CHICAGO — John Bucy’s older daughter “seemed a little frustrated” with him this week when he wasn’t home to take her to school for her first day of kindergarten.

The Texas House lawmaker from Austin hopes one day she’ll understand.

For the past two weeks, Bucy has been one of nearly three dozen Texas Democrats who, after fleeing their state in the middle of a legislative special session, have holed up at a secure hotel in far west suburban St. Charles. Invited here by Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, the Texans’ goal was to prevent the Republicans who control their legislature and governor’s office from using the special session to draw a new congressional map during the middle of the decade that could have national implications by helping the GOP retain its narrow control of the U.S. House through the remainder of President Donald Trump’s time in the White House.

While the standoff appeared to be drawing to a close as the Texas Democrats vowed late this week to head back home once the special session ends Friday and California Democrats introduce their own remap to counterbalance the Texas effort, Bucy and his fellow Democrats have already laid the rhetorical groundwork for declaring victory even if the Texas GOP eventually passes its map.

At the same time, Bucy said he hopes the personal sacrifices he and his fellow lawmakers made since they arrived in Illinois on Aug. 3 — such as having to send his daughter off to kindergarten over a video call rather than in person — would pay off in the long run.

They “don’t get it today,” Bucy said of his two daughters during an interview with the Tribune in downtown Chicago. “And my (older) daughter seems a little frustrated with me, but one day she’s going to — 10 years from now, she’s going to read about this, and they’re going to study Donald Trump’s authoritarian power grab. And I hope there’s some mention that her dad fought back, and I think that will matter more than missing her first day of school.”

With Texas law enforcement under orders from GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to arrest the Democrats, whom Republicans have accused of dereliction of duty, Bucy said as the start of the school year approached, he considered, “Should I go back and try not to get caught?” He decided against it, though he did hire private security to be at his home out of fear “someone would show up in their face and harass them on the way to their first day of school.”

Facing threats that were both legal and physical, including two bomb scares at their hotel, the Texas Democrats have been cagey about divulging too many details of how they’ve spent their days in Illinois while at the same time making themselves a ubiquitous presence on TV screens, newspaper pages and social media feeds across the country.

In just over 24 hours on Wednesday and Thursday, for example, members, not including Bucy, held separate events in Chicago with Planned Parenthood, with Indiana Democrats facing their own Republican redistricting threat and with labor leaders. They’ve also gotten a hand from supporters such as Pritzker, who is considering a 2028 presidential run and has parlayed his latest standoff with Abbott into appearances on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “Meet the Press.” Former President Barack Obama joined the Texas Democrats on a Zoom call Thursday that was leaked to the press.

“I want all of you to be returning feeling invigorated and know that you have helped to lead what is going to be a long struggle,” Obama told Texas lawmakers on the call, first reported by ABC News. “It’s not going to be resolved right away, and it’s going to require, ultimately, the American people understanding the stakes and realizing that we cannot take our freedoms and our democracy for granted. You’ve helped set the tone for that, and I’m grateful for it.”

Out of view of the cameras, the Texas lawmakers held strategy sessions and met with fellow Democrats from Illinois and elsewhere, including Pritzker, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who was in Illinois this week to deliver a keynote address during a rally ahead of Governor’s Day at the Illinois State Fair.

The media blitz was, in part, how Bucy and other Texas Democrats started to frame the outcome, whether or not Republicans in Texas eventually are able to approve their map, as a political victory.

“Why do I say we’ve won?” Bucy asked. “This has become a national conversation. Our job here was to raise the stakes, have a national conversation, and get other states, frankly, off their butts to act and be ready to fight back, and that is happening.”

Amid the fight in Texas, where Abbott and the GOP want to flip five Democratic congressional seats Republican, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed for fighting “fire with fire.” He’s proposing California respond in kind by redoing its congressional district boundaries to flip five GOP districts Democratic.

Newsom’s plan, though, faces several hurdles, including having to hastily call a special election to suspend the state’s independent redistricting process, which Newsom and other California Democrats said Thursday they plan to do.

A day earlier, at the event with Indiana Democrats at Marquette Park on Chicago’s South Side, Texas state Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, who leads the Democratic caucus in his chamber, also telegraphed how his members intended to claim victory, regardless of whether their state adopts the GOP map.

“When we first started this journey, we talked about the fact that eventually they still might pass these maps, but we’re going to do everything we can to, one, wake up America, to try to reignite the fire that is the American people, for us to fight again for what we believe in and what we want,” Wu said. “And the second thing is that we wanted to block this legislative session to give the people a chance to speak up and to tell their government, to tell their leaders, what they actually want.”

People across the country have shown a willingness to stand up to mid-decade redistricting efforts, Wu said, pointing to solidarity with Indiana Democrats over the issue after Vice President JD Vance visited their state and urged Republican leaders to draw a new map to favor the GOP. But Democrats in the Indiana legislature don’t have the numbers to break quorum like their Texas counterparts.

For their part, Texas Republicans have not only slammed Democrats for leaving their jobs as lawmakers in Austin but have said their remap effort is a response to Democrats in Illinois and other states having gerrymandered congressional districts for years.

For Bucy, who was first elected to the Texas legislature in 2018 after having been the Democratic Party chairman in Williamson County, which encompasses northern suburbs of Austin as well as a sliver of the capital city, this is a watershed moment in the Texas House.

Bucy grew up around politics, the son of two Texas Capitol staffers and the grandson of the state’s former Medicaid director, who was “a proud Texas Republican.” His grandfather was appointed by a GOP governor to a panel that studied organ transplants and was later reappointed by the Democratic successor.

Bucy, whose day job is running a group that oversees sports leagues and academic competitions for public charter schools across Texas, said he thinks about his grandfather and how much has changed when he looks at the current state of partisan politics. Despite being in the minority during his four terms in the Texas House, Bucy said he has been able to work across the aisle to pass legislation and hold leadership roles, including serving as vice chair of the Elections Committee.

But now he said he sees that tradition of bipartisan deliberation fading, leading to the standoff over the congressional map.

“There was no deliberation. There was no consideration for the people. There was no consideration for the minority party,” Bucy said. “Hell, there was no consideration for what Republican Congress members of Texas wanted. Some of them are scared of this map. There was one man (who) said, ‘Do it,’ and they all jumped.

“Donald Trump alone made this decision, and to watch the deliberation of the Texas House fade because of fear of Donald Trump, to watch Texas cower because of fear of weak-ass Donald Trump, I just think it’s been eye-opening.”

Now, as Texas Republicans and California engage in a redistricting staredown, the question becomes whether either state will blink.

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