Great detail from Ross Ramsey:
When the special session began (and, to be fair, before abortion was on the agenda), Dewhurst took a long-planned trip to France. That had to do with the dedication of a D-Day museum, a project that involves some family history for Dewhurst, whose father was on a bomber crew. Most lawmakers gave him a pass, even if they rolled their eyes at the same time.
When it came time for Dewhurst to give someone a pass, it was the last day of the session, and he decided that the most important issue on his plate was more important than the funeral of the father of Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio. It’s true that the funeral was held on the last day of a special session with several bills still in play.
But it’s also true that the first bill in line — because Dewhurst put it there — was the abortion bill. He and everybody else knew there would be a filibuster and that it might imperil other legislation on tap.
He might have asked senators to vote out the other bills, gone to the funeral and let Davis have a short filibuster on Tuesday night. That would have completed the other business, taken some of the spotlight away from Davis and set up a story for Republicans coming back in another special session to get their work done in a way the Democrats couldn’t block.
Or he could have used the rules to cut off the filibuster, which turned out to be the strategy he pursued. He assured the governor and House leaders that the abortion legislation would pass on Tuesday. But the day slipped away from him.
Senators are allowed to talk as long as they want, and when they do that in a strategic way — to delay a vote, for instance — it’s a filibuster. Those can be stopped if the senator doing the talking breaks the rules of the filibuster, yielding the floor to another senator, sitting or leaning on furniture, or going off subject. It’s a three-strikes-you’re-out rule, and Senate Republicans decided that was the way to go.
Instead of the customary empty chamber where one senator filibusters and friendly colleagues take shifts asking questions to pass the time, senators stuck around for Davis’ debate, watching for mistakes. They eventually found three that Dewhurst would sustain, and the filibuster came to a halt. But it was late and his rulings were questionable — to some of the senators and most of the spectators — and a challenge pushed Dewhurst out of the chair.
The parliamentary wrangling and the protesters ate up the rest of the time, and when Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, finally called a vote on the abortion bill, it turned out that the midnight deadline had passed.
Republicans had the votes they needed, and the conversations about whether and when to come back and try again started right away on Wednesday morning.|
They might be able to put the bill back together, but Dewhurst’s fortunes are another issue. In his attempt at a political revival, he flopped on stage with everyone watching.
