Sixth Texas Democrat in DC tests positive for COVID, and boycott isn’t going quite as planned
Updated at 5:26 pm: revised to include Phelan’s statement that he was not charged for canceled charter flight.
WASHINGTON – As COVID-19 hit more than 10% of Texas Democrats who fled Austin to prevent a GOP electoral law, the runaways spent Monday strategizing to push Congress for new suffrage protection, without being able to lobby personally.
A sixth member of the Texas House tested positive Monday, according to Dallas State Representative Rhetta Bowers, adding that she and others have brought food to those quarantined in their rooms.
“This is definitely not going to stop our work,” she said. “We just have to be a lot more careful.”
At the White House, a few blocks from her hotel hideout, press secretary Jen Psaki shrugged aside concerns that Vice President Kamala Harris might have contracted the coronavirus from the Texans or is now putting President Joe Biden at risk. Harris spent an hour with them last Tuesday, three days before a lawmaker developed cold-like symptoms and then tested positive.
“No extra precautions were taken,” Psaki said after discovering Harris had tested negative since then, insisting that her visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Sunday was routine and pre-planned.
But with six of the 55 refugees testing positive since Friday, Texans’ hopes of meeting Biden this week have clouded over significantly.
The outbreak turned their plans on their heads to return to the U.S. Capitol for more lobbying. Democrats across the country are calling for federal voting legislation to ease restrictions imposed after Donald Trump’s defeat in Austin and other GOP-controlled state capitals.
To pass the time and keep interest in their cause, the Texans hosted a hybrid seminar Monday with guest speakers and most of the lawmakers participating through Zoom. A screen showed about 20 dotted around a ballroom at the Washington Plaza Hotel – no more than three per table, each with a bottle of hand sanitizer.
“Everyone is talking about you, talking about what you are doing. I hope you can stay out of Texas for as long as you can until the governor and the rest of the Texas Republicans come to their senses, ”Dolores Huerta, 91, an icon of the labor movement who, along with the National Farm Workers Association, makes the National Farm Workers Association founded by César Chavez, said via video, the sound of a cat meowing underlined their comments. “You Texas Democrats are the soldiers who fight for everyone.”
The group started wearing masks and adjusting their plans on Saturday after three members tested positive. Two more tested positive on Sunday.
As soon as the first began to show symptoms, “we felt it was wise to proactively test our members and staff,” said Grand Prairie Rep. Chris Turner, head of the Democratic Caucus at Texas House.
The hotel staff thoroughly cleaned the meeting room that the Texans used for the past week.
Bower went out of her way to keep track of which coworkers tested positive so she could find out if she was around. She survived a COVID attack in December that also affected members of her family.
“We fought hard to get well,” she said.
“We followed all CDC guidelines,” said State Representative Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas. “We are grateful that we were vaccinated 100% in advance…. This Delta variant is no joke. “
Harris and Biden were also fully vaccinated, which health experts say should protect almost everyone from serious illness.
Harris met with Texans last Tuesday, the day after they fled Austin on short notice to thwart a GOP electoral law seen by Democrats as an attempt to drastically restrict minority participation in elections. They spent the rest of the week campaigning with senators for federal legislation that would preempt the measure and put Texas and other states with a history of discrimination that the US Supreme Court lifted in 2013 back under Justice Department scrutiny.
The Democrats in the House of Representatives killed Senate Law 7 with a strike in the evenings of the regular May session. Abbott convened the legislature for a month-long special session that opened on July 8th to revive it.
Elsa Caballero, president of SEIU Texas, who represents health care workers, security officers and janitors, compared breaking the quorum to a strike when workers have no other means to prevent unfair treatment.
“I am so proud of the courageous stance you have taken,” she said during the seminar.
In a virtual Q&A with journalists, Turner dismissed a question as to whether he expected to meet Biden in light of the outbreak. “We appreciate the president’s strong support for state voting legislation,” he said.
Houston MP Armando Walle said the caucus will need $ 1.5 million to cover transportation, room and board until August 7, when the current special session ends. Fundraising has not yet achieved that goal, he said, but it is ongoing. Beto O’Rourke and Willie Nelson participated, among others.
