In Texas Swing, 23 Democrats Switch to GOP

In another aftershock of November’s elections, 23 Democratic officeholders and party activists in Texas, led by U.S. Rep. Greg Laughlin, announced Monday they had decided to switch to the Republican Party.

Participants in the mass political defection, most of them lifelong Democrats, include a state representative, a county prosecutor, six judges, three sheriffs, two county commissioners and a justice of the peace.

The switch, announced by Gov. George W. Bush at a morning rally in Austin, was the latest manifestation of a trend in which the South and Sun Belt are increasingly represented by Republicans. In February, 12 other elected Democrats in Texas made the shift to the GOP.

“This has increasingly become a two-party state, and today we saw more evidence of that,” said Terrell Blodgett, a University of Texas expert on Lone Star State politics.

And in a telling measure of the GOP’s growing strength, Democratic operatives in Texas actually took comfort in the fact that only one Democratic member of the state Legislature switched.

“The fact that Warren Chisum was the only state representative on the list is a little surprising, because the Republicans have really been putting on a full-court press in the [Texas] House,” said George Christian, who was Lyndon B. Johnson’s press secretary and is now a business consultant in Austin.

“This doesn’t mean the Democratic Party in Texas is mortally wounded. It’s not. But it does reflect the trend in Texas of the growth of the Republican Party,” Christian added in a telephone interview.

He said those who switched were simply “following the voters.” Blodgett agreed, saying: “I suspect that they felt like they are representing an increasing number of people who are disaffected and that evidently they want to get in line with them.”

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In Washington, Laughlin is the second House Democrat to change party affiliation in the wake of the GOP takeover of Congress in November. He was preceded in April by Nathan Deal, a second-term congressman from Georgia.

The new House makeup of 232 Republicans, 202 Democrats and one independent may soon tilt further toward the GOP. Other House Democrats considered likely to switch are Mike Parker of Mississippi and W. J. (Billy) Tauzin and Jimmy Hayes, both of Louisiana. Like Laughlin, they recently quit the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, citing philosophical differences.

Since the November elections, two senators have switched from Democrat to Republican--Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Richard C. Shelby of Alabama--giving Republicans a 54-46 margin in the upper chamber.

Laughlin, a four-term congressman, represents a mostly rural and small-town district that stretches from the Hill Country west of Austin to the Gulf Coast. The 53-year-old lawmaker is known for maintaining an independent streak and has opposed the Clinton Administration and the congressional Democratic leadership on many social and economic issues.

Laughlin has long coveted a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Those chances had evaporated after Republicans took control of Congress.

Among those who courted Laughlin was Rep. Bill Archer (R-Tex.), the committee’s chairman.

“I have a commitment from the entire House Republican leadership that within a week of my switching, I’ll have a seat on Ways and Means,” Laughlin was quoted as saying Sunday in his hometown newspaper, the Victoria Advocate.

Earlier this year, Laughlin joined 22 other conservative Democrats in creating a group known as The Coalition, whose stated purpose is to temper the extremes of both parties.

Laughlin voted for 14 of 17 major provisions in the GOP’s “contract with America,” including a $189-billion tax-cut package that only 26 other Democrats supported.

“Greg Laughlin’s party switch is an ill-advised act of a damaged politician who is selling out his district to [House Speaker] Newt Gingrich for a choice Ways and Means Committee seat,” Bob Slagle, the Texas Democratic chairman, said.

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) called on Laughlin to immediately resign his seat and seek reelection as a Republican. Gephardt noted that another Texan, Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, followed that course when he decided to leave the Democratic Party while serving in the House in 1983.

Gephardt said his party “expects Mr. Laughlin to follow in the tradition of [Gramm] . . . who said upon his switch to the Republican Party: ‘The only honorable course of action is to resign my seat in Congress and to seek reelection as a Republican.’ We would ask Mr. Laughlin to do the honorable thing.”