As we approach the first day of the 89th legislative session on January 14, Texas faces a choice between a set of legislative reforms that will reset the Texas House and its leadership or business as usual. On December 7, Representative David Cook prevailed in the House Republican Caucus as its speaker nominee and IS the reform candidate for speaker.
As it turns out, "Business as usual" was not amused. A group of Republican lawmakers hellbent on preserving their power walked out of the meeting and separately declared victory.
On December 17, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal published Representative Terry Wilson's editorial entitled "The Broken Republican Caucus." In his own words, Representative Wilson complained of the "eroding trust" in the Republican caucus process, and described it "illegitimate" and "compromised." I, along with fifty-seven of my new colleagues, have often found ourselves using the same words when describing our House's failed Republican leadership team.
We are now in the midst of an historic turning that is driven by abuse of power and lack of transparency. As Shakespeare wrote, "What’s past is prologue." Over fifty years ago, the Texas House turned for the same reasons.
In 1971, a bipartisan group of reform-minded state representatives—both Republican and Democrat—boldly challenged Speaker Gus Mutscher over his dictatorial rule inside the Texas House. At that time, the state was under Democrat control. State government was still relatively opaque. State elected officials were not required to file public financial disclosures. Committee hearings were only recorded at the leisure of the Chair, and there was no Public Information Act. Full and open debate on important issues was being throttled. Investigations were being demanded of the Speaker into his relationships with a very politically well-connected bank and its legislator-shareholders. In the closing days of the regular legislative session, the members did not have the time to know what they were voting on.
The problem then (as now) was the transactional system of compromise the Speaker had created. The "losers" of this engagement faced being redistricted out of office and having their legislation buried in speaker-controlled committees or killed outright. At the time, Mutscher was embroiled in an SEC investigation and intended to tank the House's investigation against him. He intended to send the investigation to a committee where it could die a quiet death, but thirty representatives challenged his ruling.
The group referred to themselves as the Dirty Thirty. Having been referred to by a lobbyist as "those thirty dirty bastards," the group gladly owned the moniker and announced that they were "pressing for substantial reforms in the Texas House machinery." They sought to reform how bills were assigned to the calendar and how committee chairs are assigned. One of the group's leaders, Representative Sissy Farenthold filed bills requiring committees to record testimony and limiting the Speaker of the House to a single two-year term. Both bills were defeated, and Farenthold--the only woman in the House--found herself silenced by the Chair and not permitted to speak.
Headed to the interim, the group wrote, "Because the Texas House of Representatives has been run more like a feudal kingdom than a legislative body, defeating Gus Mutscher is not enough." The group further averred, "Simply replacing Mutscher with another speaker more sophisticated in manipulating the legislative process is no victory," and expressed concern about "an inside group of handpicked sycophants who carry the ball for the Mutscher team," who enjoyed "the political and financial rewards of carrying legislation for the lobby."
The Sharpstown scandal and subsequent political turmoil led to what is still the single largest electoral turnover in the Texas House. Time, it seems, is a flat circle.
Today, the Dirty Fifty-Eight of us remain concerned that Representatives Burrows, Phelan, Harris, and Bonnen--all of whom are apparently financially intertwined through Third Coast Bank--are insincere in their desire to shed power and control of the legislative process from their good ol' boys club to just the regular old members of the body.
The ripple effects of leadership's coercive efforts to drive the impeachment of the Attorney General and to prevent the advancement of school choice, protection of Texas land from malign foreign influence, and election reforms are still felt today. In fact, these are just a few of the reasons many members will not be returning to the Texas House this session.
The scandal of it all that will drive the next round of Republican primary replacements is that a handful Republicans are still fighting dirty to retain something they were never meant to have in the first place: Control. Control over committee composition. Control over the calendar. Control over lawfare and procedure. Control over who can talk (see Tinderholt, Tony). Control over which bills live and which bills die. It is, apparently, intoxicating.
There is a better way and one that prevents history repeating itself. I will support David Cook's speakership on the floor of the Texas House because our voters deserve to see us unite behind the Republican Caucus nominee who is committed to the reforms that will get us to work faster and with more transparency for all Texans.