The Texas House Speakers Race. You can't make this stuff up!

Happy New Year!

I hope you enjoyed the holidays with your family and friends over the last few weeks. My college girl is home in the Panhandle for some quality time before she heads to London for a four-month study abroad as part of her business school program in McCombs at the University of Texas.

I’ve waited to write about December’s biggest Texas news story, the race for Speaker of the Texas House, to spare you from hearing about the drama during the holidays. This has been a crazy developing story since early December and for those in the Austin “bubble,” it’s been unavoidable.

The Texas Legislative session starts down in Austin on Tuesday, January 14th, and the vote for Speaker will take place that day. So let me catch you up.

Legislative History

The Texas House is led by a Speaker of the House who is elected by the voters in his District and then elected by his peers (I say “his” as there has never been a woman as Speaker in Texas) in the Texas House. Under the Texas Constitution, a Speaker candidate must get a majority of his colleagues in the House, or 76 votes to be elected Speaker. Throughout history, even when the Republicans have had majorities of over 100 of the 150 members, the Speaker has been elected by building a coalition of members from both the Republican and the Democrat parties. In addition, because of this bi-partisan governing coalition, the tradition, allowed by the House rules which the members vote on, has provided that the minority party, currently the Democrats, could serve in roles as Chairman of committees in the House.

This bipartisan governing coalition remains valuable today because, with only 88 Republican members in the House, Democrat votes are needed to establish a Quorum, to pass certain laws, such as constitutional amendments, and to fast-track certain bills that require a supermajority of 100 votes. Strategically, one argument to make is that if you take Democrats completely out of the process, you empower the minority party with the ability to cause chaos and kill good Conservative legislation.

Disunity and Broken Trust

In 2017, the Texas Republican Caucus adopted new rules requiring the Republicans to select a consensus candidate that Republicans would then pledge to “block vote” for the first day of the session. Leading into the 2019, 2021, and 2023 session years, that rule worked to unify the Republicans around a Speaker to lead the House based on trust and a shared vision for the upcoming session. But unfortunately, that trust in the caucus process, as well as the unity among Republican legislators in the House has eroded over the past two years.

In an unprecedented way, some Republican House members, in particular rural Republican members, were targeted by their fellow Republican House members and other top GOP leaders during the 2024 primaries using misinformation and personal attacks. Many of those members aren’t coming back and the members who managed to survive the attacks from their colleagues would be justified in their loss of faith in Republican unity and trust.

Another factor that would contribute to the loss of trust in the Caucus, is the outsized influence of third-party groups and PACs engaged in the Speaker’s race. The Speaker’s race has become another GOP showdown in the Saga between the billionaire-controlled wing of the Republican Texas House and the independent, vote-your-district wing of the Republican Texas House. The Texas GOP, Texas Scorecard, and newly formed “PACs” funded by individuals are pushing divisive messaging to Social media, through texting, TV commercials, and even mailing voters in targeted districts to bully members into voting a certain way for Speaker. Members are being targeted for not pledging support for the Speaker candidate preferred by these outside groups further leading to division and distrust.

The caucus selection process itself leading up to the official December vote was corrupted before it even started. In September a minority group of House members held an “invite only” mini-caucus meeting at an Austin BBQ restaurant to deliberate and take a series of votes to pick a candidate and then announced a coalition of forty-eight supporters. When the full Republican caucus officially met in early December with two potential candidates, they took two rounds of votes where the outcome yielded almost equally split votes. The rules required that a candidate get fifty-three votes to become the consensus Republican Caucus candidate, and neither candidate was able to meet that threshold, because of the division and lack of unity. Recognizing that they were at an impasse, a group of members asked for a break, which they were denied, and then left the caucus meeting room to re-group. While they were gone the remaining members of the caucus voted a third time, with a lowered threshold of necessary votes to “win” the caucus endorsement. This vote resulted technically in a candidate they could say was “chosen by the Republican caucus” for Speaker, but in no way produced a trusted and unifying candidate to lead the House.

Where are we Now and Why does it Matter?

As it stands today, there are two Republican candidates for Texas House Speaker, Dustin Burrows (R)- Lubbock and David Cook (R)- Mansfield. Both candidates are Republicans, both candidates have Conservative credentials to tout. Both have had nearly equal support from their Republican colleagues in the House.

Neither candidate has the necessary 76 votes from Republicans to be elected Speaker of the Texas House, which the Constitution requires. There is no getting around this piece. The Republican Caucus is a non-binding vote and the constitutional vote is the only one that counts.

So here’s the problem for David Cook and his supporters: There is no path to victory. Cook announced he had forty-eight votes in September, and the needle on his core support has not moved. He did pick up an additional twelve votes following the December GOP caucus meeting from Republicans who felt they needed to support the caucus nominee, which is respectable on their part. But forty-eight plus twelve does not equal seventy-six.

So for Cook to have a path to victory, he needs to pull away Republicans from Burrows or he needs to pull in Democrats. The Democrat support is not likely, as the Democrat caucus put out a statement telling Democrats they could support any Republican running for speaker “Except for Cook”.

And while the third-party groups and outside PACs are working hard to force Republican House members into supporting Cook, including the Texas GOP threatening to deny candidates from being able to run as Republicans during the next Primary, it is not likely that Cook will earn additional support from his Republican colleagues because of the primary challenges, secret meetings, and the most recent attempts at bullying.

In truth, while this is political theatre at its VERY best, the outcome of the Texas House Speaker’s Race will have very little impact on you or your livelihood. It could impact the political power of your State Representative and their ability to get things done if they are on the wrong side. I joke, that my new state representative, whose family has been very involved in influencing the outcome of this year’s Speaker’s race, is likely to be named the Chairman of the toilet bowl committee if her guy doesn’t win. We’ll see about that, as generally, even though there is chaos around the Speaker’s race, the legislature will always put what’s in the best interest of Texas ahead of politics.

Let’s hope that tradition continues into 2025.