Texas’ 89th legislative session opens Tuesday and runs in regular session until June 2. School choice — also called vouchers — marijuana, sports betting, border security, the minimum wage, abortion restrictions and a whole lot more are on the agenda.
And all eyes are on a fight for the speaker’s chair, since Dade Phelan has said he won’t run for reelection to that leadership post in the Texas House of Representatives. Picking a speaker will be the first order of business, said Blaise Gainey, who covers state politics for The Texas Newsroom.
“So the choice, as it is known to the public at this time, is between Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Republican in Lubbock, and Rep. David Cook, a Republican from Mansfield,” he said. “They’re both Republicans. They’re pretty conservative guys. But Cook actually has the more conservative Republicans in his camp. And he’s apparently the person that Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton both want in.”
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Once that vote is taken care of, Gainey said, other legislative business can start — including assigning committee chair seats.
“Depending on who chairs the committee, they have a chance to set the agenda for that committee. They can look at a bill and say, ‘I don’t like it.’ That one person can say they don’t like it and don’t want to hear the bill and it’ll never make it through that committee,” Gainey said. “That’s why who becomes chair is so important, and it’s sort of up in the air right now.
“Usually by this time, you would know. If it was Speaker Dade Phelan, he would have probably already given some hints who it would be. But with no speaker at the moment, it’s [unknown] who will be the chair of these committees.”
There are also new faces in the Legislature since the last session.
“One that sticks out the most to me is the former Dallas salon owner – she was put in jail during the COVID outbreak; I remember her keeping her salon open [during shutdown]. Her name is Shelley Luther. She’s in Texas House District 62,” Gainey said. “Also, all the lawmakers that came in after primarying [sitting] rural Republicans. They were backed by Governor Abbott to support vouchers.”
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Gainey said he is especially curious to see how those new rural representatives vote when the issue of school vouchers comes up.
“My thought is when that time comes around, it’ll be sort of hard for them to actually support vouchers — seeing as they are rural Republicans and rural Republicans historically have not supported vouchers,” he said. “So it’ll be interesting to see if they actually stick to what they must have promised Abbott.”
