June 10, 2009
Editors note: Ben Wright covered the 2009 Texas legislative session for Newspapertree.com. He lives in Austin.
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On Friday (June 5, 2009) Texas Monthly released its list of 10 Best/10 Worst lawmakers from the 81stTexas Legislature. There were three things worth noting from an El Paso perspective.
First, state Rep. Norma Chavez got a “dishonorable mention” -- for “her petty session-long text-messaging feud with fellow El Pasoan Marisa Marquez over an ethics bill” –- and state Rep. Chente Quintanilla was again placed on the “furniture” list –- for state reps who do little or nothing. (More on that later.)
Second, the 10 Best list had on it a few mentions that must surely be hard to swallow for couple of El Paso politicians. State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas was Texas Monthly's No. 1, which might annoy state Rep. Joe Pickett, considering it was the Dallas senator who almost single-handedly scuttled HB 300, the TxDOT sunset bill Pickett worked so hard on.
Also, Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, was on the list at No. 9 and is described as “that rarest of birds—an effective liberal” -– something that Sen. Eliot Shapleigh surely must long for recognition as.
Third, the list showed just how unconsidered the El Paso delegation seems in the scheme of things down in Austin. Texas Monthly didn't even get all the facts right in Chavez's "dishonorable mention." (The session long text-feud was not about the ethics bill -- that was merely an aspect of it.) The Top 10 Best and Worst lists included lawmakers from every corner of the state –- with the exception of El Paso and West Texas.
Let’s compare West Texas and El Paso for a minute. They have a shed load of natural resources. We don’t. They have a bunch of elected officials in Austin from the state’s current ruling party. We don’t. West Texas is a predominantly rural area. Everybody cares about the fact that nobody cares about rural areas. But nobody cares about the fact that nobody cares about El Paso.
The point is: Before we can pass judgment on Shapleigh, Pickett, Chavez, Quintanilla, Moody and Marquez, one needs to understand El Paso's natural disadvantages when it comes to Capitol politics.
Understanding how Austin works
I have a friend called Yosef who is an Israeli citizen of Arab ethnicity and Christian faith. We joke that those facts put him on the wrong side of three different arguments.
The same could be said for El Paso -- a Democratic city in a Republican-controlled state, an urban area in the middle of nowhere, a low-income community in a political process where money talks.
To understand the session, you have to understand Austin (Joe Muench, you might want to pay attention here -- you too, DavidK), and to do that, one must also consider just how hard it is to get anything done there.
The process is designed to kill bad bills, not pass good ones -– and the 2009 session was no exception. Indeed, the parliamentary meltdown caused in the House by Voter ID, coupled with the recriminations afterward, meant that not a lot got done in Austin this year apart from the budget. (Something that House Speaker Joe Straus thought almost an achievement.)
The session’s legislative graveyard is large -– expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Plan, bills dealing with clean air and solar, unemployment insurance reform, revamping the Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Department of Insurance -– the list goes on. Understanding Austin is an essential pre-requisite for judging the delegation.
For example, take the issue of the third building at the medical school. The El Paso delegation failed to secure funding for it. But did anyone get funding for any similar kind of project?
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) got hundreds of millions of dollars in funding -- but they got hit by a hurricane. Dallas got permission to establish the University of North Texas law school at Dallas College of Law, but that was after 10 years hard lobbying and the Dallas City Council putting up both money and downtown property to kickstart proceedings.
Did the delegation fail or did they fail to get hit by a hurricane?
El Paso's strategy
Any El Paso delegation is going to face the problems above – so the plan is always going to be roughly the same:
1) Get the local stuff done. Pass the legislation that the City, County, and other entities like school districts need in order to do their job better -- things like exemption from stormwater fees, permission for specially zoned business parks and so on.
2) Support legislation of statewide significance that will benefit El Paso (and work to kill the stuff that won’t). That means supporting things like free health care for poor kids, improving Medicaid, more money for mental health programs or schools or public universities. It might mean working against things like Voter ID or changes to the "Top 10 percent rule."
3) Scramble for any bits of bacon you can get. That means sniffing out opportunities to nab dosh for pet projects like the third building at the medical school, making UTEP a Tier 1 university or helping the Tiguas re-open Speaking Rock Casino.
4) Don’t get overly ambitious. Pick your battles, make friends and influence people, maintain a reasonable batting average.
So with those things in mind, how did the El Paso delegation do?
