Exclusive: Gene Wu joins strategy call with Democratic legislators about fighting GOP-run redistricting beyond Texas
Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, the leader of the Texas House Democrats who fled the state earlier this month to resist Republican-led efforts to redraw Texas's congressional maps, joined a private strategy call on Thursday with Democratic legislative leaders from other Republican-led states that might also redraw their maps, ABC News has learned exclusively.
The call, hosted by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), the arm of the Democratic Party focused on state legislative races, came the day after the Texas House passed a bill containing new congressional maps that could allow Republicans to flip up to five U.S. House seats.
"I think it's easy to say I kind of didn't expect to be here in this position, starting, you know, when I ran for caucus leader or caucus chair," Wu told leaders from states such as Missouri and Indiana on the call, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by ABC News.
Texas's move to redistrict, which is usually only done once a decade, has set up a redistricting race around the country. Republicans in Indiana, Missouri and Florida have openly discussed the possibility of reworking their maps ahead of the 2026 midterms; the DLCC has called for blue states to consider mid-decade redistricting and says it is working with Democrats in red states on how to push back against GOP-run redistricting.
Wu told participants that leaving the state to deny a quorum was not something the Democrats decided on lightly. But they decided to move forward, Wu said, to spark awareness nationwide about Republican-driven redistricting.
"We wanted the nation to pay attention to this, and we were hoping and praying that there will be at least -- even if we went down, even if we were to be lost at the Alamo, that our fight would resonate across the nation and hopefully get new recruits to come into the fight."
In many other states with Republican-dominated legislatures, breaking quorum may not be an option for Democrats. They do not hold enough seats in state legislatures in Indiana and Missouri, for instance, to deny a quorum and stop any voting.
But Wu offered some more general strategic advice for Democrats in those red states.
He referred to Texas state legislators breaking quorum in 2021 over a voting bill, a move that fell apart after internal Democratic fissures led to enough representatives returning to form a quorum. Wu said the 2025 round was more successful because of the connections the Democrats made and how they worked together this time, as well as speaking in plain language.
"Working out partnerships with your national groups, having everyone be on the same page, on comms. And this was really one of the primary things about why this was more successful -- messaging and comms, unified messaging… People don't understand redistricting," he said. "They understand lying, cheating and stealing, and they understand that politicians like to lie, cheat and steal, right?"
"So it's not a hard sell to go to the public and saying they're lying to you and they're going to cheat you out of your vote," he added.
Republicans have defended politically driven redistricting in Texas as legal and have pointed to blue states such as Illinois and California that they say are gerrymandered in favor of Democrats.
Wu noted that Texas House Democrats tried to tie the redistricting fight to issues impacting people in their lives, such as grocery bills and healthcare, and that they emphasized being the "underdog" in the fight.
He spoke about having hearings with people outside of the legislature's own schedule to let more citizens participate, and about spontaneous actions such as state Rep. Nicole Collier's decision to remain locked in the state House instead of agreeing to a law enforcement escort. These were the kinds of actions that could bring further attention to their cause, he said.
"I was her production assistant for 48 hours at least, and helped her with all their shoots and stuff, and griped at her about getting ready faster," Wu joked of his role in helping Collier. "Because she has another interview in two minutes."
ABC News' Benjamin Siegel and Rachael Dziaba contributed to this report.
