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Rep. Raymond: ‘Don’t ask me to betray my beliefs’
In an emotional speech on the House floor, Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo, said he’ll work to delay consideration of a voter identification measure — and he wanted his colleagues to understand why the measure is so personally offensive to him.
Like other Democrats, Raymond sees the proposed requirement that voters show additional identification at the polls as voter suppression.
Raymond spoke about how when he was a child, his father paid a poll tax.
“I grew up watching people’s rights being suppressed, people’s rights being taken away from them,” Raymond said.
He spoke about Martin Luther King Jr.’s work for civil rights and he became choked up when he talked about how King laid the groundwork for an African American — Barack Obama — being elected president and for Obama today nominating a Hispanic woman, Sonia Sotomayor, for the Supreme Court.
Raymond said that on the issue of voting, he doesn’t care about party politics — it’s not about that, he said.
“Don’t ask me to betray my beliefs,” he told his colleagues, “because I would never do that to you.”
The House has a lengthy list of noncontroversial bills to consider before the voter identification measure. Raymond promised to talk for nearly all of the 10 minutes allotted to each bill in order to delay discussion of voter ID. Democrats have been using that tactic — known as chubbing — for several days to delay voter ID before a legislative deadline tonight.
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By Reader
May 26, 2009 12:23 PM | Link to this
Great job, Rep. Raymond! Keep up the good work.
By Reader
May 26, 2009 12:20 PM | Link to this
Great job, Rep. Raymond! Keep up the good work.