In no particular order …
State Rep. Joe Moody, District 78
Moody got dealt a great hand, which would have left him with few excuses for having a bad session. He didn’t have one. He was even awarded Best Freshman by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus.
Unlikely to face a strong primary opponent in March 2009, but likely to receive a serious Republican challenge for his seat in November 2010, Moody was always going to be somewhat tied to the Democratic leadership –- he’ll need that Central Texas money come election time.
But in a closely divided House that wasn’t a handicap.
Moody got on board the Straus bandwagon early and was rewarded with great committee assignments –- Criminal Jurisprudence, utilizing his experience as a prosecutor, and Border and Intergovernmental Affairs, utilizing his experience as ... well, as an El Pasoan. He even ended up with a gavel, chairing the Criminal Procedure subcommittee.
Like Marquez, Moody was perpetual motion on the House floor, making friends, asking questions and making himself useful.
Freshman are supposed to be seen and not heard. With the prospect of a tough re-election contest in 2010, Moody (and the Democrats) couldn’t afford anonymity. Moody passed a slew of bills relating to criminal matters, including one that ups the penalties for perpetrators of certain kinds of domestic violence. He also got a rider placed in the budget that puts the building of a visitor's center at Franklin Mountain State Park much higher up on the state’s to-do list.
Moody worked well with other members. When he passed his first bill, one state rep quipped that it was hardly his first stab at legislation in light of the fact he had re-written most of the bills that went through Criminal Jurisprudence.
Finally, in the last week of the session as the House was emerging from the chub-a-thon, a small bill Moody authored ended up having the yellow pages amended onto it in the Senate. Dallas state Sen. Carona used Moody’s HB 2086 as a vehicle for his SB 11, the omnibus gang bill, (which Moody worked on in committee as well). Providing Gov. Rick Perry doesn’t veto the bill -– currently on his desk -– Moody will become the author of the session’s most important piece of gang-related legislation.
If that ends up being the case, Republicans -- be it Dee or Adair -- will have a hard time dislodging him. [link]
State Rep. Marisa Marquez, District 77
Marquez had a much different approach to the session than her fellow rookie Moody. Catapulted to Austin after a bloody primary battle in which she ousted an El Paso legend, an opponent in March 2010 was always a given. (It remains to be seen whether that opponent will be from the Morenistas or the Chavezitas -– or maybe both giving Marquez the opportunity to divide and conquer.)
Her district will be a safe Democratic seat for the time being, giving her a level of independence from the party when picking her battles -– and her donors –- in Austin. If Moody had to be teacher’s pet, Marquez needed to blaze her own trail of glory.
She was not helped by crummy committee assignments (Corrections, Rules and regulations and County Affairs), a reflection of her very late arrival on the Straus bandwagon. Nevertheless, she made lemonade -- bigtime. From her seat on Corrections, she passed a flurry of bills that aim to improve the lives of inmates that landed her the best freshman award from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.
Marquez also took on two heavyweight pieces of local legislation and got them passed. A building codes bill, which allows counties to impose standards on unincorporated areas (like colonias) ciphered its way through the process all the way up to the House floor. Marquez kept her cool as certain Republicans questioned her from the back mic about its statewide implications. The bill passed by a whisker and may end up being one of the most significant pieces of legislation for El Paso County that this session produced.
Marquez also kept her cool during the long and winding road to passing the El Paso ethics bill -- another very important El Paso-specific bill, which will give the county the ability to impose fines on naughty politicians.
One mark of concern will be votes that placed her between her donors and her constituents.
HB 1657, the so called Entergy bill, was an attempt by lawmakers (mostly Democrats) to prevent the Texas Supreme Court from being able to rule as it did in the 2007 Entergy vs. Summers case. As the Austin American Statesman put it, “At issue in the Entergy case is whether an injured contract worker is allowed to sue the work site owner for negligence. The court’s original ruling extended legal immunity to the work site owner when the company buys workers’ compensation coverage.” [link]
In short, Democrats and trial lawyers railed against the ruling as judicial activism in favor of special interests. Republicans and Texans for Lawsuit Reform said it was a fair interpretation of the statute. HB 1657 would clarify that the law gave contract workers injured on the job because of negligence the right to sue a work site owner.
Marquez voted with TLR (which donated to her campaign) and the Republicans, along with a handful of other Democrats, effectively voting against the expansion of workers' rights. That vote was made for a future negative campaign ad. (On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that she was one of the 24 "nays" when it came to changing the Top 10 percent rule.)
