Last night, Wendy Davis spoke to a huge crowd in Austin to celebrate the anniversary of her filibuster. I met the political director of Battleground Texas at the event & promised a diary, so here it is. if you want to skip the pictures & fangirling, and just help us turn Texas blue, you can do that right here: Battleground Texas: What Will You Do?
This will be a short one, but — my amazing, wonderful, fantastic state senator Kirk Watson is matching the next $10,000 in donations to Wendy Davis. Kirk is an old friend, a great feminist, who was part of the resistance to the anti-choice shenanigans last summer. And here he is, really stepping up to turn Texas blue next year.
here’s the donation page: https://secure.wendydavistexas…
I was at Scholz’s for the party the Travis County Democratic Party threw so we could watch Wendy Davis make her announcement for governor. The room was packed – just about literally. And there was so much excitement — I was drafted to help at the table selling t-shirts & we sold tons. Come & see the pictures I took.
Turn Texas blue? Not if we can help it! http://t.co/59yrg63Fu3 #BGTX #txlege #tcot
– FreedomWorks (@FreedomWorks) June 26, 2013
In the midst of Texas state Senator Wendy Davis’ epic filibuster of SB 5 on Tuesday evening, GOP strategists apparently decided it was time to leak their plans to counter Democrats’ efforts to turn Texas back to blue (my emphasis):
The conservative outside group FreedomWorks has drawn up plans to spend nearly $8 million mobilizing and expanding the GOP base in Texas, in a move to counter state and national Democratic efforts to make the state more electorally competitive, POLITICO has learned.
In a twelve-page internal strategy document obtained by POLITICO, FreedomWorks says that the Republican Party should be alarmed in particular by the Democratic group Battleground Texas, which several Obama campaign officials founded this year with the mission of organizing liberal-leaning constituencies that currently vote at below-average rates.
Several weeks ago, Steve Munisteri, Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, announced that they will receive help from the national GOP, which is an indication of how seriously the Republicans are taking the threat that BGTX poses to their continued control of Texas. It’s the equivalent of national Democrats’ spending large amounts in California, or even New York.
Munisteri has also vowed to raise 10 times as much as Battleground Texas:
“They talk about they’re going to be putting tens of million into Battleground Texas,” said Munisteri. “If there ever were a significant threat because somebody put $20 million in, our business community would probably spend that on Republicans by a factor of several-fold; $75 million was raised just from Texas for Romney. None of that money was spent in the state. Over a six-year period, the RNC raised $41 million in Texas and spent about $400,000. Those dollars can easily flow back the other way if we need them, so if they spend $10 million, we can spend $100 million.”
If so, for a national Democratic donor that would mean for every dollar spent in Texas, Republicans would spend $10, money they wouldn’t be spending elsewhere. That’s not a bad return on investment.
The Republican Party of Texas is going to need all the help they can get from the Koch brothers via FreedomWorks as well as from their national party, but it still isn’t going to be enough. There are approximately 200 volunteers in the inaugural group of Battleground Texas Summer Fellows, and we have been organizing and registering voters all over our state. Every single day.
Anyone who doubts that Texas is now a battleground state should take a second look at the hard-fought battles-including Thursday’s “people’s filibuster”-during the past week after Republican Gov. Rick Perry, at the urging of Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, added onerous abortion restrictions to the special session, restrictions that would close all but 5 abortion clinics in Texas even though the GOP-controlled legislature had failed to pass any anti-abortion bills during the regular session.
Please Stand With Texas Women today as our Democratic Senators filibuster Senate Bill 5 while other Democratic politicians, women’s health advocates, activists, and ordinary Texans support this battle to prevent Republican Senators from passing their anti-woman, anti-abortion omnibus bill in the final hours of this special session, which ends at midnight.
Dems Approach Abortion Victory as Special Session Wanes
Texas Democrats, far outnumbered by Republicans in both the House and the Senate, are nonetheless on the verge of killing one of the most restrictive abortion proposals in the nation – at least for now.
