The Long Memory of the Texas House

For twenty-three years, one party wrote every page of Texas law. Republicans took the Texas House in 2003, the Texas Tribune reported, and held it, along with the Senate and the governor's office, for two decades. On Nov. 3, that ended. If unofficial results hold, Democrats will hold 83 House seats to Republicans' 67, a net gain of 21.

Numbers that large can hide the one person who explains them.

The woman who remembers

Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston has served in the Texas House since 1973. Do the arithmetic and you find a lawmaker who sat in a Democratic majority, watched it fall in 2003, and spent the next twenty-three years in the minority without leaving the room. Now she is running for speaker, backed by at least 11 Democrats including caucus chair Gene Wu, according to the Tribune. She says she carries an "enormous responsibility to deliver for the people we serve."

She is not alone in the race. Speaker Pro Tempore Joe Moody of El Paso, an eighth-term Democrat who has worked closely with Republican House leadership, is also in it and could seek Republican votes. That choice, between the long memory and the working relationship, is the first decision the new majority has to make. It will say a great deal about the next two years.

Call it the thread that runs through this moment: memory. Thompson remembers what a majority is for. Moody knows how the other side counts votes. Texas needs both, and only one can hold the gavel.

The map of who lost

The flip did not come from one corner of the state. Kristian Carranza took a San Antonio seat left open when Rep. John Lujan ran for Congress. Rep. Angie Chen Button of Garland, a nine-term Republican, lost. In Fort Worth, Democrat Beth Llewellyn McLaughlin appeared to beat Rep. John McQueeney, who trailed by more than 1,000 unofficial votes despite outspending her 30 to 1 from July on, the Tribune reported. South Texas Republicans Janie Lopez and Denise Villalobos lost too.

Money did not save the incumbents. Neither did a twenty-year habit.

The machine underneath

Here is the part a victory party skips. Texas did not elect one government on Nov. 3. It elected two.

Democrats won the House, and Gina Hinojosa defeated Gov. Greg Abbott. Vikki Goodwin beat Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and will preside over the Senate. But the Senate itself stayed 19 Republicans to 12 Democrats. In Texas the lieutenant governor's power over the Senate comes from rules the senators write themselves, and a simple majority can rewrite them. Quorum Report editor Scott Braddock told KPRC he sees a move to strip Goodwin's powers as "likely." Republican Sen. Charles Schwertner put the posture plainly: "Texas stands as long as the Texas Senate Republican caucus holds the line."

So the machine is a standoff by design. A Democratic House and governor can stop the Senate. A Republican Senate can stop them. Nothing moves unless somebody crosses the hall.

The case they are owed

Republicans have an argument, and it deserves a fair hearing. They argue their majorities kept taxes low and made Texas a magnet for employers. A party that believes it delivered that growth can reasonably ask the newcomers to prove they can manage what they inherited before they remake it. Even Christina Morales, who chairs the Democrats' House campaign arm, named the fragility herself: "we need to hold on to it."

And Democrats have a temptation to resist. Wu was blunt about it in Governing: "I don't think anybody has any desire to change the rules the Republicans shoved down our throats." That is the right instinct. The rules that frustrated the minority are now the rules that protect it.

What we owe each other

The philosopher T.M. Scanlon asked what we owe one another, and answered with a test: could you justify your choice to the person with the least power in it, on grounds they could not reasonably reject? For twenty-three years, Texas Democrats were that person in the Capitol. They know what it feels like to lose the votes that matter.

The test for the new majority is whether it can govern in a way it would have accepted from the other side in 2005. The test for the Senate is the same, turned around. Thompson has watched both sides of that door for fifty-three years. If anyone in Austin knows what it costs to be shut out, it is her.

Memory is a gift only if you use it. Texas is about to find out who did.

Results are unofficial until certified. This op-ed is part of The State's series on the 12 legislative chambers that changed party control on Nov. 3, all of them to Democrats, according to Ballotpedia.