Finally, her ongoing dispute with Chavez must be mentioned.
Marquez is a very clever boxer –- a Sugar Ray Leonard compared to Chavez’s Roberto Duran-esque streetfighter persona. In each round of the fight -– ethics part one, ethics part two and so on -– she ducked, weaved and danced while Chavez slugged.
In the end it looked like Marquez had forced a “no mas!” response from Chavez as she continued to stay out of a brawl and keep the ethics bill moving forward.
However last week, a text message was leaked to the El Paso Times from Chavez to Marquez detailing how Chavez had asked Marquez to stay away from her graduation party. Both state reps have denied leaking the text. If Marquez did leak it, she may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Everybody knows Chavez has a rampant dislike for Marquez. But the text message also referenced Marquez being drunk. Those rumors have now moved from the blogosphere to the printed page -- again, easy fodder for a primary opponent.
It remains to be seen whether a bad vote and text-message-gate overshadowed what was otherwise an impressive debut.
State Rep. Chente Quintanilla, District 75
Quintanilla again made it on to Texas Monthly’s “furniture” list. This time at least, that seems to be rather unfair. Quintanilla is one of those state reps who do what they do quietly -– spending little time on the back mic, even less time writing press releases, and seeing what is out there -- supporting the good, shunning the bad.
Quintanilla, representing one of Texas' poorest districts, voted with his constituents on just about every issue. He voted for expanding Children’s Health Medical Insurance, voted for making it easier to enroll in Medicaid, voted for pay increases for state employees. He also bucked his party and the vast majority of House members by voting against changes to the Top 10 percent rule, which could lower the amount of El Paso high school graduates able to get an automatic place in the University of Texas at Austin.
Quintanilla also passed four bills of note. First, he was the House author of the bills that would exempt the county and school districts from paying stormwater fees in El Paso. When asked, he was honest about the behind the scenes scramble to get credit for the bills, and cited himself as being at fault for a lack of communication during the process.
Second, he ended up virtually writing the largest chunk of the session’s most important piece of gambling legislation. HJR 137, which never made it to the House floor but may end up being the template for the expansion of Texas gambling in the future, would have given counties the ability to hold local elections in order to approve gambling -– language taken straight from a bill he had authored himself earlier in the session. (Part of the bill carried language authored by Chavez as well.)
Third, Quintanilla authored a bill that sets up a business park in Tornillo and imposed stricter licensing requirements on persons who sell Medicaid products.
He’s never going to be Appropriations chair, but in a district where you more-or-less have to be put in jail in order to relinquish the seat, his constituents might not mind a functional piece of furniture.
State Rep. Norma Chavez, District 76
Normus Dramaticus –- “Thorma” Chavez of the EPT cartoon -– the one dishonorably mentioned in Texas Monthly -- what shall I say? First I’ll say this: She gets tackled because she carries the football (of course, she might have knocked someone out to get it).
She is arguably the delegation's most effective member, and absolutely her own worst enemy. Chavez got a surprising amount done at the legislature for someone finishing up a degree and with an insatiable appetite for controversy.
She landed on her feet with committee assignments, despite having worked closely with former Speaker Craddick in the past. (Only a handful of House members managed to do likewise [link])
Chavez passed bills with a host of senators -– Davis, Shapiro, Watson, Hinojosa, Nelson, and her pal, state Sen. Shapleigh -- on a host of measures, including bills that reform the management of the El Paso County Hospital (SB 534), created new job incentive programs (HB 2169), increase protections for employees in sheriff’s departments (HB 2168), and making the (Governor’s) Emerging Technology (slush) Fund more accountable. She teamed up with Armando Martinez, D-Weslaco, and put an amendment in the UNT law school bill that obliges the state to conduct a feasibility study regarding the establishment of a law school on the border. [link]
What she didn’t get done was the big ticket item local stuff.
Chavez has advantages in her district that many state reps don’t have. Her district is a safe Democrat seat, and a trail of vanquished primary opponents make it likely she’ll be there in 2011. This gives her the ability to really take on the big stuff. Her committee assignments (Calendars and Appropriations) give her the ability to muscle things through the system.
These advantages proved a double edge sword in 2009.
Big ticket items, such as re-opening Speaking Rock casino, or getting funds for the third building at the Medical School, are hi-stakes, hi-risk phenomena. This session, she rolled the dice twice, losing both times.
