On the Lege

One measure of the absurd lengths to which the congressional re-redistricting battle now extends: In Saturday's dailies, Richardson Republican Rep. Fred Hill was defending Iranian cabdrivers from the clumsy ethnic slurs of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. In case you missed it, last week the exasperated Dewhurst managed to insult Iranians, cabdrivers, and House Speaker Tom Craddick all in one sentence, when he accused the House redistricting conferees of "playing the Iranian cabdriver, where you get what you want, and then you start adding on two, three more requests." Hill cited census statistics to declare that most Iranian-Americans are both prosperous and highly educated. Does that mean if Dewhurst had said "poor and ignorant Iranian cab drivers" it would have been okay?

Hill didn't mention that Craddick should be issuing his own apology, to Jewish Texans; on Thursday, the speaker had insisted on convening the House on Yom Kippur (Sunday evening through Monday evening), over the objection of 37 House members, to meet the supposed "drop-dead" deadline to avoid delaying the March primary. Whatever the pace of House business, the speaker has respected the sanctity of Sunday mornings (let alone, say, Easter Sunday). But Craddick not only informed the House he expected it to meet on the Day of Atonement but made a point to add his own, rare vote to reject a motion to the contrary. Hill was absent that day, so perhaps he would have demurred, but of his fellow Republicans only Houstonian Martha Wong courted the speaker's wrath by voting with the Democrats.

As it turned out, the issue was made moot by the Republicans' continuing inability to come to agreement on a new map, and the House never even made it to Sunday evening. Craddick came in Sunday afternoon for a pro forma adjournment until Wednesday -- only to discover a dozen Dems outnumbering a couple of Republicans on the floor. In theory, the Democrats thus had the votes to adjourn the third special session altogether, sine die -- and Craddick responded by quick-gaveling adjournment while House members demanded to be recognized. His parliamentarian said afterward that the gavel beat the motion -- but KVUE-24's video coverage (available on the station's Web site at www.kvue.com) appears to record shouted motions while the speaker's gavel is still in the air. So much for the forms of democracy at the Texas House.

Craddick was so angry (or abashed) that he refused to speak to reporters as long as Democratic House members were also present -- although there's hardly a press conference that a few curious legislators don't attend. Considering the way the Republicans are now treating one another, the Dems shouldn't be too insulted. Despite daily announcements from virtually all the anointed players (an incredibly shrinking cabal) that a deal is only hours away, the members of the House-Senate re-redistricting conference committee exchanged maps and insults in almost equal measures all week, and appeared no closer to a resolution at press time Wednesday than they were when Tom DeLay issued his initial ukase. The West Texas conundrum (pitting Craddick vs. Sen. Robert Duncan, Midland vs. Lubbock, and oil 'n' gas vs. agriculture) remains the bitterest dispute, but shuffling those pieces -- not to mention other Republican agendas, like de-electing U.S. Reps. Martin Frost or Lloyd Doggett -- continues to reverberate throughout the jigsaw puzzle.

Another amusing moment occurred when the Belle of Burleson, Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, offered her own map, which momentarily intrigued the Senate conferees -- only to be yanked back by Craddick, who pointed out that Wohlgemuth is not a member of any redistricting committee, let alone the conference committee. On Friday -- the day following Dewhurst's diplomatic remarks on Iranian negotiations -- designated House mapper Phil King, R-Weatherford, announced that in the hopes of a resolution he had spliced West and East Texas together from two different Senate maps, and the resulting proposal should require only some "fine tuning." Apparently the Senate was fresh out of tuners.

As of Yom Kippur, the Great Texas Re-Redistricting Massacree rolled merrily along, with no map in sight but plenty of occasion for atonement. The GOP has given up any pretense of adhering to the lines previously addressed by the public and contained in both chambers' adopted redistricting proposals. Frost's District 24 in the Metroplex and Doggett's District 10 here in Travis Co., both of which remained more or less intact in both the adopted House and Senate maps, are now very much "in play." The most recent map of Travis Co. chops up the state capital into provinces of Houston, Starr County, and San Antonio. Even the GOP's own lawyers are reportedly suggesting that the conference committee's juggling of minority districts like icons in a game of Tetris may well run afoul of the Voting Rights Act -- but the GOP response is now a collective shrug.

Blowing the Monday (and now Wednesday) deadline almost certainly means that the March primary will be postponed -- even if that means a staggering additional expense for the counties and surrendering any Texas influence on the presidential election. The GOP attitude seems fairly represented by Bryan Sen. Steve Ogden, who told The Dallas Morning News, "I have never been opposed to a September primary."