings outside her Austin apartment, which they had under surveillance. The arrest does not come with a criminal charge, but compelled Giddings to return to work at the Capitol.

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Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this report.