Using delaying tactics and parliamentary rules, the minority party argued into the wee hours in the state House on Monday morning and then stuck together to keep the GOP from jamming Senate Bill 5 through the Senate in the afternoon and evening. Republicans vowed to try to muster enough support to push the bill through Monday night, but that effort failed. […]
Sen. Wendy Davis, a Fort Worth Democrat and rising star in the party, has vowed to launch a filibuster. Unless Republicans can change some votes, the abortion measure can’t be brought up for debate until Tuesday morning at about 11 a.m. Since the session ends at midnight Tuesday, that means she could kill the legislation by talking nonstop for about 13 hours.
As Democratic Senator Wendy Davis leads the filibuster, she needs Texas women to share your stories:
Stand with me tomorrow, and share your story with me so I can tell it from the Senate floor. http://t.co/svlU3seE6z #SB5 #txlege
– Wendy Davis (@WendyDavisTexas) June 25, 2013
Filibuster: 2 hours @WendyDavisTexas going strong with less that 11 hrs to go. Stand with Texas women. #txlege #SB5 pic.twitter.com/278MDqjgWN
– Sylvia R. Garcia (@SenatorSylvia) June 25, 2013
Late last night, the Texas Senate finally passed House Bill 950, a state version of the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. 
Authored by Democratic state Rep. Senfronia Thompson (HD-141), who has served for four decades and is a force to be reckoned with, HB 950
clarifies that pay discrimination claims based on “sex, race, national origin, age, religion and disability” accrue whenever an employee receives a discriminatory paycheck. Under the measure, a 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit resets with each new discriminatory paycheck.
The bill passed after two Republicans weakened amended it:
One change to the bill, made by state Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, would limit the equal protection rights to wages, and not to benefits or other compensation. Another change came from state Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, and it would require that the act apply only to claims that occur on or after the law takes effect in September.
Every Democratic legislator in the House and the Senate voted for HB 950, but many Republican lawmakers did not. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just Republican men who voted against equal pay for Texas women. Katherine Haenschen at the Burnt Orange Report sums up the situation:
What’s most appalling to me is the number of Republican women who voted against letting other women address gender-based pay discrimination. Jane Nelson, Joan Huffman, Cindy Burkett, Stefani Carter, Angie Chen Button, Myra Crownover, Marsha Farney, Susan King, Stephanie Klick, Lois Kolkhorst, Jodie Laubenberg, and Geanie Morrison — what the heck is wrong with you?! Do you really not recognize that women are paid less than men? Have y’all had such rarefied or willfully ignorant experiences that you don’t realize the need for this legislation? (I don’t understand the pathology of women who vote Republican anyways, but this seems like an extra dose of Stockholm syndrome here.)
When conservative Republican men can vote for this bill — whether for craven political reasons or out of a genuine concern for economic fairness, on some levels it matters not, seeing as the bill passed — and a bunch of professional, successful women serving in our Legislature cannot, these women need to reevaluate their decision-making criteria.
Here’s a fact that should have gotten the attention of more Texas GOP lawmakers, especially the women. Based on reports in the 2012 Census, Texas women outvoted men by approximately 625,000.
Selected Voter Turnout Data for Texas (in thousands)
| Texas (Citizen) | Total Citizen Population | Percent Registered | Percent Voted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total | |||
| Female | |||
| Male |
Now obviously not all women vote for Democrats, but State Senator Wendy Davis (SD-10) was re-elected in 2012 in part because of a gender turnout gap that had women in her district outvoting men at a greater level than in Texas overall.
When HB 950 gets to his desk, Republican Governor Rick Perry should not be afraid to sign this bill. After all, businesses get to decide whether or not to pay all of their employees fairly:
“Employers who are doing the right thing and treating women fairly don’t view this bill as a threat,” said state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, who sponsored the bill in the Senate. “Equal pay decisions should be made in the CEO’s office rather than a courtroom.”
And regarding the Republican women who voted against equal pay for equal work, many working women and those who care about them might be inclined, as Haenschen at the BOR was, to recall former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s saying:
“I think there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”