Texas Democrats face COVID outbreak

WASHINGTON — Democratic state lawmakers from Texas arrived in Washington last week with plans to apply unending pressure on the Senate to pass voting rights protections that would help counteract a Republican election overhaul bill back home.

Then a COVID-19 outbreak stalled their progress.

The entire delegation from Texas is now stuck at a Washington hotel after six of the Democratic state representatives tested positive for the coronavirus, and officials from the White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office who met with them have also tested positive. All of those who have tested positive are fully vaccinated, but nobody in the capital is now particularly eager to meet in person with the group, which has resorted to virtual meetings.

In the meantime, Senate Democratic leaders remain focused on passing an infrastructure package, President Joe Biden is in a standoff with social media companies, and there has been no public sign that the Texas Democrats have won over any senators who weren't already on board with their push to pass new federal voting legislation without clearing a 60-vote Senate threshold. They have not secured a meeting with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona or with any Republicans.

And they cannot go home to Texas for another 2½ weeks or they will risk being arrested for leaving the state.

The lawmakers' journey began last week when nearly 60 Democratic members of the state House departed Texas in an effort to prevent the passage of a restrictive new voting bill by the Republican-controlled Legislature. After their arrival in Washington was met with a swarm of television cameras in an airport parking lot, subsequent efforts to draw attention to their cause were less successful.

Now, with the coronavirus appearing to spread among the lawmakers, plans for larger events like a Washington gathering of supportive state legislators from across the country have been delayed.

"If anything, this goes into a low gear, but I think the momentum still builds and we're in a perfect position when this thing crescendos," said state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a leader of the delegation who on Tuesday was in the third day of a 10-day quarantine in his hotel room after testing positive for the virus. "It's slowed things down a little bit, but this COVID is not unique to us. It may just change our engagement methods, but we still have a way to make a splash."

The news of the infections rattled some on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers and their aides have been moving toward more normal operations.

By staying away from the State Capitol in Austin, the Democratic state representatives have denied Republicans a quorum necessary for the Statehouse to conduct business, delaying the passage of new restrictions on voting.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has threatened to have Texas House Democrats who return to the state arrested and "cabined" in the state House chamber until a quorum is reached.

Abbott and other Texas Republicans have relentlessly mocked the Democrats. Dade Phelan, the Republican speaker of the Texas House, has demanded they return their $221 per diem pay.

The Texas Democrats, who are all said to be vaccinated, did not wear masks on their two charter flights from Austin, nor did they on buses to and from the D.C. airports.

Because of the outbreak, meetings and conferences that would have taken place in person are now on screens.

"Everybody is scrambling because the realization is hitting that this new strain is among us and is very contagious even among people who are vaccinated," said Gina Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin.

On Tuesday morning, the delegation met over a video call with Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat. Clyburn, Hinojosa said, remains optimistic that the Senate can pass a federal voting rights overhaul before early August, when the current special session of the Texas Legislature will expire. (Abbott has promised to call a new one if Democrats do not return by Aug. 6, when the session ends.)

Clyburn encouraged the Texans, they said, to push to have a key measure in the proposed John Lewis Voting Rights Act — the Justice Department's preclearance requirements, under which a number of states mostly in the South needed federal approval before changing voting laws — transferred to the more comprehensive For the People Act, which passed the House and remains stalled in the Senate.