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CNN LIVE SATURDAY
Interview With Rodney Ellis
Aired September 6, 2003 - 18:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KELLI ARENA, CNN ANCHOR: The Texas redistricting battle has all the hallmarks of the Alamo and neither side is willing to compromise but with one Senator breaking ranks with his boycotting colleagues, Texas lawmakers could soon have a quorum they need for a vote.
Rodney Ellis is still defying calls to return to Texas. He's one of the Senators who bolted to New Mexico. He's joining us from New York, Senator Ellis thank you for joining us.
SEN. RODNEY ELLIS (D), TX. STATE SENATOR: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
ARENA: Well, what do you think of your colleague's position to go back to Texas?
ELLIS: Well, I'm very disappointed. I mean the issue here is much bigger than the state of Texas. It's really a national issue. We're talking about whether or not one party can change the rules, go through a redistricting a second time in the middle of a decade. It's really re-redistricting.
I'm disappointed that he went back but we'll see what happens. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of the members of the Texas House deciding to boycott the session. It will be an interesting week in Texas.
ARENA: Well, Senator Whitmore says that he just didn't think that this was going anywhere that there are more Republicans than there are Democrats and he wanted to be there and have his voice heard. Is there any credibility to that argument?
ELLIS: No, not at all. The real issue here is in the '01 year, all around the country, you do redistricting for reapportionment issues. Never before in the history of America has any state done redistricting again in the middle of a decade and what offended us more than anything in Texas was the fact that they decided to change the rules to go from our normal two-thirds vote to bring a bill up to simply having a simple majority.
If you look at what's happening around the country, the recount controversy in Florida, the recall in California, and now re- redistricting in Texas, it's beginning to look like a Banana Republic. It's not an example of what a democracy ought to be like for the rest of the free world.
ARENA: There is a new ad campaign about this issue and you and your colleagues are suggesting that the White House has played a very important role here even though it insists that this is a Texas issue and it's not involved.
ELLIS: Well, Carl Rove the president's chief political adviser, a government employee, called the former lieutenant governor of Texas two years ago and said will you go into a special session and change the rules in order to get redistricting passed?
That Lieutenant Governor Bill Ratliff, now a member of the Senate, declined to do so. I mean I don't think the president can have any plausible deniability when a federal employee sitting in the White House, it's not like a call from your house or my house, one call from the White House is like 1,000 calls from any other house.
We think that this rests at the doorstep of the president of the United States and we think the great uniter, that's what he campaigned on, ought to go back and say let's not have this going on in Texas. It will have a ripple effect all around the country.
If they're successful in Texas, it will put pressure on Democrats in Illinois, in Pennsylvania. If Democrats win in California again it will be ridiculous. We'd have perpetual redistricting in America.
ARENA: Now you haven't been home since July 28 and you've also put in a great deal of personal sacrifice that many of our viewers may not know about.
ELLIS: Well, we've all made a lot of sacrifice. I have a daughter who was born on July the 20th and we left on July the 28th, so I went 32 days without seeing her. We met in Atlanta, I guess in your hometown, during the Labor Day weekend and it was quite a reunion.
But I hope I'll look back and tell little Elena Steele (ph) some 30 years from now I made that sacrifice not just for the people in Texas but for people all around America.
Because you turn our democracy into essentially a Banana Republic if you let people change the rules, just redistrict willy-nilly simply because somebody wants to have a power grab from the federal government and pick up an additional seven seats in the United States Congress.
There's a 12 vote margin that determines which party controls the United States Congress and I'm going to fight to the very end. We'll see what happens.
ARENA: All right, well you know they may have that quorum now. You may lose. Will it have been worth it?
ELLIS: Well, if they get that quorum we're going to go down fighting.
ARENA: All right, well you heard it here. Thank you so much Senator.
ELLIS: Thank you.
ARENA: You take care.
ELLIS: Thank you.
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