It’s less than a week from the 89th Texas Legislature gaveling into session.
In Austin, 181 lawmakers will be sworn in. That’s 31 senators and 150 members of the House.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick presides over the Senate, but what about the House? Well, the race for speaker has been heating up in recent days.
Back in December, sitting House Speaker Dade Phelan dropped his bid for a third term amid challenges within his own Republican Party. So where does the race for speaker stand, and what can we expect on Tuesday?
Blaise Gainey, state capitol reporter for The Texas Newsroom, joined Texas Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Well, let’s talk about the two names being mentioned most right now. First, Republican David Cook. I understand he’s got the support of some top Texas leaders, including Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Blaise Gainey: Yeah, I mean, he has Republicans on his side for the most part.
Like you said, he has Paxton on his side. I believe the governor is on his side, although he hasn’t come out and directly said Cook’s name. He basically alluded to the fact that all Republicans need to vote together with the majority of Republicans, which would mean that he would be supporting Cook.
Right now, I think Cook is the favorite from the more conservative side of the Republican Party.
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Well, I was going to say, the other Republican who we’re hearing about is Rep. Dustin Burrows. He, I guess, is an ally Phelan, who had some backing. But is that Phelan backing transferring over to Burrows?
Yeah, I mean, it does look like for the most part, if people were backing Phelan, they are likely to back Burrows.
But I think the bigger question up in the air is whether or not they will actually do that on the floor. There’s been a lot of people saying that, you know, if you were to vote for Burrows, who is not who the Republican caucus voted for, then you would be censured and not allowed to run when the new elections come around. So I just don’t know if a politician would be willing to risk not being able to run for a next term in order to vote for Burrows.
But I think that’s that’s why this is so exciting and why this is being so talked about, because this is something unprecedented – because these rules within the Republican Party are new. So it’ll be interesting to see if they are put to use and exactly how tight they stay to these rules.
Well, could we be in for a surprise? Is there perhaps a third representative who’s got some interest in this, who hasn’t been talked about yet, or not?
I mean, I’m sure there’s probably more than three representatives that would like to be speaker, but whether or not they’re willing to stick their neck out there and say, “hey, I’m the one that can bind us all together,” it’ll be interesting to see.
You know, politics, I think people usually say it’s a dirty game. So it’ll be a lot of things that I think will surprise people when they go to take this vote.
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What does that look like? I know this is your first Texas Legislature, but the cobwebs are in my brain right now, too. I mean, is this a majority rules thing or do they have to get a certain number? And are the votes public? Do we know who voted for who in every case?
Yeah, that’s a great question.
Actually, people want the vote to be public. Some people do. And then some others want it to be private because they need to be harder to censure a person or find out whether a person voted one way or another. So this won’t be decided until the day of whether or not it’s private or public. So it’ll be really interesting to see exactly what happens.
I think usually in the past it’s been public, right? But apparently there’s some wiggle room here and it can be made private. I don’t think it will be because I think a lot of people will want to know how each Republican votes on this. But it could be. And I think all of this just makes it more interesting.
I think it’ll be a very interesting first day of session to see who is going to be the speaker, because I think who’s the speaker will determine a lot of who’s the chair of the committees and which bills come come up. And so we’ll be in for a surprise.