On Monday, Texas for All, a coalition of progressive and democratic groups, criticized the Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan’s “expensive and wasteful publicity stunt” last week when he offered Washington Democratic lawmakers a free flight home.
“After the speaker paid for an empty plane to fly to DC in a strange attempt to force our Democratic champions – who fight to protect Texas freedom of choice in the country’s capital – the plane left Washington so empty, how it was received. ”The coalition announced in a press release.
Coalition Director Sissi Yado added, “No pro-democracy legislature in Texas has boarded this plane because these champions are busy protecting Texans’ freedom of choice.”
However, Phelan spokesman Enrique Marquez said no plane had flown to Washington. Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, had planned to pay it out of his campaign money. But since no Democrats accepted the offer, Phelan’s campaign account did not cost anything, Marquez said.
“Because there was no passenger manifest, spokesman Phelan’s campaign was not billed,” he said in an email. “We wish the best to House Democrats who are recovering from COVID-19 in Washington, DC.”
Photos posted online showed House Democrats maskless as they went to Washington in two chartered jets.
Some Republicans have ridiculed them for being irresponsible – including some who also deride advice from experts on how to wear masks.
Donald Trump Jr. posted a mocking message on Instagram with a photo of the sober lawmaker on a bus going to the Austin airport.
“Who says God has no sense of humor?” Wrote Trump Jr., who contracted COVID-19 in November after his father, then President Donald Trump, was hospitalized for the illness.
On Monday night at 9 p.m. Central Time, MSNBC will host a live City Hall with the Texas Democrats.
The Republicans pinched the Democrats in the House of Representatives for giving up their duties in Austin and fleeing a fight. With just over a third of the chamber, the Democrats have enough leverage to break a quorum and shut down the process, but far too few votes to thwart a bill.
Abbott’s campaign gained advertising time for a 30-second commercial that shows footage of an empty State Capitol chirping crickets. There’s a short clip on CNN by State Representative Michele Beckley, D-Lewisville, in which she says she isn’t sure the group would meet with Republicans in Congress – the ones who block federal law. (They don’t, aside from brief interactions in passing.)
“Instead of addressing border security, retired teachers, commercial and foster children, the Texas Democrats decided to go on a road trip,” the ad said. “Texas Democrats have to # go back to work.”
The outbreak complicated and preoccupied her plans for the week.
Just before the program started on Monday, a Democratic adviser, Abhi Rahman, sneezed. “Don’t worry, I’ve tested negative twice,” he said.
Caballero recalled election observers showing up at polling stations in Texas last fall with guns over their shoulders, a “scare tactic to keep people from voting.”
The bill that Abbott wants would, among other things, further strengthen partisan election observers. It would make it a crime for election workers to send unsolicited absentee voting and to limit early and absentee voting.
“We all know what this bill is about. It’s not about voter protection. It’s not about electoral fraud. This is just another attempt to prevent people from voting – to prevent certain communities from voting, ”Caballero said, turning it into“ a Republican takeover ”.
“In taking that stance, you have sent a loud message to Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov. Patrick and the rest of the Republican legislature,” she said.
Hector Sanchez, executive director of Mi Familia Vota, a group that advocates for Latin American citizens and immigrants, praised the “heroic, amazing delegation from Texas for standing up, lighting the spark of hope for democracy, inspiring us … There are Moments in history to remember when people stood up and said we won’t let that happen…. The Texan lawmakers are the ones who take this heroic stand, and we are in solidarity with all of you. “
“Why do we have people who wait six hours on a Tuesday just to have basic voting rights and some others can vote a lot easier?”
The fight in Texas, he said, was reminiscent of fighting in Arizona for SB 1070, a 2010 immigration restriction bill that was the strictest in the nation at the time, and before that, California’s proposal 187 in 1984.
Prop 187 was an electoral initiative that would have denied undocumented immigrants access to schools, non-emergency health care, and other government-sponsored services.
On both episodes, Sanchez said, “We voted out the most extreme votes … Texas is the present and the future of our nation.”
Robert T. Garrett, chief executive of the Austin office, contributed to this report.
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