March 20, 2006

Grusendorf Defeat Creates Dilemma in House
with Special School Finance Session Nearing

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

Speaker Tom Craddick won't be forced to find a new chairman for the Public Education Committee for next month's special session on school finance and taxes the way he had to come up with interim replacements for House leadership team members who chaired committees before losing primary re-election bids in 2004. But will he anyway?

As a result of a House rules change last year, the speaker has the option of keeping State Rep. Kent Grusendorf in the top post on the Public Education Committee that he's chaired since Republicans claimed a majority and elected Craddick to be the chamber's presiding officer in 2003. Craddick's office said after the March 7 primary election that the speaker had no plans at that time to replace the veteran Arlington Republican as the leader of the standing panel that deals with public school issues before his term expires at the end of the year.

Grusendorf - a longtime Craddick ally and House member since 1987 - became an election-year casualty when came up short in his bid for an 11th term when former Arlington school board president Diane Patrick won a hotly contested duel for the Republican nomination in House District 94. Grusendorf's positions on education and leadership style as the House sponsor of school funding bills in three special sessions and two regular sessions were central issues in the primary battle with Patrick this year.

Patrick's victory created a dilemma for Craddick that he didn't have two years ago when several committee chairs lost primary election races. After winning a majority in the lower chamber in 2003, House Republicans amended the chamber's rules to include a requirement that committee chairs be replaced once it became evident that they wouldn't be back for a subsequent term. Republican members made the change a year after veteran Democratic members such as Paul Sadler and Rob Junel had been allowed to remain in their positions as chairmen of the public education and appropriations committees respectively after announcing that they wouldn't be candidates in the 2002 elections.

But the Republican rule change backfired in 2004 when several members of Craddick's leadership team including then-Ways and Means chairman Ron Wilson were defeated in the primary election that was held a month before a special session on school finance convened. Wilson, a Democrat who'd drawn the wrath of his own party's leaders as a result of his close ties to Craddick, had been expected to play a key role in the special session as the House leader on taxes and its foremost expert on procedure and rules.

But the rule revision imposed by Republicans during the previous year forced Craddick to find interim replacements for Wilson and other chairman such as Glenn Lewis of Fort Worth and Jamie Capelo of Corpus Christi. The speaker moved vice chairs of the Ways and Means, County Affairs and Public Health committees into the chairs that had been held by the incumbents who'd loswt primary elections. But those turned out to be temporary promotions when Craddick tapped new chairs for those panels at the start of the regular session in 2005.

A total of eight House committees will have openings for chair between now and the start of the 2007 regular session in January as a result of members losing primary races or leaving voluntarily after deciding against re-election bids. The questions of when Craddick will replace Grusendorf and who his successor might be take on a new sense of urgency with a special school and tax session set to get under way April 17.

The job of Public Education Committee chair has been one of the House's four or five most powerful positions over the years. Craddick tapped Grusendorf for the post initially in the 2003 regular session - and he appointed him to lead a special House committee that worked on a school finance plan for the special session in the spring of 2004.

In the wake of Grusendorf's primary defeat, the list of possible candidates to replace him is expected to include Republican State Reps. Rob Eissler of The Woodlands and Dan Branch of Dallas. Both Eissler and Branch have had key roles in the public education debate since their freshmen sessions in 2003. The two House sophomores were appointed by Craddick to the team of conference committee negotiators that Grusendorf led in the school finance battle last year. Eissler represents a heavily Republican suburban district outside of Houston while Branch is the state representative for an inner-city district that includes poor areas as well as the wealthy Highland Park neighborhood north of downtown Dallas. Branch and Eissler both must overcome general election opposition from Democrats over whom they will be favored before they will be assured of returning for the regular session next year.

State Rep. Bill Keffer, a Dallas Republican who served on the school finance conference committee with Grusendorf, Eissler and Branch, would be an interesting choice as the next Public Education chairman considering that his brother, State Rep. Jim Keffer, will probably be sponsoring the part of a special session plan that deals with taxes as the Ways and Means Committee chairman. The House conference committee's other 2005 member - State Rep. Dianne Delisi of Temple - has been a key force in the public school debate over the years but is already the chair of the Public Health Committee - a position she probably doesn't want to give up.