As Texas leftists fled the Lone Star State for sanctuary in Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts, Wisconsin conservatives must be feeling a sense of deja vu. After all, they have seen this movie before — and it didn’t end well for the Badger State Dems who pulled a similar political stunt nearly a decade and a half ago. 

‘It’s Not Optional. It’s a Duty.’

Dozens of Texas House Democrats absconded to the deep blue states on Sunday in a temper tantrum over a Republican plan to update the state’s congressional maps mid-decade that could boost the GOP’s chances of picking up five seats in next year’s pivotal midterms. Democrats are crying foul over what they are calling a “gerrymander” driven by President Donald Trump, seeking refuge in two leftist-led states that have excelled in gerrymandering. 

Democrats fled the state to deny a quorum as the Republican-led Texas House prepared to vote on the redistricting plan. The usual corporate media stooges hailed the derelict Democrats as heroes in the left’s latest political charade. As Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to expel the revolting House Democrats for fleeing the state and their legislative responsibilities during the special session, rotund Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker vowed to “protect every single one of them” from arrest. 

“ …[W]e know they’re doing the right thing, we know that they’re following the law,” Pritzker, a far-left Democrat who seems to be filling up on White House aspirations, said Sunday at a Chicago-area press conference. 

Pritzker was wrong on both counts, according to Abbott. In a statement, the Republican governor cited Texas law on special sessions, noting that lawmakers must meet. 

“It’s not optional. It’s a duty,” Abbott said. “The absconded Democrat House members were elected to meet and vote on legislation — not to prevent votes that may not go their way.” He ordered the “derelict” House members to return or he would invoke Texas Attorney General Opinion No. KP-0382 “to remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House,” an action that ultimately would be decided in Texas district court. 

‘Rooted in Nonsense’

Mason Di Palma, spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee, said in a statement that the protesting Democrats are engaging in “absurd theatrics intended to mislead the public into believing they are upholding their values.”

“By traveling to Illinois and New York, two of the most partisanly gerrymandered Democrat-controlled states in the country, these stunts are rooted in nonsense and illustrate how disconnected today’s Democratic Party is from the needs of the American people,” Di Palma said. 

New York leftist Gov. Kathy Hochul, hosting Texas Dems on Monday, rolled out the “I” word, insisting that Lone Star State Republicans were engaging in a “legal insurrection” to help conservatives hold on to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026.  She “openly embraced the full-fledged gerrymandering of congressional districts in New York to favor Democrats on Monday,” Democratic Party mouthpiece Politico reported. New York is one of most gerrymandered states in the country.  

And Illinois? Nathaniel Rakich wrote at the FiveThirtyEight in 2022:

One of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was a Republican from Illinois. But the state’s new gerrymandered congressional map seems hell-bent on making Republican congressmen from Illinois an endangered species. There are currently five Republicans in Illinois’s U.S. House delegation. But that was apparently too many for the Democrats who were in charge of Illinois redistricting last fall. They drew a map that packed all five Republicans into just three congressional districts.

‘Hiding Out in Another State’

Illinois’ neighbor to the north experienced a similar political temper tantrum from absconding Democrats in winter 2011. Wisconsin State Senate liberals ignored orders to show up and vote on a nationally-watched bill that would strip Badger State public sector unions of long-held outsized power at the collective bargaining table. Amid building Big Labor-led protests that would occupy the state capitol for months, 14 Democrats fled to Illinois.

“The plan is to try and slow this down, because it’s an extreme piece of legislation that’s tearing this state apart,” Jon Erpenbach, a Madison-area leftist, told the Associated Press in a telephone interview at the time. As the AP noted, Erpenbach “refused to say where he was. Other Democratic lawmakers sent messages over Twitter and issued written statements, but did not say where they were.”

They were holed up in a hotel in Illinois, running from their problems — not the least of which was a Republican wave that had swept the state legislature and the governor’s office in 2010’s elections. Initially, the Senate asked the Wisconsin State Patrol to apprehend the AWOL lawmakers. Then-Gov. Scott Walker blasted the liberals’ claims that they were standing up for democracy by taking their ball and going away. 

“Democracy is not about hiding out in another state,” he said in an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “It’s about showing up here in the capital and making the case there.” Walker said he hoped “cooler minds would prevail.” They did not. The political theater further ignited the disorderly protests that Democrats and their friends in the accomplice media ridiculously equated to the pro-democratic “Arab Spring” demonstrations. 

On March 9, 2011, the Senate’s Republican majority ended the Democrats’ games and voted 18-1 for the bill. Republicans used a procedural maneuver to get around the usual quorum requirement. The Republican-controlled state Assembly passed the amended non-fiscal measure the next day, 53-42. Walker then signed it into law. 

Derelict Democrats who were still MIA were stunned, calling the GOP’s vote an assault on democracy. While liberal Madison courts initially struck down Act 10, the collective bargaining reform law eventually was upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

“The Senate Democrats have had three weeks to debate this bill and were offered repeated opportunities to come home, which they refused. In order to move the state forward, I applaud the Legislature’s action today to stand up to the status quo and take a step in the right direction to balance the budget and reform government,” Walker said in a statement upon passage. 

Texas House Democrats remained defiant Monday, shaking their fists at Republicans in “sanctuary” states far from the Texas Statehouse. Their political temper tantrum, at least for now, has stalled the redistricting bill. The GOP-led House issued civil arrest warrants for the AWOL lawmakers. 

Apparently they’ve learned nothing from their brethren in Wisconsin, where, interestingly, even a liberal-led state Supreme Court has refused to take up a leftist lawfare request to hear a lawsuit demanding that Wisconsin rewrite its congressional maps — mid-decade. As The Federalist has reported, liberal Madison appeals court Judge Susan Crawford, elected in April to the state Supreme Court, was the special guest of big money leftists who pitched her victory as a way to win back the House next year. 

“…[W]inning this race could also result in Democrats being able to win two additional US House seats, half the seats needed to win control of the House in 2026,” declared the invitation to January’s donor advisory meeting featuring “pro-democracy Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford.”   

“Crawford’s backers, including Democratic U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, said electing Crawford was important so she and other liberal justices can order Wisconsin’s congressional boundary lines to be redrawn,” the AP noted.  

So, congressional map rewriting is okay in Wisconsin mid-decade but not in Texas. What should be abundantly clear is that running away from votes isn’t representative democracy, but it is what Democrats do.