Texas Attorney General Moves to Oust Democrats From Office Over Walkout

Politics|Texas Attorney General Moves to Oust Democrats From Office Over Walkout

Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas asked the state supreme court on Friday to remove 13 Democratic state representatives from office, saying they had abandoned their seats when they left the state to avoid voting on a redrawn congressional map pushed by President Trump.

Mr. Paxton had warned absent Democrats that he would begin proceedings if enough Democrats did not return to the Texas Capitol to allow a vote on the proposed map, which was designed to flip as many as five Democratic seats in the U.S. House to the Republican Party.

He made good on that threat about an hour after the Texas House met for just eight minutes on Friday, long enough to determine that Democrats had ignored the Republicans’ deadline.

Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit is part of an increasingly aggressive effort by Republicans to compel the Democrats’ return. His office said he had focused on 13 Democratic lawmakers — out of the 54 who did not show up in Austin on Friday — because they had made “incriminating public statements regarding their refusal to return.”

“Something must be done,” Briscoe Cain, a Republican state representative from the Houston area, said, showing his party’s mounting frustration. He offered Democrats some unsolicited advice on Gov. Greg Abbott: “I wouldn’t push the governor. He is determined,” he said. “And there’s nothing that’s going to stop him.”

Mr. Abbott has already directed the Texas Rangers to investigate potential criminal charges against the absent Democrats for potentially violating state bribery laws. And Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, has pressed the F.B.I. to get involved in getting the Democratic lawmakers back to the state capitol.

So far, the Democrats have held firm.

“They’re trying to intimidate us, and we’re not going to stand for it,” said John Bucy III, a Democratic state representative from Austin and one of those targeted by Mr. Paxton’s suit on Friday. “We’re not backing down. We’re going to continue to fight.” He said lawyers were working on a formal response to Mr. Paxton.

Most of the Texas Democrats spent the week in a hotel outside of Chicago, taking refuge in a Democratic state where the governor, JB Pritzker, has offered his strong support and where he says the civil arrest warrants issued by the Texas House are unenforceable.

Mr. Paxton is trying to challenge that. The Texas attorney general has asked a rural county court in western Illinois to order that the Texas warrants be enforced in Illinois. No action has been taken in the matter yet.

Mr. Abbott has also tried to exert his own legal pressure. He asked the state supreme court to declare that the leader of the walkout, Gene Wu, a Houston Democratic state representative, had abandoned his seat by leaving the state to avoid a vote on the map. Lawyers for Mr. Wu were given until 5 p.m. local time on Friday to respond.

Some Democrats have said they were on edge during the week, particularly after an early morning bomb threat at their Illinois hotel on Wednesday morning. Several members took part in a security briefing at the hotel on Thursday.

Despite Mr. Cornyn’s declaration of F.B.I. assistance in finding the lawmakers, no agents have been seen. The Texas Democrats said they had similarly not yet received any word that they were being fined by the Texas House, whose rules call for absent members to pay $500 a day.

The speaker of the house, Dustin Burrows, said on Friday that those fines would eventually have to be paid. And he added additional administrative penalties, such as taking away 30 percent of the monthly budget for each member’s office, and forcing them to pick up their paychecks in person. (Texas House members receive $7,200 a year, and a $221 per diem during session.)

“With each passing day, the political cost of your absence is rising, and it will be paid in full,” Mr. Burrows warned absent Democrats before slamming his large wooden gavel down on the brief meeting Friday.

The legal arguments made by Mr. Paxton and by Mr. Abbott in his similar action against Mr. Wu have not been tried before, a point that legal scholars highlighted and one that Mr. Paxton himself conceded in a television interview earlier in the week.

“It’s never been done,” he said in an interview on Newsmax on Wednesday.

David Montgomery contributed reporting from Austin.