Senate Dem Could Reap Campaign Windfall
after Filibuster Derailed and Map Approved
Capitol Inside
August 23, 2025
Texas Senate Republicans may have all but guaranteed a fundraising infusion for a Democratic colleague early Saturday morning when they voted to cancel a filibuster that she'd been preparing to stage and approved a congressional redistricting bill in a move that kept them from having to work all night.
Democratic State Senator Carol Alvarado of Houston announced midway through the afternoon on Friday that she would use the time-honored tradition to draw more attention to the Republican gerrymander that President Donald Trump directed GOP lawmakers here to undertake.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick gave the impression on Friday night that he would not try to derail the Alvarado filibuster and planned to let her speak. But the writing appeared to be on the wall when Patrick called for a three-hour dinner break after an initial vote of 18-8 for the U.S. House map in House Bill 4. Senate Republicans returned to the floor at 11:35 p.m. and voted after midnight for a motion "to move the previous question" that prevented the filibuster.
The congressional map cleared the upper chamber on a final vote around 3 a.m. and headed to Governor Greg Abbott's desk.
Alvarado made the mistake of including a link for campaign donations in the announcement on the talkathon. Senate Republicans seized on that as a hook for the move that buried her plans for the filibuster that was designed to draw attention to the fight in Austin with no chance of actually killing the GOP map.
GOP State Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock accused Alvarado of "potentially unlawful" behavior by using government resources to boost a campaign. “Using the entire Senate, its employees and support for Senator Alvarado’s campaign effectively holds the entire Senate hostage,” Perry contended. "“It’s disrespectful, it violates the decorum of the Senate, and personally, I’m offended by it."
Perry's logic was intriguing in light of the fact that the entire redistricting process in two summer special sessions has revolved on the goal of putting Republicans to win more U.S. House campaigns in 2026. But Perry and the Republicans may have been stumbling blindly into a trap by denying the Democrat the right to filibuster - and she could end up raising substantially more for her campaign that she would have been able to do by talking all night in opposition to the redistricting bill she was not in position to actually kill.
The Senate Republicans resent the fact that the Texas redistricting quest has been a gold mine for the Democrats here as far as the fundraising and public relations are concerned. Abbott was so angry about the minority party's milking of the map redesign process that he threatened to have 55 House Democrats jailed on felony bribery charges for breaking quorum for two weeks. None of the punitive actions that the governor promised have materialized up to now beyond an apparently futile attempt to have the House Democratic caucus chairman thrown out of office for a leading role in the walkout.
But the more that the Texas Republicans have threatened to do, the more lucrative the redistricting effort has been for the Democrats who've been resigned to losing the fight here throughout it. While the Republicans finally passed a new U.S. House map that Trump ordered them to produce, the Democrats in the Texas House bought California Democrats critical time to get their own redistricting effort off the ground in a bid to counter the map here.
Texas Republicans are playing catch up now with the Golden State where Governor Gavin Newsom signed a plan that he hatched and persuaded Democratic legislators there to pass in a six-day span. The Texas Senate vote this morning put the GOP back in front in the head-to-head competition with the Democrats in California where voters must approve the plan in a November election.
The California plan aims to cancel the gains that the GOP makes in Texas where the Republicans crafted the new map with five congressional districts designed to flip from blue to red at the polls in 2026. California Democrats - in turn - expect to pick up five seats that Republicans control now with the map they approved in a whirlwind this week.
Senate Democrats expressed outrage with the Republican maneuvering the blocked the Alvarado filibuster.
"What Dan Patrick pulled on @CarolforTexas tonight was disgraceful, but some things never change," State Senator Sarah Eckhardt of Austin said in a post on X at 2:46 a.m. "Just ask Senator Margie Neal, the first woman elected to the Texas Senate in 1931.
She was silenced by a privileged motion, too."
more to come ...
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