State House Minority Leader Gene Wu detailed Texas Democrats’ quorum-busting in recent weeks as other states like California weigh counter redistricting.
Texas Democrats got a heroes’ welcome on opening day of the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis, with DNC Chair Ken Martin and Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu outlining their response to Republicans’ redistricting plan.
“We’re fighting fire with fire in Texas with a massive mobilization effort, and working alongside brave Texas Democrats who are standing up and squaring up with [Gov.] Greg Abbott and [President] Donald Trump,” Martin said in his opening remarks on Aug. 25.
He said the committee is pairing organizing efforts with legal challenges. Accusing Republicans of undermining “voting rights and fair elections,” Martin said the clash was central to the party’s immediate plans, saying Democrats are “holding Republicans’ feet to the fire with the state-of-the-art war room” and challenging them in court.
Wu described what he and colleagues experienced during the Democrats’ quorum break amid the first special session, where the absence of dozens of Democrats stopped a vote on new congressional maps—until they later returned. Gov. Abbott called a second special session, where the maps were able to pass.
“They tried to send the FBI after us. They doxxed our homes. They sent rogue vigilantes after us. They put [Texas Department of Public Safety] troopers in front of our houses.”
Members confronted “bomb threats,” he said. “We got kicked out of hotels for the bomb threats.”
Wu said the DNC moved resources quickly.
“Chair Martin and the DNC made sure we had over a quarter million text messages” to constituents, he said. “We had 30,000 volunteers make phone calls.”
“Chair Martin himself, personally, convened organizations, convened coalitions of our allies, of our groups that supported us, all around the nation, to make sure that everyone was on the same page,” Wu said. “To make sure we were talking about it in the same way, to make sure that whatever we do, that the messaging to the public was that Democrats were fighting corruption everywhere.”
The push helped spark actions beyond Texas, he said.
He said that the Texas fight helped prompt Democratic countermoves elsewhere, including “getting California to take the step up, to become the safety net for the country,” and sparking discussions in “New York and Illinois, and Maryland.”
The objective is broader than energizing core Democrats, Wu said.
“What we are doing is igniting the hearts of Americans to remind them that what makes America great is us,” Wu said. “It is Americans who make America great, and we will go back to that. We will go back to ... [an] America that works for people who work hard and follow the rules. Democrats are gonna fight for Americans.”
