fate of the nation tied to TX Democrats

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just got this email in my box -- it is really scary. Read the part where it states how an increase in TX Republicans will permanently change the balance of power in the country:

Dear Philadephia-area MoveOn member,

Please join the brave Texas Senators on their "Defending Democracy"
tour at City Hall in Philadelphia on Monday.

Here are the details:

WHO: Texas Senators;
Mayor Street;
Congressman Chaka Fattah (INVITED);

WHAT: Press Conference

WHEN: Monday, September 8, 1:00 P.M. EST

WHERE: Mayor's Reception Room, Room 202
at City Hall, Philadelphia

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte and Sen. Rodney Ellis will greet
distinguished Pennsylvania officials and supporters at the Mayor's
Reception Room at City Hall at 1 p.m. on Monday, September 8.

We should all attend to thank these senators and their colleagues
for their courageous efforts to defend democracy. As you know,
these Senators are among those Democrats who fled Texas for
New Mexico to "break the quorum" in the Texas Senate and block
passage of a Republican Congressional redistricting plan that
would disenfranchise minority voters in Texas and replace six
or seven Democratic congressmen with Republicans hand-picked by
Bush and his cronies.

Please come by City Hall and thank these Senators for their courage
and commitment to Democracy. With our help, they are going to win
this fight.

Thanks,

--Wes Boyd
MoveOn.org
September 5, 2003

P.S. Here's an update on our "Defending Democracy" campaign:

- Our hard-hitting ad ran in the NY Times yesterday. The headline is
"President Bush: Don't Mess with Texas. Don't Mess with Democracy."
You can view the ad here:
http://www.moveon.org/press/ads/Texas.pdf

- Local advertising supporting the Senators has begun in Texas,
at first on radio.

- Three Texas State Senators spoke to a packed press conference in
Washington D.C. yesterday, announcing their continued commitment to
defeat the Texas gerrymander. I've attached their statement from
this conference below.

- Unfortunately, one of the Texas 11, Senator Whitmire, has
returned to Texas. It's yet not known exactly what his plans are
and what impact this will have but the fight continues.

- Our work to connect the dots is taking hold. CNN "Inside Politics"
yesterday aired a segment with this theme: "The 4 R's: Remove (Clinton),
Recount (Florida), Redistricting (Texas), Recall (California)",
featuring interviews with the Senators. The national media is
getting the message.

These Texas Senators are continuing the fight and taking it to
President Bush's front door and to the nation at large.

In case you've missed the earlier emails on this campaign, I've
included the original letter from Senator Rodney Ellis that began
MoveOn's campaign for the Texas 11:

----

Dear friends,

I am writing to you from a hotel room in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
where I and 10 of my colleagues in the Texas Senate have been forced
to reside for the past 20 days. If we return to our homes, families,
friends, and constituents, the Governor of Texas will have us
arrested.

I know, it sounds more like a banana republic than the dignified
democracy on which we have long prided ourselves. We are effectively
exiled from the state due to our unalterable opposition to a
Republican effort -- pushed by Tom Delay and Karl Rove, and led by
Texas Governor Rick Perry -- that would rewrite the map of Texas
Congressional districts in order to elect at least 5 more Republicans
to Congress.

You may not have heard much about the current breakdown in Texas
politics. The Republican power play in California has obscured the
Republican power play in Texas that has forced my colleagues and me to
leave the state.

Recognizing that public pressure is the only thing that can break the
current stalemate, our friends at MoveOn have offered to support our
efforts by sharing this email with you. In it, you will find:

-Background information on how the situation in Texas developed;
-Analysis of what's at stake for Democrats and the democratic process;

The Republican redistricting effort shatters the tradition of
performing redistricting only once a decade immediately after the
Census -- making redistricting a perpetual partisan process. It
elevates partisan politics above minority voting rights, in
contravention of the federal Voting Rights Act. It intends to decimate
the Democratic party in Texas, and lock in a Republican majority in
the U.S. House of Representatives. And Republican efforts to force a
vote on this issue by changing the rules of legislative procedure
threaten to undermine the rule of law in Texas.

We do not take lightly our decision to leave the state. It was the
only means left to us under the rules of procedure in Texas to block
this injustice. We are fighting for our principles and beliefs, and we
can win this fight with your support.

Sincerely,

Rodney Ellis
Texas State Senator (Houston)
August 18, 2003
___________________

Background:

During the 2001 session of the Texas Legislature, the legislature was
unable to pass a Congressional redistricting plan as it is required to
do following the decennial Census. A three judge federal panel was
forced to draw the plan. Neither Governor Rick Perry or then Attorney
General John Cornyn, both Republicans, objected to the plan, which was
reviewed and approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 2002 Congressional elections, the first held under the new
redistricting plan, resulted in a Congressional delegation from Texas
consisting of 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans. However, five of the 17
Democrats prevailed only because they were able to win the support of
Republican and independent voters. All statewide Republican candidates
carried these five districts. Most experts agree that the current plan
has 20 strong or leaning Republican districts and 12 Democratic
districts.

Meanwhile, the 2001 redistricting of Texas legislative seats (which
was enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislative Redistricting
Board, after the legislature again gridlocked in its efforts) resulted
in wide Republican majorities in both the Texas House and Texas
Senate. Now Tom Delay has made it his priority to force the
Republican-controlled Legislature to enact a new redistricting plan to
increase the number of Republican-leaning Congressional districts.
Republicans believe they can manipulate the districts to elect as many
as 22 Republicans out of the 32 member Texas Congressional delegation.
They achieve this by packing minority voters into as few districts as
possible and breaking apart rural districts so that the impact of
independent voters will be reduced and suburban Republican voters will
dominate.

