The Texas Nationalist Movement told a Texas House committee in writing on Tuesday that a state line moves only by consent, and that the people of Texas are owed the same regard as anyone asking to move one. On Wednesday night, the attorney general’s office and lawmakers from both parties repeated TNM’s argument on the New Mexico counties, point after point.
The House Select Committee on Governmental Oversight took up its charge on adding New Mexico counties to Texas at about 9 p.m., after nearly 12 hours on other business. A New Mexico sponsor of the counties’ proposal, Rep. Randall Pettigrew, was set to testify by video, but the connection failed. The one witness was Michael Cotton, who registered as chief of special litigation for the Office of the Attorney General.
“A county cannot move itself,” TNM’s filing said. Its path, TNM wrote, runs through New Mexico’s consent. Cotton told members the same. “Basically, you just need the consent of both states and you need the, generally speaking, the consent of Congress as well,” he said. Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, a Laredo Democrat, said it more bluntly: “We can’t bully our way into getting it. They have to agree.”
TNM asked Texas to state its terms in advance: “a majority vote of the residents of each county, New Mexico’s consent under its own constitution, a compact, and approval by the Legislature and the voters of Texas.” The hearing walked through nearly every item on that list. Rep. Brooks Landgraf, an Odessa Republican whose district borders New Mexico, said the New Mexico proposal, House Joint Resolution 10, was built on “consent by the people of New Mexico, both locally and statewide,” including “a two-thirds vote of the people in each one of the affected counties” and a statewide referendum. Cotton said each state’s legislature would pass a law, and when Raymond asked whether Texas could pass one in session, Cotton answered, “That’s correct, sir.” Landgraf proposed an interstate compact between the two states’ regulators.
On Congress, TNM wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court “has never held that Congress must consent to a transfer of territory between two states,” and asked the committee “to confine its finding to agreements between states.” Cotton said the court has said that consent “wouldn’t always be required in a Compact Clause case,” and that what triggers it is an agreement “that may encroach upon or interfere with the supremacy of the United States.” His own example made the point. North and South Carolina resurveyed their border, and 93 properties changed states in 2005 with no approval from Congress. “We don’t have a lawsuit, we don’t have a case, so we don’t really know exactly what a court would say in that situation,” Cotton said.
TNM’s filing said that by taking up the charge, “the House has made self-determination part of its own deliberation.” Landgraf spent much of the item on exactly that. Many people in southeastern New Mexico, he said, feel Santa Fe treats them “like an extraction colony” rather than “a co-equal part of the state.” Their oil and gas money goes to Santa Fe, he said, “but they’re not really given a seat at the table.” He called the counties’ proposal “a bit of a cry for help.” Rep. Erin Zwiener, a Driftwood Democrat who warned that the talk could sour relations with Santa Fe, still asked members to “respect their autonomy.”
The case most often cited against Texas independence never came up. No one at the hearing, on any of the day’s three items, cited Texas v. White, the 1869 Supreme Court decision. TNM’s filing had said that by “entertaining this interim charge,” the House “has acted as though Texas v. White settles nothing.”
TNM seeks no territory for Texas and takes no position on whether any county should move. Raymond made that point for the committee too: “First of all, we can’t take it away from them.”
Chair Cody Vasut of Angleton closed the item, adjourned the committee at 9:35 p.m. and said it will hold another hearing, with no date set.
TNM’s filing drew the conclusion the hearing left open. “If that principle is good enough for 156,000 New Mexicans, it is good enough for the people of Texas,” it said, and it asked the Legislature to “send the people of Texas the question of Texas’s continued membership in the federal union by hearing and passing the Texas Independence Referendum Act.” TNM’s full written testimony and its white paper, “The Line Moves by Consent,” are posted at thetnm.org.
Most of the Texans who wrote to the committee said the same. The House received 89 written comments on the item, according to its compilation of public comments, and 54 of them, TNM’s among them, asked the Legislature to let Texans vote on independence. Many made the same comparison TNM did. Six opposed the idea. “If you are willing to consider letting three New Mexico counties vote on leaving New Mexico, you should let the people of Texas vote on reasserting Texas’s status as an independent nation,” wrote Mike Jackson of Lufkin.
For its last 35 minutes, the committee heard why the people of southeastern New Mexico want a say in where they belong. Every reason applies to the people of Texas, who have not yet been asked.
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