O’Rourke, who has lost campaigns for governor, president, and Senate, helped finance a similar walkout in 2021
State lawmakers in Texas make just $7,200 a year. A group of Democratic legislators spent roughly four times that amount to take a private jet to Illinois in an attempt to block their Republican counterparts from passing a new congressional map. But they didn’t have to worry about the price tag—because Beto O’Rourke’s PAC picked it up.
That’s according to a report in the Texas Tribune, which cited two people involved in the effort to raise funds for Texas Democrats’ walkout. O’Rourke’s PAC, Powered by People, is “armed with a $3.5 million war chest” and has covered most of the costs associated with the walkout so far, including “air transport, lodging, and logistical support,” the outlet reported. Every dollar the group receives going forward will go toward supporting the walkout.
O’Rourke’s emergence as the walkout’s financier could land him in legal trouble. Lawmakers who flee Texas to prevent the state legislature from having enough members to pass laws are subject to $500-a-day fines under Texas house rules, which also prevent walkout participants from soliciting political contributions to pay those fines. Republican governor Greg Abbott has said that “any other person who ‘offers, confers, or agrees to confer'” such contributions to the “fleeing Democrat House members” may be in violation of state bribery laws.
That’s unlikely to faze O’Rourke, who has long spent sizable sums of money on questionable political endeavors.
O’Rourke ran three high-profile campaigns for Senate, president, and governor between 2018 and 2022. He spent nearly $200 million on the three races—including $19 million on his presidential campaign, which lasted just seven months—but lost all of them.
O’Rourke’s PAC also funneled $600,000 to a group of Texas Democrats who spearheaded a similar walkout in 2021 over a Republican-led voting bill. After spending nearly five weeks in Washington, D.C., several walkout participants returned home, giving Republicans the attendance they needed to pass the bill.
This time around, more than 50 Texas Democrats fled the state on Sunday to deny Republicans the quorum needed to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, an objective they plan to complete during a 30-day special session that began two weeks ago. The Democrats traveled in style—photos showed them boarding a 76-seat CommuteAir jet chartered through Signature Aviation, a company that dubs itself “the world’s largest network of private aviation terminals” and maintains its own “state-of-the-art” private terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
The Embraer E170 jet features “comfortable 2×2 leather seating, two lavatories, ovens for hot meals, and two experienced flight attendants at your service,” according to a CommuteAir advertisement. It typically costs around $15,000 an hour to charter such a plane.
After posting videos and photos from the tarmac that decried Republicans’ “rigged redistricting process,” the lawmakers flew to Illinois, home to one of the most gerrymandered House maps in the country. They held a press conference with liberal governor J.B. Pritzker, who fielded a question about his state’s map. “The fact that we are very good in Illinois about delivering for the people of Illinois and then people react to that and vote for our candidate winning is very different than cheating,” he said, dismissing the notion that Illinois is a prime example of Democratic gerrymandering.
Walkout participants said they plan to stay away from Austin for two weeks, when the special session is scheduled to end. To pass a new congressional map, two-thirds of the Texas house’s 150 members must be present to pass a bill, meaning at least 51 of 62 Democratic members must leave the state to break quorum. The New York Times reported that the “number of those taking part in the walkout on Sunday was well over that threshold.”
Abbott responded to the walkout by threatening to “remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House.”
Read the full article here
