Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Two days before the first angry words were exchanged in the Texas Senate's partisan and very public fight Wednesday, Democrats sensed something was up.

They just didn't know what.

For weeks, perhaps even months, Sen. Tommy Williams, a Republican from The Woodlands, had been researching the history of the Senate's rule that requires two-thirds of the body's approval to bring a bill up for a vote.

He proposed allowing an exemption from the rule, which would provide a way for Republicans to bring up the voter ID bill with only a majority vote (Democrats had successfully killed voter ID two years earlier using the two-thirds rule).

Williams' initial plan also included exempting redistricting. Both are issues close to the heart of the statewide GOP's conservative leaders.

"I don't want to resort to parliamentary tricks or legislative sleight of hand," Williams, chairman of the Senate's GOP caucus, later explained. "I thought this was the appropriate way to do it."

Democrats quickly disagreed. On Tuesday, after getting the first details about Williams' resolution, they immediately huddled behind closed doors. Block it however we can, they agreed.

Behind the fighting that soon erupted, senators conceded Thursday, was a private drama in a back hall Senate conference room — a tense exchange they now say could perhaps tee off continued partisan bickering throughout the legislative session.

Senators would discuss details only on the condition they could do so privately.

By Wednesday, when senators on both sides met in another closed-door meeting, the battle lines were mostly drawn. The only shift: Republicans agreed to drop redistricting from the exemptions, leaving just voter ID.

That change would make little difference.

One GOP senator related how an East Texan had illegally bought numerous votes for $150.

"That's illegal. Did you report it?" a Democrat shot back. Democrats argued that if Republicans were successful in exempting voter ID from the rule, their party activists might demand similar action on other issues such as vouchers, immigration and gambling.

Republicans were unswayed.

There was consensus on only one thing: Everyone was to keep their mouth shut.

When the discussion moved to the public Senate chamber, the debate soon took unexpected turns — from a proclamation by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who serves as its president, that the Senate had no rules yet, to a parliamentary question of whether Dewhurst even had the authority to preside.

Dewhurst had been absent from the previous closed-door bickering, telling reporters repeatedly: "I've stayed out of this. It's the Senate's rules. I'm leaving this to the senators."

But Dewhurst's hands-off insistence wasn't selling well with some Democrats, who noted that he had lobbied them for months for a possible compromise to bring the voter ID bill up for a vote.

"He's a micro-manager. I don't see any way he could not have known that Tommy was not going to bring this up," one Democrat said.

Not true, Dewhurst said.

His counsel to senators who asked him as the events unfolded about doing away with the two-thirds rule, perhaps even modifying it, was to quote former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, as he cautioned against the proposed invasion of Iraq: "You break it. You buy it."

Williams' resolution ultimately passed 18-13 — along party lines with one Republican, Sen. John Carona of Dallas, voting against it.

Corona would later tell a Texas Monthly reporter that after he announced his opposition to Williams' plan, "I was told it would affect my legislative package" and might get him a primary opponent.

By Thursday, after the acrimonious debate had silenced, senators were still smarting over the airing of their dirty laundry — and how the whole episode might have been avoided had Dewhurst employed an iron-fisted, in-your-face style as Democrats such as Bob Bullock used to do.

But as Dewhurst had explained to reporters the day before, when asked whether he should try to settle the fight: "That's not my style. This is the senators' business."

The debate on voter ID

For the Democrats, the proposal to require voters to show a photo ID is just a GOP maneuver to make it tougher for some of the Democrats' core constituencies, such as the elderly and minorities, to vote.

Republicans say it's crucial to stop ballot fraud: to keep dead people, undocumented immigrants and fake voters from casting ballots.

Last year, the House Elections Committee heard testimony about the issue from witnesses from the attorney general's and secretary of state's offices, local election officials and national experts. Voter fraud occurs in Texas, they testified, but it is rare. When fraud occurs, it usually involves mail-in absentee ballots or voter registration.