Dan Patrick Re-Election Vow Could Be Ploy
to Keep Grip Tight on Senate Republicans
Capitol Inside
January 27, 2023
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick could be bluffing about his plans for a re-election race in 2026 as a way to maximize the already unprecedented power that he wields and the control that he has over the Texas Senate's GOP majority.
Patrick announced this week that he will seek a fourth term as the upper chamber's president since 2015. Barring unforeseen circumstances, Patrick would be a prohibitive favorite to win again in a development that would keep him in power in his current role for eight more years until he's almost 80. Patrick, who moved to Texas from Maryland as a young adult, would be in position to break Democrat Bill Hobby's record as the longest-serving lieutenant governor in Texas history with re-election victories in 2026 and 2030 as well. Hobby spent 18 years in the post.
Patrick may fear that his iron grip on the Senate grip could start to slip if the ruling Republicans viewed him as a lame duck whose domineering shadow that will someday escape. The lieutenant governor doesn't have to worry about becoming irrelevant anytime soon - however - when considering that he will have the gavel for one more regular session in 2025 before he and most of the other statewide offices are on the ballot again three years from now.
Having never lost an election in a career that began as a state senator from Houston in 2007, Patrick can assume that the Republicans in the Senate would expect him to be in the chair as long as he wants to be as long as he's healthy enough to serve.
But Patrick could have multiple incentives to make senators believe that he will be their boss for most of the next decade. Patrick for starters could be trying to defuse an unofficial competition among Senate Republicans who have eyes on replacing him whenever he decides to relinquish the position at some point.
Senators would have the opportunity to elect one of their own as the lieutenant governor if Patrick ascended to the state's top in the event of Governor Greg Abbott's election as the president in 2024. Patrick would be following the lead of Republican Rick Perry if such a scenario came to pass. Perry served two years as the lieutenant governor until he inherited the governor's position in early 2001 when George W. Bush won a promotion to the presidency in the extended election the year before.
That appears to be an unlikely possibility at this point scenario with no apparent interest in an Abbott White House run. Patrick in the meantime could be inclined to let the Senate's members think that he's running for a new term until the last minute before the filing deadline for the election when he knows that he's done without a re-election campaign - whether that be in 2026, 2030 or some time in his mid-eighties if he lasts that long.
That will make it easier to handpick a successor. Patrick said on the chamber floor this week that he'd like to see one of the Senate's current 31 members take place when he decides to hang it up. That group has 19 Republicans. It's difficult to imagine Patrick backing a Democrat eventually as the most partisan legislative leader in the history of the state.
The consensus is that Patrick envisions GOP State Senator Mayes Middleton of Galveston to be the Texas lieutenant governor in waiting. An unaccomplished House member who served two terms, Middleton is a wealthy businessman who won a Senate seat last year after Patrick cleared the way by pulling his support for then-incumbent Larry Taylor at the eleventh-hour in a surprise move that prompted him to give the seat up without a fight.
By stopping short of naming the senator who envisions as his replacement many years from now, Patrick may have found yet another way to get into the minds of the other Republicans who each know that they could be the next Taylor no matter how subservient they try to be. Patrick managed to chase Amarillo Republican Kel Seliger out of the Senate with a redistricting plan that killed any re-election hopes.
But Seliger had been in Patrick's dog house for some time after refusing to toe the line like his GOP colleagues. Seliger had been popular with the other senators and earned their respect. But they participated in the dismantling of his district for the sake of being next on the Patrick target list.
more to come ... |