Controversy regarding Tigua women’s rights, Tigua Gov. Frank Paiz's criminal past, the gambling industries' civil war, and the state not needing the money because of stimulus cash, ruined the chances of re-opening Speaking Rock's casino any time soon. Also, funding for the third building at the medical school was dead-on-arrival in Austin as the economy continued to sink, putting the K.O. on just about every “third building” type project in the state.
These failures make Norma Chavez look bad, even though she isn’t to blame for either of them. A more cautious politician would have backed away from the projects earlier in the session. Chavez was scrambling (and failing) to amend bills up to the buzzer that would have got money for the third building. That is a credit to her (and she made sure it was known).
What is surely not a credit to her is her infrequent, but often-gratuitous behavior towards certain colleagues, especially Marisa Marquez. Despite her qualms with the ethics bill and her reasonable protestations at Shapleigh’s holding up of her stormwater legislation, Chavez simply had too much fun dishing out the dirt. (Both were arguments she lost.)
Chavez needs to do some thinking in the interim. She may have ambitions of higher office. If so, she will need to add schmooze, calm and compromise to her political ability to muscle, street fight and bulldoze. She needs to learn how to dodge punches as well as take them on the chin, to go for clever combos rather than wildly swinging (and often missing.)
The logic is simple: She simply won’t be in as safe a position in Reyes’ congressional district –- or for that matter Shapleigh’s senatorial district -- as she is in District 76.
State Rep. Joe Pickett, District 79
Pickett got more than he bargained for in 2009. A closely divided House, his relationship with powerful Republican Burt Solomons, and his guru-like understanding of transportation policy landed him one of the big chairs.
No El Paso politician has held a position of such power in recent memory. As chairman of the House Transportation Committee, Pickett led the session’s roller coaster ride -- reforming the Texas Department of Transportation.
Pickett took more of a back seat -- or at least a backroom -- in the squabbles that plagued the delegation. The one time he put his foot down publicly, in the stormwater bill issue, it seemed to work. [link]
His Transportation Committee passed more than 100 bills, more than a quarter of all sent to it. Anyone who sat in on the committee's hearings learned two things about Pickett: He has a great sense of humor, and he gets mad when he thinks people aren't playing fair -- it was uncomfortable at times watching Pickett and fellow Transportation Committee members make mincemeat out of TxDOT employees.
Nevertheless, Pickett conjured a working coalition of House Republicans and Democrats who pummeled the agency (as-is) to smithereens with their version of the TxDOT sunset bill.
Transportation funding would have been overhauled, driving it down to the local level, a legislative oversight committee would be put in place over TxDoT, and the Trans Texas Corridor would have been officially toast. These changes, as well as others, would have radically changed the way TxDOT works (which was the point, as Pickett freely elucidated on several occasions).
However, Pickett was smart enough to co-operate with caution in the upper chamber, institutional ire and federal suspicion. He worked with Senate author Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, in order to make the formula funding more palatable. He penned a letter to the feds rebutting their suggestion the bill might jeopardize federal funds.
But the bill went down in acrimony, a prime example of how 2009 was not always about Democrat v. Republican, but often about House v. Senate.
With time mercilessly squeezed by the House chub-a-thon, the bill was scuttled by Carona et al over Pickett and Hegar’s decision to remove local option tax language from the bill. Carona claimed the decision was made behind his back. Pickett claimed the bill wouldn't pass the House with the language included. Local option taxes were Carona's big priority for the session, central to North Texas' plan to build more than 250 miles of commuter rail (and also sought after by San Antonio, and locally, by Shapleigh).
Pickett had the votes to pass the bill in the House (75+), but not the votes to bring it up out of order (100+). It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because Carona was so angry he had promised to filibuster the bill in the Senate. [link]
That leaves Pickett with a problem. He broke heads, upset witnesses and berated lobbyists in his attempt to reform TxDOT. That’s ok if you win, but the bill didn’t pass. Will there be recriminations? That depends upon just how powerful those folks at TxDOT and up in North Texas really are. Having said that, Pickett is a moderate Democrat with a strong track record of working well with Republicans. If Straus and the Republicans retain narrow control of the House in 2010, they’ll need Democrats like Pickett.
One final note, Pickett passed HB 1462 , which allows state employees to take up to five hours a month of paid leave to volunteer for the CASA program. Nice one.
