As Donald Trump Jr. led conservatives in howls of shock and disbelief, GOP State Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock raised the bar on audacity to the sky on Monday when he issued invitations on Monday to fundraising events this week as the self-proclaimed new "speaker-elect" of the Texas House.
Burrows moved swiftly to create the perception that his election as the speaker in January would be a mere formality with fundraisers set for Thursday in Houston and Austin on Friday under the auspices of incoming leader in the state Capitol's west wing. The West Texan who chairs the powerful Calendars Committee is giving potential donors the opportunity to be official hosts for the events with contributions between $50,000 and $5,000 with individual tickets as low as $500 apiece.
Burrows indicated today that his list of supporters had grown to 80 after claiming to have 76 pledges on Saturday night with an equal number of House members from the two major parties. But several Burrows initial backers appeared to flip to State Rep. David Cook of Mansfield after he emerged as the GOP Caucus nominee on Saturday and claimed to have 56 current and future members who he named publicly in his corner.
Twenty-eight Republicans who'll be House members next year appeared with Burrows in the Speaker's Committee room behind the House when he claimed to have locked down the leadership post despite a runner-up finish to Cook in the caucus endorsement vote. Burrows had 41 votes of support in the caucus compared to 47 for Cook on a second ballot.
Burrows and his allies appeared to have the ability to block a caucus endorsement for Cook before the lion's share bolted from the meeting before a third vote with State Rep. Cody Harris of Palestine as the first to go. But the Burrows caucus boycott at that point paved the way for Cook to score a watered-down nomination with a lower threshold of required support for a third vote that was never actually taken based on reports from the meeting.
Burrows could declare himself as the tentative winner of the battle for speaker if he had most if not all of 25 Democrats who'd apparently remained uncommitted by the weekend's end. The Democrats who are holdouts could be keeping powder dry in a competition that could have additional Republicans emerge as contenders with more than a month to go before the election on the regular session's first day.
Donald Trump's son was aghast by the chain of developments in the Texas speaker's contest during the weekend. "It’s unbelievable what is happening in Texas right now," Trump Jr. said in a post on X. "There is a group of so-called Republicans cutting a deal with liberal Democrats to elect a speaker instead of uniting behind the Republican nominee, @DavidCookTexas! Unbelievable! Republicans have a mandate!"
All of four Republican speakers in Texas in two decades of GOP rule had significant support from Democrats when they were elected to the post. All four had significant numbers of Democratic committee chairs during respective stints at the helm of the House. Burrows pledged to continue the bipartisan tradition if elected to the job that Speaker Dade Phelan had been seeking again and claimed to have locked up until withdrawing abruptly from the race late last week.
But Cook's campaign for speaker revolves on a promise to shun Democrats completely when committee chairmanships are dished out next year. Cook might have had a shot to win if he'd followed former Speaker Tom Craddick's lead by courting support from a dozen Democrats or so in his first winning bid for the leadership post in 2003. But Cook can't expect any support from the rival party as a consequence of the partisan purity pledge.
Craddick, the longest-serving member of the House where he's still a representative, has been mentioned in the past week as a possible default candidate for conservatives if the caucus nominee stalls. State Rep. Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City has been floated as a potential compromise candidate for the Republicans as well.
As a candidate Guillen would be an intriguing choice as a lawmaker who served in the House for almost 20 years as a Democrat before switching to the GOP in 2022. Guillen served as a Democratic committee chair in five of his last six regular sessions before joining the GOP before his current term.
more to come ...
