Police pursuits and ‘Killer Bees’: What happened when Texas Democrats broke quorum in the past – By Jane C. Timm (NBC News) / July 14 2021
Legislators have run for the state line more than once before in attempts to block Republican-backed measures in Texas.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, knows what it’s like to break quorum in Austin.
Doggett, who met with Texas Democrats who fled the state at their hotel late Monday, was one of a dozen “Killer Bees” who broke quorum 42 years ago. As a young senator in the Texas Legislature, he was a pioneer of the kind of scrappy delay tactics Texas Democratic legislators have used in their fight to block election restrictions advanced by the Legislature’s Republican majorities.
“This kind of tactic is really a last resort, when everything else fails,” Doggett said. “It’s very similar to what’s happening today.”
The Texas Democrats’ dramatic walkout Monday — they took two private jets to Washington, D.C., where they plan to spend weeks lobbying for federal legislation and putting a national spotlight on Republican efforts to pass voting restrictions around the country — is not without precedent. In 2003, a redistricting proposal advanced by Republicans triggered two different walkouts to two different states. The walkouts offer colorful lessons for the legislators working to block bills in absentia, when caucus unity is critical and the Texas Rangers loom large.
