DeLay: Tammany on the Potomac - By Joshua Micah Marshall

[Khephra]

By JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL
FORWARD CORRESPONDENT

Last May a few dozen members of the Texas House of Representatives fled the state to stymie a Republican redistricting plan, halting the process. Remember that? If so, you probably also know that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, and his allies enlisted the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration and even the new Department of Homeland Security to help hunt them down. But did you know that 11 Democrats in the Texas Senate just hightailed it to New Mexico in a replay of last May's antics? Or that Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, another Republican, made plans to hire bounty hunters to bring them back to Austin? Or that the rump state Senate is now debating whether to strip the runaway legislators of their right to vote in the upper chamber — thus disenfranchising some 700,000 Texans per senator — until they pay tens of thousands of dollars in personal fines for leaving the state?

If any of this comes as a surprise, you're not alone. The ongoing redistricting fight in Texas has galloped on from farce to outrage to parody and back again several times since the story slipped out of the national media headlines in June. Throughout the summer Republican lawmakers acting at DeLay's behest have conducted a political, scorched-earth campaign to help him pad his majority in the House of Representatives. But the endless fireworks are actually part of a larger, more ominous story: the rise of Tom DeLay.

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http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.08.22/news4.html