State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, District 29
Many of Shapleigh’s press releases follow the same pattern. They announce that a certain lawmaker has passed a certain bill on a subject that the El Paso senator feels strongly about. They go on to say something like Shapleigh filed "nearly identical legislation” to the bill that passed, or that the other member’s bill used a “concept (that) was originally introduced” through legislation filed by Shapleigh.
The point is to show that Shapleigh has good ideas -- which often is true. But the reality is that Shapleigh’s versions of those ideas often don’t go anywhere.
One senator said to me late in the session that Shapleigh is by far the brightest member of the upper chamber; the sharpest mind but not the sharpest political mind.
That is an apt description of Shapleigh.
One Austin source commented that Shapleigh's 2009 session effectively ended on day one, when he called two points of order on Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in an attempt to prevent Republicans ramming Voter ID through the upper chamber. (One state rep fumed that those POOs effectively poo-pooed the session for the whole delegation.)
Was that bravery or stupidity? It really depends on your point of view.
Voter ID is arguably a horrible piece of legislation that exposed Senate Republicans as a gratuitously partisan bunch. Dewhurst’s rulings on Shapleigh’s POOs could also be seen as dubious.
But no one else called a POO. Why didn’t other Senate Democrats join him in charging up the mountain? Perhaps because they understood that, as a minority, there wasn’t much they could do. They argued their point, made Republicans take some bad votes, sat down, and ate humble pie.
Shapleigh, in a re-election year, needed to take something home to show for himself.
For his actions on day one, Shapleigh received bum committee assignments -- really bum when you consider how long he has now been in Austin. Consigned to legislative purgatory by Dewhurst, none of his major legislative proposals went anywhere.
Shapleigh had his fair share of bad luck too. A flurry of good bills fell victim to the House’s meltdown at the end of session – bills that would have extended financial literacy programs in schools, banned trans fats in restaurants, SB 897 that would hold companies that bring toxic waste into Texas more accountable, SB 1270 that would have made state government more open, to name a few.
One that survived wasSB 202, a great piece of legislation that will make it easier for El Paso to recruit much needed medical professionals (like doctors, nurses and dentists) from other states by granting them provisional licenses until they get a Texas license.
At the end of the session though, great pieces of legislation remained heavily outnumbered by redundant press releases.
One such press release was titled, SENATOR SHAPLEIGH REACTS TO SWINE FLU OUTBREAKS, URGES EL PASOANS TO TAKE HEALTH PRECAUTIONS. (Thanks for the tip.) Others spoke about the senator giving out awards he created for community service.
Some seemed to take credit for other people’s work. Shapleigh churned out press releases on HB 300, the TxDOT sunset bill and HB 2086, Carona-via-Moody's gang bill, before the authors had a chance to. His press release on the El Paso ethics bill described it as “filed by Senator Shapleigh and sponsored by Representative Marisa Marquez,” which is only technically true. The Senate bill that now sat on the governor's desk was swapped out in committee for the House version, which Marquez had done so much heavy lifting on.
But if those examples are arguably six of one, half a dozen of the other, the debacle over stormwater was more clear cut.
In May, four bills that exempted El Paso County and the El Paso school districts from stormwater fees were working through the process -- two Senate bills and two House bills.
Shapleigh blatantly clogged up the House bills in the Senate -- authored by Pickett and Chavez -- in order to give his versions time to catch up across the House.
Shapleigh argued that it was his problem to fix (he had authored legislation setting up the stormwater utility in 2007). Was Shapleigh worried Pickett, Chavez or someone else might use the issue in his upcoming March primary?
If so, why not slow the bills down quietly? Instead, Shapleigh ostensibly refused to carry them, wrote memos to the House members (available by open records requests) and when Pickett and Chavez tried to find other senators to carry their versions, he asked them not to.
That unnecessarily jeopardized the whole issue of exempting counties and school districts from stormwater fees -- essentially a double tax on El Pasoans. Shapleigh got his way when Pickett and Chavez stood down, and the Senate bills passed by crawling on their bellies through the process as the House imploded over Voter ID.
But if the Voter ID fight had gone differently, there would have been a mad scramble to tack the bills onto something else, and who's to say it would have worked? After all, it didn’t work for many far more important bills authored by far more influential lawmakers in the session's final week.
Stormwater aside, his episodic drubbing of the Texas Commision for Environmental Quality was compelling -- Shapleigh at his best -- the pit bull terrier getting his teeth into some meat and not letting go. Having backed the TCEQ into a corner, he received a favorable ruling in his battle to access correspondence he and many others believe will show evidence of dodgy dealing between TCEQ regulators and Asarco over the controversial decision to re-issue Asarco with a permit in 2008. TCEQ appealed. What do they have to hide?
