Texas Democrats continue their quorum break in an effort to keep the Republican-controlled Legislature from passing new congressional maps. The move has fellow Democrats across the country cheering and some party leaders, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, saying their state would counter Texas’ efforts by redrawing their own maps.
In Oregon, however, Republican lawmakers are calling it hypocrisy.
Lauren Dake is political reporter and producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting. She joined Texas Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Oregon is one of the other few states that require a two-thirds majority to form a quorum in the Legislature – is that right? And is that more than most states?
Lauren Dake: Yeah, I mean, that’s really the reason why these walkouts work, is because of the rules around a quorum – so a quorum being the minimum number of people who have to be present to actually conduct business.
Oregon and Texas are two of only four states that have that requirement that require a two-thirds quorum to do business, which is why lawmakers have so much leverage. When they leave, there aren’t enough people to make a quorum. Therefore, the majority party cannot pass bills.
And it is a tactic deployed by both parties. Even in Oregon, the Democrats have walked out. But the commonality here is it’s a tool used by the party and the minority. So some call it the nuclear option, but clearly we’re seeing it’s becoming more commonly used.
So the party of the minority in Texas is the Democrats. In Oregon, it’s the Republicans. Can you give us some recent examples of GOP walkouts in recent years?
I can because there have been several legislative walkouts in Oregon in recent history.
It’s actually mostly a tactic that has been used by Republicans here. They have walked out in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023. And in 2023, that was the longest walkout in our state’s history. It lasted more than 40 days. But even the short walkouts, they derailed the legislative session to some degree. Certain policy bills die because time simply runs out.
The reason for some of the more recent Republican walkouts have really ranged here from Republicans trying to kill a climate change bill. During one, they were protesting COVID-19 restrictions. They’ve walked out over bills related to abortion access and gender-affirming care. So there’s been a real range of issues.
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Here in Texas, the governor can just call special session after special session. So what ends up happening is maybe the Democrats kind of delay things, but it seems that except maybe in a few cases, it’s hardly ever fully effective. There’s an acknowledgement that eventually the Republican majority is going to pretty much get what they want here in Texas.
Is the same true in Oregon or have they actually made a difference?
Certainly, the governor here could also call a special session – that is also always on the table. But we have seen in the past that the Democrats have had to make pretty considerate concessions to bring Republicans back. And they’ve done that.
During the 2023 walkout, Democrats agreed to water down bills related to abortion access and gun control in order to convince the Republicans to return. Another walkout certainly helped kill a climate change bill that the Democrats wanted and the Republicans did not.
And there has been another pretty significant consequence of these walkouts that’s maybe worth mentioning here, which is in 2022, Oregon voters approved this measure banning lawmakers who had 10 or more unexcused absences from seeking reelection. So in 2023, several Republicans tested that the courts ruled against them and several of them essentially lost their seats because of the walkout.
Oh, wow. So tie this back to my introduction, because I said that Republicans in Oregon were calling all of this “hypocrisy.” What’s the word now from them?
Yeah, Democrats in Oregon have been praising the walkout in Texas, despite saying that when Republicans here in Oregon walked out, you know, they called it a subversion of democracy. They were very upset.
The way that the Democrats have really squared this is they have drawn this distinction between debates around policy versus what they see as a political grab in Texas.
So they’re saying if you want to debate policy, if you want to debate COVID-19 restrictions or access to certain types of health care, you should stay in the state house and debate. But then they have said, but if it comes to something like disenfranchising voters, which they believe is happening in this Texas redistricting effort, they seem to think that a walkout is justified. And Republicans here in Oregon just say that’s a very hypocritical stance.
