An Interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico
What it was like to flee Texas for voting rights - and why it couldn’t last
You may remember that in July, 56 Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state, denying their GOP colleagues the quorum needed to pass a massive new voter-suppression bill.
In early August, I interviewed one of those members, state representative James Talarico. It’s been a busy few weeks, and I’m only just now getting around to posting a transcript of the interview, edited for clarity and length.
In those weeks, a lot has changed. At the time, it seemed like Texas Democrats were ready to remain outside the state for as long as it took, but in fact, the effort began to fall apart just a few days after James and I spoke. Lawmakers (including James) began returning home. There’s once again a quorum in the Texas House, meaning that Texas’s anti-voting bill will almost certainly pass. On Monday, the bill advanced out of the House constitutional rights committee, the first step on the road to the governor’s desk.
I don’t really blame the Texas Democrats who decided they couldn’t remain fugitives forever, especially amid a surge in COVID cases. But my thoughts about my conversation with James has changed. Re-reading the transcript, I can see that when we spoke in early August there were already fractures in the Texas Democratic caucus. And for all the bravery it took to flee the state, I think that, reading between the lines, you’ll see how hard this effort was to sustain.
So now I think of this as a talk about something else: how hard it is, in most places that aren’t the United States Senate, to obstruct indefinitely. Most lawmakers must sacrifice an enormous amount to block bills from coming to the floor - and most of the time, the price is just too high.
Which is why these state lawmakers can’t fight GOP voter-suppression laws on their own. They need Congress to do something. The federal House, to its credit, will be voting on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act this week, though it seems likely to meet a similar fate as H.R. 1 did earlier this summer.
Anyway, here’s the full interview - I hope you find it interesting!
David
So, how are you doing right now?
I went for an early morning run on Sunday morning to the Lincoln Memorial, which I’ve done almost every morning that I’ve been here. It’s a beautiful city. It had rained a little bit, and rain on the marble steps is not a great combination and I fell down ten of the steps and I broke my thumb and bruised some ribs. So I was in the ER on Sunday.
That’s a great run. It’s one of the best parts of being in DC, being able to run on the mall. You didn’t do it exactly in the way I’d recommend but that’s a nice run.
Yeah, they need to put cones out there when it rains.
Breaking your thumb is certainly something you’ve sacrificed coming to DC. Breaking quorum is clearly a very drastic step. What else have you risked by leaving Texas?
In the Texas House, it’s still bipartisan committee leadership, so unlike Congress there are Democrats in positions of power. They chair important committees, the Speaker Pro-tempore, the No. 2 position in the house, is a Democrat. It’s an old tradition, this kind of shared leadership. You would think those powerful committee chairmen or that Speaker Pro-tempore wouldn’t risk their own political capital or position to break quorum. The fact that they did, the Speaker Pro-tempore came with us and actually lost his position, the Speaker fired him from that No. 2 position, so he paid that price upfront, so that surprised people too.
So you’re saying a lot of people really did have something to lose.
Correct. I’ll say for myself, I’m only a sophomore but I sit on the Calendars Committee, which is the procedural committee that decides what bills get to the floor, so it’s the most influential committee, and I am one of the four Democrats on that committee and I will probably lose my position on there after this quorum break, so I also had political capital to lose. There's nothing in the rules that says things need to be bipartisan. You could have all Republican committee chairs, they could dominate all the major committees. I think that’s how it’s done here in Washington, if I’m not mistaken. The minority party are the ranking members. It very much could become Washington DC.
You’ve outlined the political sacrifice you are making, but there’s also this personal sacrifice. Can you go into that a little bit?
I have Type 1 diabetes, so one of the things I had to do was figure out how I was going to get enough insulin to last me, because I didn’t realize I would be near a pharmacy. They didn’t share the location, I didn’t realize I was going to Washington, DC. Now I’m an unmarried, single man at this point and don’t have a partner or kids. But most of my colleagues do, so they left behind their young children. Some of them are learning to walk while they’re away. Some of my colleagues are leaving behind sick loved ones who are dying. There were a lot of personal sacrifices that were made, but I think the consensus was that those personal inconveniences were nothing compared to what people like John Lewis sacrificed for voting rights. If we were going to honor their legacy, we would have to be willing to have some personal inconveniences. That was something we were all willing to do.
You mentioned John Lewis, who is a touchstone of this movement. When things get rough, what are the other things you keep in mind to keep you going?
So Senfronia Thompson is the dean of our delegation. She’s the most experienced member and I believe she’s the longest serving African-American woman legislator in the country, not just in Texas. She has served since the 1970s. She talks movingly about her parents having to save up for the poll tax in Houston. She is always the one who grounds us when we’re feeling lost. Today, she is a person of great faith, and she told us in no uncertain terms that we are chosen to do this and that God could have chosen anyone to do this work and he chose 57 politicians from Texas, and “we can’t let God down,” was the phrase she used. Coming from her, that will certainly set your mind right. I do think faith is something that many of us draw upon when times get tough. We’ve been really privileged to hear from people like Reverend Barber and the daughter of MLK Jr, so to have leaders like that, leaders of that kind of moral caliber really helps keep you focused and remind you why you’re here.
