While most voters are focused on the midterm elections, taking place on Nov 6, 2018, there is another election that quite possibly may be of bigger significance for Texas residents.
On December 1, members of the Texas House Republican Caucus will meet to decide among themselves, who they want to be their choice as the next Speaker of the Texas House. With the retirement of Rep. Joe Straus, a Republican, who has held the position since 2009, a new Speaker will be chosen when the 86th Legislative session begins in January. For historical purposes, Speaker Straus won the speaker race in 2009 by garnering all 74 votes from the Democrat party along with 11 Republicans. In the preceding sessions, he continued to receive all democrat votes and a handful of Republican votes until 2017 when he received 100% from both sides. In 2017, he ran unopposed.
Ever since Rep. Straus took the speaker position, there has been a growing concern that many conservative bills were not being passed. There were many that believed conservative legislation, involving but not limited to policies such as gun rights, abortion and property taxes were not being passed, or even heard and passed out of committee's, while Straus was the speaker. The House Speaker has, among some of its duties, the responsibility to appoint committee chairs and assigning bills to respective committee's. In 2017, Republicans controlled the House 95-55. Of the 40 main committee's in the House, only 9 had a Republican Chair and Vice Chair, two committee's had a Democrat Chair and Vice Chair. Overall, Speaker Straus appointed Democrats to chair 14 committee's, and Republicans to chair just 26.
Because of the groundswell of voices throughout Texas, Republican Caucus chairman Tan Parker appointed a working group, that included our own Chris Paddie, HD9, to come up with a legal and enforceable procedure whereby the Texas House Republican Caucus selected the next speaker. The full report can be seen here. This group said among other things, 'there is no legal restrictions on the Republican caucus selecting or otherwise endorsing a nominee'. They also suggested that a Speaker candidate be selected from a majority of votes by the caucus. If there are more than 3 candidates and none of the candidates receive a majority of votes, then voting continues with the person receiving the least amount of votes eliminated, until one person receives the required majority.
In the March 2018 primaries, Texas Republicans voted overwhelmingly in favor of House Republicans selecting their speaker nominee and in June at the Texas GOP State convention, delegates said in their platform, "Republicans in the Texas House should select their Speaker nominee by secret ballot in a binding caucus without Democrat influence". There are currently six confirmed individuals that have declared their intention to be speaker. It has also been reported that some of those six are recruiting democrat support ahead of the Dec 1 vote.
Will Texas House Republicans keep to what Texas Republicans want and elect a speaker candidate without Democrat influence? Will they reject any candidate that claims Democrat support? And will all Texas House Republicans stick to the candidate that comes out of the caucus? Voters should call or write their representative and tell them to only elect a candidate that is not courting Democrat votes and to stick with the plan to support the Republican Speaker nominee.
Jan 8, 2019 is the first day of the 86th legislative session and when a new speaker will be confirmed.
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