The Man With the Plan
Long before the Texas Legislature did battle over redistricting, Tom DeLay knew exactly what he wanted: the defeat of five to seven white Democratic congressmen by appropriately conservative, sufficiently loyal conservative Republicans. And he knew how to get it.
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On a more positive note for DeLay, a few days later the House redistricting committee in Austin suddenly kicked out a bill and a proposed map. To Democrats like Elliott Naishtat, this gerrymandering was an outrage and an insult. Naishtat had migrated to Texas as a federal volunteer social worker after growing up in Queens, New York; he had ridden Ann Richards’s coattails into the Texas House in 1990, and he represented one of the state’s most liberal districts, in Austin. Naishtat was agog at what the Republicans were trying to do to congressional representation in Central Texas. The state capital would be divided into three districts so that the GOP could get rid of Lloyd Doggett. Austin’s historic and ethnically diverse south side would be handed to Republican Lamar Smith, a near-nativist who had engineered a massive overhaul of immigration law and who lived in San Antonio, eighty miles away. Austin was always being punished for its snooty airs and liberalism. But what to make of Lockhart? Southeast of Austin, the little town would also be cut into three congressional districts. "They want to split the high school off from its football stadium!" Naishtat cried.
Waco, a city that had remained entirely within a single congressional district for a century, would be divided at the Brazos River. The purpose was to separate Chet Edwards from the black community’s vote. Edwards was also to be cut off from the sprawling Army base to the west of Waco. Fort Hood was the largest employer in the area, and Edwards was a member of the House Armed Services Committee. The Republicans wanted to put Edwards in a stacked-deck race against state representative Arlene Wohlgemuth, whose obsession was controlling health and social services costs.
The plan voted out of the committee was hurtling toward passage like a runaway train. The Republicans weren’t even going to hold public hearings. The only way to stop this, Democrats realized, was to run out the clock on the 2003 legislative session. If 51 of them left the state and stuck together, they could break the quorum (100 out of 150) and bring the House to a standstill.
However brief and futile, the revolt of the Killer D’s was a national sensation. The House had adjourned for Mother’s Day, and most Republicans had left Austin for the holiday weekend. Consequently, Craddick and his team were caught flat-footed Monday morning. Seeing that the House had too few members to attain a quorum, he ordered a lockdown of the chamber. Nobody could leave. Capitol staff started hauling in cots so the captured House members could sleep. It was quickly noted, though, that most of the hostages were Republicans, who were not happy sitting at their desks and twiddling their thumbs. Capitol staff quietly returned and hauled away the cots. Craddick banged his gavel and ordered the House to stand at ease. At a press conference, reporters hooted and asked him where the Democrats had gone. The best Craddick could do was sneer that the runaways were "Chicken D’s."
Judging from the behavior of his aides, DeLay was livid. A lawyer on his staff called the Justice Department to inquire if the FBI had the authority to arrest the Democrats. The state Department of Public Safety set up a command center in a room next to the Speaker’s office in the Capitol. From Austin, DeLay got a report that a bunch of Democrats were aboard Pete Laney’s plane. Laney’s craft was a Piper turboprop; how many fugitives could there have been? But they didn’t need to bring in all the Democrats. A few were on the Craddick team—notably a flamboyant black entertainment lawyer from Houston named Ron Wilson—and had reported for the vote. One more Democrat on the floor would give Craddick his quorum; turning Laney’s plane around would do the trick. A caller from DeLay’s office helpfully provided the Federal Aviation Administration with the tail number of Laney’s plane, and a DPS investigator implied to the Department of Homeland Security that an "overdue" plane carrying state officials might have crashed or might even have been the victim of terrorists. The plane landed uneventfully in Ardmore, Oklahoma.
The Democrats knew the jig was up the first night, when they saw reporters in the lobby of their hotel. They were approached by a nervous DPS trooper, who acknowledged that he had no authority to arrest them. He asked if he could give any of them a ride back to Austin. Ever sure of himself, DeLay told the Houston Chronicle that calling in federal marshals or FBI agents to arrest the fugitives was justified because redistricting involved congressional seats, which made it a federal matter. Ardmore swarmed with the national press. CNN’s Judy Woodruff demanded of one legislator if he didn’t feel "a little silly doing this." That was an arguable point of view, and it was hard for Democrats to tell their story and make their case in a twenty-second soundbite. But the Killer D’s stuck it out in Ardmore for four days. They forced Craddick to gavel the regular session to a close without a vote on redistricting.
