Donald Trump nominated former Texas House lawmaker Scott Turner on Friday night for the prestigious position of Housing and Urban Development secretary - the second Texan who the incoming president has chosen for his new cabinet after spurning a half-dozen other allies from the nation's second largest state.
Trump was reportedly prepared to name veteran Texas operative Brooke Rollins as the agriculture secretary on Saturday - a post that state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller appeared to have a chance to score. Rollins could view the new assignment as a consolation prize after apparently having her sights set on more prestigious positions in the next Trump White House.
While Trump has declared his love for Texas repeatedly during the past decade, he's demonstrated that he may not be that impressed with the talent here with residents of the Lone Star State accounting for only 6 percent of more than four dozen cabinet picks up to now if Rollins gets the call to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Turner, a Richardson native, joined former congressional Republican John Ratcliffe as the only Texans who Trump had tapped for his leadership team heading into the weekend before Rollins' name emerged on Saturday. Trump named Ratcliffe, who served in his first administration, as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Rollins is a former Texas Public Policy Foundation director who served in Trump's first administration.
Rollins and Turner share a bond with the America First Policy Institute. Rollins leads the organization as its president while Turner has played key roles as a motivational speaker who directs a think tank called the Center for Education Opportunity. Turner worked as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump's first term.
Turner turned to politics after eight years as a cornerback and special teams player for three teams in the National Football League. After an unsuccessful bid for Congress in California, Turner returned to Texas where he won a Texas House seat in a newly-designed district in Collin and Rockwall counties in 2012.
Turner waged an abbreviated campaign to oust Republican House Speaker Joe Straus in 2015 when he received 19 votes from conservative GOP colleagues as a belated entrant. That's the highest number of votes ever recorded for a challenger in a Texas speaker's election in nearly two dozen years of GOP rule.
The list of apparent Trump snubs reads like a who's who of current Texas politics with sitting officials like Attorney General Ken Paxton and Miller as the two who appeared to be the most likely cabinet apppointees from the largest red state in the U.S. The group of big-name Texans who Trump has passed by include Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston.
Patrick, the Texas campaign chairman for the Trump for the past eight years, had said he was happy in his current post as the state Senate president and wasn't interested in a move to Washington D.C.
Paxton's chances appeared to soar this week after Matt Gaetz dropped out as Trump's pick for U.S. attorney general when it became apparent he wasn't capable of being confirmed by the Senate. But the president-elect picked a former state AG from his current home base of Florida for the job of directing the U.S. Department of Justice after his inauguration in January. The nominees who Trump tapped after passing on Paxton and Miller are both women who may be considerably less conservative.
Abbott and Patrick may not have wanted to give up posts that could keep indefinitely. Paxton could have informed Trump that he'd rather run for the seat that U.S. Senator John Cornyn has said he plans to defend in 2026. All of the officials who have something to lose might be hesitant to join the new administration in light of Trump's history of record turnover and chronic instability with the highest-ranking employees.
