Texas House Democrats flee to Chicago to deny GOP redistricting effort

Opting to use what Texas politicians called a nuclear option, Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives arrived in Chicago on Sunday under threat of fines and arrest to deny Republicans the quorum they need to redraw five congressional districts aimed at helping President Donald Trump and the national GOP maintain a U.S. House majority in next year’s midterm elections.

A supportive Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was meeting the Texas Democrats when they landed Sunday evening at O’Hare International Airport. Pritzker issued a statement echoing Texas Democratic arguments that Republicans were using a special legislative session in Austin, aimed at providing relief for last month’s flood victims in the state’s Hill Country, to please Trump and “as political cover to push through a racially gerrymandered congressional map.”

“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” state Rep. Gene Wu, the chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement.

“We’re leaving Texas to fight for Texans,” Wu said. “We will not allow disaster relief to be held hostage for a Trump gerrymander. We’re not walking out on our responsibilities; we’re walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent. As of today, this corrupt special session is over.”

By coming to Illinois, the Democrats from Texas left a place where Republicans dominate and now find themselves in a state where the opposite is true.

The 150-member Texas House has 88 Republicans and 62 Democrats, with 100 members required to be present for a quorum call to conduct legislative business. It was not immediately clear Sunday evening precisely how many Democrats made the trip to Chicago. After the group landed Sunday evening at O’Hare, the Texas Democrats were expected to hold a news conference with Pritzker at the DuPage County Democratic headquarters in west suburban Carol Stream.

The Texas Democrats left the state after a House panel on Sunday scheduled the full chamber to vote on the new map on Monday — a roll call that now seems unlikely to occur.

Pritzker, in his statement, said the walkout denies Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott a quorum “to pass his rigged redistricting scheme,” which was encouraged by Trump’s political allies.

Pritzker and Abbott clashed often in the last few years over the Texas governor’s decision to bus and fly thousands of immigrants from the southern border to Chicago, in part to mock state and city sanctuary policies, resulting in Illinois and the city spending tens of millions of dollars for services.

A source close to Pritzker said discussions about Texas Democrats seeking help from the governor began June 28, when Pritzker attended a dinner for the Oklahoma Democratic Party.

There, Pritzker met with Kendall Scudder, the head of the Texas Democratic Party, and the two spoke about the challenges facing Texas Democrats. Pritzker vowed to support and defend them if they came to Illinois, the source said.

The topic came up again a little more than a week ago when the governor met on Chicago’s South Side with some Texas Democratic lawmakers to discuss that state’s GOP midterm redistricting effort, the source said.

It’s not the first time that Texas House Democrats have fled the state capital in Austin to deny a quorum. In July 2021, when Republicans in the state pushed for tighter restrictions on voting, they spent five weeks in Washington, D.C. The move prompted a Texas House rule of $500 per day fines for any such future absences.

But the Texas Tribune reported that in recent days, members of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation were contacting their campaign donor base to put together funds to compensate missing members for fines as well as their accommodations in Illinois. One estimate put the cost at $1 million per month.

Additionally, Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is mounting a primary challenge to GOP U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, has offered the services of his office in “hunting down and compelling the attendance of anyone who abandons their office” to deny a quorum.

“Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately,” Paxton wrote on X. “We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law.”

Pritzker, who is a billionaire, has no plans to pay for the Texas Democrats’ stay in the Chicago area, but his campaign staff would make hotel recommendations and help with other logistics, according to the Pritzker source.

The move by Democrats came a day after a Republican-led Texas House panel voted along party lines to advance a draft congressional map altering current district boundaries to create five districts that favor Republicans. The GOP currently holds a 25-12 advantage among the 38-member congressional delegation, with one vacancy.

While the U.S. Department of Justice under Trump sought to offer legal justification for redrawing the map, contending four districts were unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered, Texas House Republicans flatly stated their goal was to increase GOP representation in the state’s congressional delegation.

“Different from everyone else, I’m telling you, I’m not beating around the bush,” said state Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican who sponsored the remap legislation. “We have five new districts, and these five new districts are based on political performance.”

Texas Democrats said the new map would come at the expense of representation for Black and Latino voters who would either be packed into new districts or widely dispersed among them.

It’s not the first time that Illinois has become home for another state’s Democratic lawmakers. In 2011, Indiana Democrats crossed the border and stayed for five weeks in the Champaign-Urbana area to deny a quorum over a Republican push for union-weakening legislation and creation of a school voucher program. A right-to-work bill passed the following year under GOP majorities achieved through the 2011 remap.

Also in 2011, a contingent of 14 Democratic Wisconsin state senators fled Madison and gathered in Rockford to block a quorum on a GOP effort to strip collective bargaining rights for public employees. They returned nearly a month later, the Senate having already convened and the bill signed into law.

Illinois is no stranger to congressional district controversy. When Illinois Democrats drew and enacted the most recent congressional map, they pushed Republicans into three downstate seats, while giving themselves 14 members in the 17-member U.S. House delegation.

John Curran of Downers Grove, the Illinois Senate’s Republican leader, called Pritzker’s hosting of the Texas Democrats “the height of hypocrisy” since the Democratic governor has supported independent mapmaking and pledged to veto a gerrymandered map.

Curran called the current Illinois congressional map “shameless in its attempt to remove choice from voters.” Illinois Democrats, he said, “should be focused on strengthening democracy here in our state with fair maps instead of chasing national headlines by intervening in other states.”