GOP still rules Texas House

AUSTIN — Texas House Republicans lost their supermajority in Tuesday's election but will hold on to solid control when a new legislative session opens in January.

Republicans opened the 2011 session with a 101-member supermajority and now account for 95 seats in the 150-member House. It takes a two-thirds majority, or 100 votes, to pass constitutional amendments or to create a quorum necessary to do business.

“They didn't even need us to show up,” House Democratic Caucus leader Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, said about the 2011 session. “We're relevant again.”

The loss of six GOP seats will barely be noticed, GOP consultant Ted Delisi said.

“Has the philosophical direction of the House changed as a result of this election? Absolutely not,” Delisi said. “Ninety-five (members) is a great deal more than you need to get anything done.”

The House operates under a majority-rules system, meaning it takes only 76 votes, if a quorum or all members are present, to approve legislation. The Senate has operated with rules requiring two-thirds majority approval to bring legislation to the floor for debate.

“If you squint really, really hard, you can say that (Democrats) have enough members to break a quorum,” Delisi said, also noting that any constitutional amendment takes a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers to move the issue directly to the election ballot for voters to decide.

In 2003, Democrats broke quorum to keep Republicans from considering a redistricting bill two years after drawing new political boundaries.

Gov. Rick Perry called special sessions that summer until the Legislature passed a new congressional redistricting map.

Because of the GOP's supermajority last year, Farrar noted that Democrats couldn't shut the House down over what they considered to be “bad immigration stuff.”

The quorum rule provides a check and balance on the system, she said. Without it, the majority could run roughshod over the minority, Farrar said.

“It's totally symbolic more than anything else,” veteran lawmaker Rep. Garnet Coleman said of the Republicans' supermajority. Coleman, D-Houston, contends that House Democrats were just as successful in stalling legislation last year as they were during the 2009 legislative session, which had 76 Republicans and 74 Democrats.

“Good public policy is ultimately a strong weapon in any dynamic,” he said.

David Guenthner, senior director of public affairs for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said he didn't expect the loss of the supermajority to have much effect on legislation, although he said it might put more emphasis on negotiation across the political aisle.

“It is very difficult and it has traditionally been very rare to have legislation that requires a two-thirds majority that doesn't get at least some sort of party support across the aisle,” he said.

“I think last session was a historical anomaly in that you had a huge number of Republicans getting swept into office on the (2010) tea party wave, and now you're starting to see a little bit more of a reversion to the mean or the norm.”

Farrar contends that the decline in GOP seats “sends a signal to Republicans that their agenda is too extreme and they lost seats because of it. They lost the presidency because of it.”

Because of demographics changes, Republicans will have to tone down their rhetoric, she said.

Texas Hispanics will surpass Anglos as the state's largest population group within seven years, according to demographers.

Anglos will account for only 4 percent of the state's population growth over the next four decades. By 2050, Texas will be home for 31 million Latinos and only 12 million Anglos, according to Steve Murdock, a former U.S. census director.

The number of Republican Latinos in the 181-member Legislature will drop from the five there two years ago.

But Delisi, the GOP consultant, said his party's modest decline reflects a simple reality. Republicans never expected to keep a supermajority that swept into office from the 2010 GOP landslide. Redistricting also made it difficult for some Republicans to hang on to their seats, Delisi said.

Republicans could lose a few more seats if a federal court, as expected, redraws some of the boundaries for the 2014 elections.

gscharrer@express-news.net

Peggy Fikac contributed to this report.