The episode was farcical, no doubt about it. But another CNN commentator, Bill Schneider, reported that "Texas authorities had followed up on DeLay’s suggestion and asked the feds to help round up lawmakers on the lam." Even before the Democrats climbed onto their buses and came back across the Red River, state troopers in Austin were clearly anxious about the implications of what they had done; one DPS official ordered all field notes, photos, and computer records of the manhunt destroyed. Investigations were also under way at the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice. In an internal Justice Department report, an official wrote that DeLay’s requests to call in the FBI had gone unheeded because they were, in a word, "wacko."
AS IN OTHER WARS THEY had waged, the Republicans had trouble managing the peace. Democrats watched in delight as the victors fell snarling, snapping, and yelping over the spoils in one special session, and then another, and then another. Final resolution of the Republican map got so hung up in a fight between West Texas Republicans that Perry was just days away from having to call a fourth special session, which would have prolonged the agony into the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. Lubbock’s state senator, Robert Duncan, wanted to make sure his hometown’s freshman congressman, Randy Neugebauer, had a safe GOP seat, but he also begged to differ with those who wanted to rid Congress of Democrats. Duncan thought highly of Abilene’s Charlie Stenholm and believed the farmers and ranchers and small-town chambers of commerce out in the mesquites did not want to sacrifice him. But Craddick insisted on creating a new district around his hometown of Midland. The seat was tailored so that Mike Conaway, an old friend and oil-patch business partner of President Bush’s, could fulfill his dream of serving the nation in Congress. So intricate is the process of redistricting that every jiggle of district boundary lines sets off a clatter of dominoes throughout the state. "We’re fighting over Deaf Smith County," said one Republican negotiator, "a place most people couldn’t find with a map."
Recognizing that his master plan might yet come to nothing, DeLay hurried to the pink granite statehouse and set about proving who ran this joint now. As he shuttled between meetings with the leadership teams of Craddick, Dewhurst, and Perry, reporters knew he was in the Capitol but could never get close to him. An aide of one House Democrat looked across an atrium and saw DeLay, wearing a dark blue suit, rocking thoughtfully in the office chair of a Republican member. He must have felt her gaze. DeLay looked around, saw her through the window, and smiled at her briefly; then the blinds dropped so hard they bounced and snapped shut.
Naturally, DeLay’s friend Craddick won and Duncan lost. (Duncan emerged from one meeting and pantomimed a routine in which his wrist was twisted toward his shoulder blade.) Midland got a new district customized for the pal of the president, while in Lubbock and Abilene the incumbents Neugebauer and Stenholm had to run against each other. The last few days, DeLay hovered over maps, reviewing every tweak. Later, when Democrats challenged the new districts in court, Republican state representative Phil King, of Weatherford, said in a deposition that DeLay told the legislators to forget one nudge of the lines of his Twenty-second District; it would take away too much of his base.
Two days after Perry signed the redistricting bill into law, in October 2003, DeLay downplayed his role at one of his tightly controlled press briefings on Capitol Hill. "I am a Texan," he said of his great redistricting victory. "It’s a process that affects Texas. I am also a leader in the House, and the Republican Conference’s point of view, I felt strongly, should be represented. It’s an open process, and I have every right as a citizen of the United States to participate in the process."
He had subjected government in Texas to seven months of acrimony and gridlock, and the bill for the special sessions was passed on to taxpayers in the amount of $5 million. As Christmas approached, the battleground in Austin shifted from the Capitol to a nearby federal courtroom. Before a three-judge panel, several advocacy organizations joined in a suit to have the congressional districts thrown out on the grounds that they violated the Voting Rights Act. (The plan was upheld, and the case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.)
During the trial, reporters learned one day that DeLay was in town raising money for his perpetual revolution at a closed affair in the InterContinental Stephen F. Austin Hotel, downtown. Security officers wouldn’t allow the reporters near the stairs to the chandeliered room, but they milled about in the lobby, craning their necks and joking. This time they thought they had him cornered. He would have to run their gantlet as they hammered him with questions. But once more, DeLay was ahead of the game. He shook hands and basked in the adulation and gratitude of GOP donors and raked in the dough. Then his heels rang and his short legs pumped as he and his aides jogged down a fire escape and gave those liberal clowns the slip.
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