AUSTIN, Texas, May 16 (UPI) -- A band of 51 maverick Texas House Democrats returned to Austin early Friday, declaring victory in killing a Republican-backed congressional redistricting plan.
About 200 supporters welcomed them at a rally on the steps of the capitol after a four-day walkout that prevented a quorum in the house. The rebel lawmakers walked out on the steps to a cheering crowd, some carrying signs. "Welcome home Texas heroes," one placard said.
A congressional redistricting plan that Democrats said was designed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, died at midnight Thursday along with an unknown number of other bills. The GOP-controller house could not take up that bill or any other measures until the rebel lawmakers returned.
"Government is by the people and for the people," said state Rep. Jim Dunnam, House Democratic Caucus chairman from Waco. "We had to go to Oklahoma
to say that government is not for Tom DeLay."
The Friday session opened at 9 a.m. with a prayer as scheduled.
Delay and other Republicans said the current congressional districts
failed to fairly represent the party's strength in the state after taking over every major statewide office and control of the Legislature. Democrats countered the a three-judge federal panel had approved new districts two years after the last census.
The budget and a number of other bills are pending before the session
scheduled to adjourn June 2 and those measures were the focus of a war of
words during the walkout. Republicans said Democrats had killed important
bills but Democrats said the GOP had taken up precious time with an unneeded
redistricting plan.
The band of 51 Democrats reported absent to House Speaker Tom Craddick,
R-Midland, on Monday, preventing him from taking up any business because 100 of the 150 members were needed on the floor. He dispatched state troopers to round up the lawmakers but they had taken charter buses to a Holiday Inn in
Ardmore, Okla.
The Democratic lawmakers were safe from the state troopers in Oklahoma
where the troopers had no jurisdiction and during the next four days the House was held hostage while the maverick Democrats had strategy meetings at the
motel's conference room and stated their position to reporters from across
the nation.
Craddick's order for state troopers to round up the rebel lawmakers, which
is permitted under house rules, had led to charges of possible misuse of a
federal homeland security agency to track down the plane of state Rep. Pete
Laney, a former house speaker who flew to Ardmore to join his fellow
Democrats.
Texas members of the U.S. House have denounced the use of a federal agency
in a state political matter and they have demanded an explanation from Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller. They say DeLay encouraged the use of federal agencies.
"Americans had thought this department was to look for terrorists," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas. "Perhaps those who attacked these courageous citizen-legislators would treat them as terrorists. This is how tyranny begins."
Aides to DeLay said there was no contact between his office and the federal agencies in question.
An officer with the Texas Department of Public Safety contacted the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center, an arm under the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the agency. The caller left the impression that the plane was missing or crashed, the agency said, but the plane was never found.