One journalist remarked late in the session that if the Democrats ran the Senate, Shapleigh would be a star. That is undoubtedly true. He has a computer for an intellect and deeply cares about his community and social justice.
But the Democrats don’t run the Senate. They probably won’t next session either. As stated above, Texas monthly described Austin state Sen. Watson as someone who “has adapted, Darwin-style, to the inhospitable habitat of the Republican-dominated Senate,” which made him “the rarest of birds --an effective liberal.” [link]
If re-elected, will Shapleigh be able to take a leaf out of Watson’s book? Or will he continue to be an altruistic voice in the wilderness, nobly railing against the system -- but effectively out of the game?
As a delegation
A partial list of issues: Stormwater, base funding for the medical school, an ethics commission, new building codes for colonias, job creation programs, supporting state wide pay raises for state workers, greater rights for inmates, more help for foster children, higher penalties for perpetrators of domestic violence, a new business park, and a road map for UTEP becoming Tier 1.
Also, a good stab at re-opening Speaking Rock casino, reforming TxDOT, expanding CHIP and Medicaid, increasing financial literacy among students, and securing funding for the third building at the medical school.
When you take into account the historic disadvantages El Paso delegations take to Austin, and the way the wheels stopped turning in the House in late May, would it be fair to pronounce the session a modest success?
If so, why are so many people in El Paso left with feelings to the contrary?
Why was the state delegation's recent joint press release greeted with a communal wry smile in the blogosphere?
Not because the press release took liberties with the truth. The reason was that all session, the delegation has been plagued by its own bad press -- produced by an ostensible lack of unity.
The scuffles over stormwater, the ongoing, Marisa/Norma drama, and the controversy over the ethics bill all congealed to leave a bad taste in the mouth of the public.
And not just the public -- stormwater bills had four separate committee hearings for different versions of the bills, where with some collaboration, one hearing would have been ample. Committee hearings are not given out freely by committee chairmen. There are too many bills filed for them all to be heard -- hearings cost political capital inAustin. No doubt the El Paso delegation had to call in favors in order to get four hearings. Wouldn’t that political capital have been better spent on other bills?
Furthermore, the delegation’s lack of unity makes the members hard to work with. On more than one occasion, either a lobbyist or a state rep expressed to me their frustration in dealing with the El Paso delegation. [link] These are busy, powerful people who do not suffer fools gladly.
You can't quantify the damage disunity causes -- it's not like you can point to this project or that project that didn't get done and blame it on infighting. But it certainly doesn't help.
So why don’t El Paso politicians get on? Well, truth be told, they don’t really get on any worse than many other delegations. But, unlike say delegations from Fort Worth or the Valley, the El Paso delegation has no neighbors to turn to as a backup.
For example, rookie state Reps Moody and Marquez have been perpetual motion on the House floor this session -- garnering support for bills, schmoozing, making friends. Why? Because they have to be. West Texas is the middle of nowhere: El Paso is outside the middle of nowhere.
El Paso County’s five house districts share a border with one other Texas county -- Hudspeth County -- represented by state Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine. Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, is our closest neighbor on the Senate side. Beyond that are the Panhandle and West Texas Republicans, before you finally get to the speckled blue of central Texas -- a very different kind of blue from El Paso, with a different set of problems.
The place we share the most in common with is the Valley -- Democrat, poor, Hispanic, on the border -- but Brownsville is not that much nearer to the El Paso than Moscow is to London. A San Antonio lawmaker has his Austin buddies to help him with his bills if he gets a nasty text message. A Fort Worth House member has Dallas senators to run to if someone blocks his bill in order to take credit for it.
This lack of regional allies, the ability to easily form clusters of support among House members, makes delegation unity a necessity, not a luxury.
Such unity can be quite lucrative. All five House members united behind Speaker Joe Straus, R-Alamo Heights at the start of the session. The result? Overall, a haul of plush committee assignments. In 2011, the House will likely again be closely divided. Voting as a bloc in the speaker's race probably makes El Paso harder to ignore.
With the state's fiscal picture set to worsen for the next biennium -- as the state's structural deficit combines with little prospect of another federal stimulus package -- that might be just as well.
Chances are, El Paso is likely to see the same faces representing them in Austin next session.