From the NY Times, June 4, 2011...
Ms. Davis’s Senate filibuster last Sunday night — which prompted Gov. Rick Perry to send exhausted lawmakers, poised to adjourn Monday after a grueling budget battle, back into an immediate special session — has quickly become legend.
And it has catapulted this petite, eloquent and seemingly fearless politician into the spotlight, which she has seized to mobilize the state’s downtrodden and outnumbered Democrats.
Sound familiar?
She said she was disappointed by the way she and fellow Senate Democrats had debated this session’s deep budget cuts — as if, she said, “there wasn’t any fire in our bellies.”
Democratic politicians with no fire in their bellies to fight deep budget cuts!
Who ever heard of such a thing?
And of course there were plenty of Democrats (even in 2011) who claimed that fighting back would only make things worse!
However, Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa of McAllen told his fellow senators that a special session would give Perry the opportunity to reopen the debate on a crackdown on illegal immigrants through the now-dead sanctuary cities legislation. The rumor was that big-money Republicans Bob Perry and Doug Pitcock—both Houstonians with large construction companies—had persuaded the governor to let the legislation quietly die. But Hinojosa worried that the pursuit of Tea Party voters might have more sway with Perry in a special session, especially if Perry really was looking at running for president. Hinojosa wanted to know: What was the end game?
What was the end game? The end game was that
almost half the Democrats in the Texas State Senate were ready to nullify Wendy Davis' filibuster.
The following morning, the last of the regular session, there was an effort to revive the bill with a four-fifths procedural vote, which would have required six Democrats to cross over at least for the procedural vote. The Democratic caucus had a discussion that focused on “What next?” Davis arrived late and made an emotional appeal for her colleagues to back her up. The caucus voted seven to five to support Davis unless a reasonable compromise could be reached with Republicans.
Seven to five! Hurrah!
One vote short of rolling over for the Republicans!
And wouldn't that have been déjà vu all over again, and again, and again...
So Wendy Davis rolled over the Roll-Over Wing of the Democratic Party, and maybe that's the most important message of her multiple filibusters.