You’ve been in DC for almost a month now. What have you been doing with your time?
The first week there were a lot of meetings on the hill, meeting with the Vice President, meeting with Senator Manchin, Elizabeth Warren. A lot of press; I went on Fox News, so there was a lot of activity. Now it's a lot of rallies, church services, plus we had over 150 legislators come to DC this week to meet with us. So a lot of meetings, a lot of events, so it’s very busy. We are speaking daily to the Speaker’s office, Nancy Pelosi, speaking to Leader Schumer and his office. I have a meeting later today with a staff member from Senator Warnock.
You mentioned legislators coming from around the country, these are state legislators I assume?
Yes, people who have dealt with this or will deal with voter suppression bills. A lot of them have talked about how our actions have inspired them to be more aggressive and reminded them of the stakes. I should say, and I think we talked about this, breaking quorum is a powerful tool in the legislative toolbox. It’s also a dangerous tool because it stops the functioning of government. It slows democracy to a halt. So the only time you should ever use it, in my view, is when democracy itself is threatened.
You’re saying that on other issues, you’re fine with being on the losing side?
We as Texas Democrats lose on all kinds of issues back home. We lost on a virtual ban of abortion last session, permitless carry of handguns, on a racist civics bill, really bad stuff, and we didn’t break quorum. The reason we broke quorum on this bill and the bills like it around the country is because Republicans are trying to rig the rules of the game. We can debate the issues but we won’t debate democracy itself. I had a little sister growing up and she was very analytical and she loved playing monopoly. I was always very bad at monopoly, but I played because I’m a good big brother. But if in the middle she had decided to change the rules of monopoly in her favor, I would’ve stopped playing. That’s essentially what’s happening here. I’ll play because I believe in democracy, but not if they’re going to change the rules of the game.
In addition to meeting with these state legislators, you’ve been having lots of meetings with federal lawmakers. Do you feel like people are listening?
It’s hard to tell with politicians. They’re saying all the right things and thanking us for being here. So what’s probably more important than the meetings themselves is the fact that we’ve inspired and motivated the Democratic base. There’s a lot of movement happening around this voting rights bill in the Senate and I think the consensus was there really wasn’t any momentum behind this a few weeks ago, and I don't mean for our group to take all the credit but I think we were an important spark plug to getting this moving again.
I don’t want to be a pessimist but there are a few senators for whom the Democratic base is not essential to their reelection. Do you feel like there's a way, either directly or indirectly, that you are able to reach them?
What I think we’ve accomplished is ensuring that voting rights, which is not the sexiest issue, is at the top of the priority list. I worry that if we hadn’t done this, after infrastructure it would be just another policy topic. Now it feels like voting rights is next in line after infrastructure. I think that will be our legacy if this works out. What we did, I think, was push this to the front of the line, and it’s partly because it activated and inspired the base, to make sure the three people I mentioned, not Manchin, not Sinema, but Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden, and Vice President Harris, feel the heat that this needs to be given a dedicated amount of attention.
Let me just wrap up by asking, people are reading this, what is the thing that we don’t know that we can do to help. How do we support you?
I hope what this does is inspire more people to pay attention to state politics. Democrats and progressives in particular seem to be obsessed with what happens in Washington, DC, we seem to be obsessed with winning Congress and winning the White House in a way our Republican counterparts are not. We need to focus more attention and resources to winning state house seats, because honestly if we had flipped the Texas House in 2020, and we were only nine seats away from doing it, if we had done that I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be begging Congress to take federal action.
That was a real disappointment in 2020.
That’s right, and it’s because we don’t get as much money as the congressional races. Most people probably donate to the DCCC, not the DLCC or the HDCC back in Texas. I hope that there’s a change in attitude in the progressive coalition. We’ve got to be reoriented towards the states.
So obviously, if someone is reading this they can donate directly to your campaign. I won’t make you say it, I’ll say it, but you also mentioned the HDCC. So that’s a way to donate to the full House Democratic caucus in Texas?
Yes. You get a bigger bang for your buck at the state level. It takes $2 million to win a congressional seat, it takes about a quarter of that to win a state house seat. It’s a better investment for most people and it’s not mutually exclusive, because we on the ground in a state house campaign, we’re the ones actually knocking on doors and registering voters, which helps the top of the ticket. It flows up, it doesn’t flow down. If you give it to a congressional candidate, they’re going to spend it on TV ads, and as you know TV ads are not doing the work on the ground. That’s one thing if people walk away from this crisis believing, I think we’d be much better off.
Then in the short term, is there anything we can do to support you all while you’re in DC? Sandwiches?
We have enough food, which is good. What I think is most helpful is if people can use their platforms, whatever that looks like, to speak out on this topic and keep it in the conversation. Our primary goal is focusing the national attention on the issue of voting rights. Any way that people can help do that, I hope they do because we have to keep our federal lawmakers focused on this topic. They will lose focus if we don’t keep it on the frontburner.
All right, we have a mission then.
An action item.