During the regular session of the Texas Legislature, Democratic
members of the Texas House of Representatives exercised an
unprecedented parliamentary move to prevent the House from passing Tom
Delay's redistricting plan. While Democrats are in the minority of the
House of Representatives, the state constitution requires that at
least 2/3 of the House be present for the House to pass a bill.
Because it was clear that the Republicans would entertain no debate
and brook no compromise in their effort to rewrite the rules by which
members of Congress are elected, the Democrats were forced to break
the quorum to prevent the bill from passing. Because the Republican
Speaker of the House and Governor called on state law enforcement
officials to physically compel the Democrats to return, the lawmakers
removed themselves to a Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma -- outside
the reach of state troops(1). In there effort to apprehend the
Democrats, Tom Delay officially sought the help of the Department of
Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation and the Department
of Justice.

The House Democrats (nicknamed the "Killer D's", based on an earlier
episode in Texas history in which a group of Democratic state senators
called the "Killer Bees" broke the quorum in the Senate over a
similarly political stalemate) succeeded in stopping Delay's
redistricting plan during the regular session, returning to Texas
after the legislative deadline had expired for the House to pass
legislation. However, because the Texas Legislature meets in regular
session only every two years, the state constitution gives the
Governor the power to call a 30-day special legislative session at any
time between regular sessions. Despite statewide protests from Texas
citizens who oppose Tom Delay's redistricting plan, the Governor has
called two special sessions(2) already this summer to attempt to force
the legislature to enact a new plan.

The first called session expired in a deadlock, as 12 of 31 Texas
Senators(3) opposed the plan. Under Senate rules and tradition, a 2/3
vote is required to consider any bill on the floor of the Senate,
giving 11 Senators the power to block a vote(4). The Republican
Governor and Lieutenant Governor then determined they would do away
with the 2/3 rule, and called another special session, forcing 11
Democratic Senators to break the quorum and leave the state.(5) These
Senators have spent the past 22 days in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Governor has indicated he will continue calling special sessions
until the Republican redistricting plan is enacted, despite the fact
that the Republican-controlled Texas Supreme Court recently rejected
the Governor's writ of mandamus filing to compel the Senators to
return to the Senate. Meanwhile, eleven Democratic state senators are
exiled from their state, unable to be with their families, friends,
and constituents, for fear of being arrested as part of a partisan
power play by Republicans. In the most recent indignity, Republican
Senators voted to fine the absent Democrats up to $5,000 per day, and
to revoke parking and other privileges for their staffs as long as the
Senators are away.

What's at stake:

At stake, on the surface, is whether Tom Delay will succeed in
exploiting Republican control of the Texas Legislature to add to the
Republican majority in the United States Congress. But deeper issues
are also at stake.

1. If the Republicans succeed in redrawing the Texas Congressional
lines to guarantee the election of five to seven more Republicans, it
will ensure that Republicans hold the majority in the U.S. House of
Representatives for the entire decade and will likely result in Tom
Delay becoming Speaker of the House.(6)

2. The Republican advantage would be gained by removing many African
American and Hispanic voters from their current Congressional
districts and "packing" them into a few districts that already have
Democratic majorities. The voting power of these minority voters would
be dramatically diluted by the Republican plan, in contravention of
the federal Voting Rights Act. If the Republicans succeed, over 1.4
million African American and Hispanic voters will be harmed. It would
be the largest disenfranchisement of minority voters since the Voting
Rights Act was passed.

3. Redistricting exists for the purpose of reapportioning voters among
political districts to account for population shifts. The purpose of
this reapportionment is to ensure a roughly equal number of voters in
each district, to preserve the principle of "one man, one vote."(7)
For this reason, redistricting has always been conducted immediately
following the U.S. Census' decennial population reports. Tom Delay now
proposes a new redistricting plan two years after the Census report
simply because Republicans gained control over the Texas Legislature
in 2002 and now have the power to enact a much more Republican-
friendly plan than the one drawn by the federal courts two years ago.
This is an unprecedented approach to redistricting, one that
subordinates its original purpose of ensuring the principle of "one
man, one vote" to the purpose of perpetual partisan politics.
Redistricting, in this model, would never be a settled matter, and
districts would constantly be in flux depending on the balance of
political power in the Legislature.

4. The Texas Legislature has traditionally been defined by a spirit of
bipartisanship and cooperation. This issue has polarized the
legislature in a way that threatens to destroy that tradition. The
Republicans have effectively exiled their Democratic counterparts in a
power play that makes our state look more like a banana republic than
a dignified democracy. The arbitrary decision to discard the 2/3 rule
in the Senate sets a precedent that undermines that body's tradition
of consensus and cooperation. The deployment of state law enforcement
officials to apprehend boycotting legislators erodes the separation of
powers between the executive and legislative branches of government,
and diminishes legislators' ability to represent their constituents as
they see fit. The unilateral Republican effort to penalize Democratic
Senators and their staffs

What is needed:

The Democratic Senators currently in Albuquerque have two critical
needs. The first is to generate increased public awareness of the
situation. By all reason, every day the Senators are out of the state
this story should get bigger. Instead, news media have gradually lost
interest in the story. The California recall has dominated the
attention of the national media, and the Texas media has largely lost
interest in the story -- out of sight, out of mind. Without public
attention to this story, the Republicans have all the leverage -- if
it does not cost them politically, it costs them nothing(8) to
continue calling special sessions until the Texas 11 are forced to
come home.

The second critical need is funding. The cost of hotels, meeting
rooms, staff support, and public relations efforts is mounting. In
addition, the Senators must defend themselves legally against
Republican efforts to compel their return, while also filing legal
claims against the Republican power play. The Senators are actively
raising money for the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus Fund to offset
these costs and prepare themselves for a stay of indefinite duration
in Albuquerque.