A State House Republican condemned the Democrat walkout of the Senate late last month, over what they claim is voter suppression legislation, and said that despite the session’s end, the GOP will be back with “a golden opportunity for us to accomplish more.”
“Busting quorum before a deadline to avoid certain issues may be a legislative strategy,” State Rep. Jeffrey Curtis “Jeff” Leach (R-Plano) said in a May 31 Twitter post about the strategy that is also used by Republicans where that party is in the minority. “But it’s also a losing strategy.”
Leach has represented House District 67 since he first assumed office in January 2013.
District 67 is made up of Plano, Allen, Richardson and Dallas in Collin County.
Texas Senate Bill 7, the Texas GOP’s priority legislation, is aimed at reforms for all voting processes. SB 7 includes provisions such as limits to early voting hours, restrictions on local voting options and reducing vote-by-mail options.
The left has been portraying the bill as a full-on disenfranchisement effort. Common Dreams claims SB 7 is a “ruthless voter suppression bill.”
Two days before the walkout, President Joe Biden claimed in a White House statement that SB 7 is “part of an assault on democracy that we’ve seen far too often this year—and often disproportionately targeting black and brown Americans.
“It’s wrong and un-American,” Biden continued in his statement. “In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote.”
SB 7 effectively died Monday, May 31, when minority Democrats broke quorum and walked out ahead of the bill’s midnight deadline. Prior to their walk-out, Democrats objected to suspension of the Senate’s own rules that normally would have given them more time to examine changes to the bill as it came out of committee.
Those changes included new vote-by-mail ID requirements.
Walkouts to kill legislation are not unique to Texas. The strategy has become a regular occurrence among minority GOP state lawmakers in Oregon. In February, Oregon Republican lawmakers walked out for the third straight year, this time over Gov. Kate Brown’s COVID restrictions. In 2019, Oregon Republican lawmakers walked out – and some went into hiding after Brown sent police after them – to successfully kill a bill to lower the state’s carbon emissions.
After the Democrat walkout in Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to withhold pay from the entire state legislature over the walkout by the Senate minority party and announced SB 7 would be revived in an upcoming special session.
“I expect legislators to have worked out their differences prior to arriving back at the Capitol so that they can hit the ground running to pass legislation related to these emergency items and other priority legislation,” Abbott said in a statement that followed the conclusion of the 87th regular Legislative Session. “During the special session, we will continue to advance policies that put the people of Texas first.”
Republicans in the Texas legislature seem to be trying to work out differences, even going so far as to admit that SB 7 is flawed. For example, Republicans in the Texas House, including State Rep. Travis Clardy (R-Nacogdoches), have promised to rewrite a tone-deaf portion of SB 7 that seemed to target the longtime “souls to the polls” practice by black churches to encourage congregants to vote. That was only one of the provisions of SB 7, all negotiated behind closed doors, and it limited Sunday early voting to 1 to 9 p.m.
Clardy told NPR that there are items in the bill he “looks forward to fixing.”
In his Twitter post days before Clardy’s comment, Leach claimed a Democrat admitted the night of the walkout that the event was a mistake.
“As a Texas Democrat said last night, ‘We’ll regret this,'” Leach said in his post. “And I couldn’t agree more. A gifted, golden opportunity for us to accomplish more. And we will.”