Minority Party Leader Keeps Powder Dry
on House Dems' Stance on Burrows Fate
Capitol Inside
May 8, 2025
The leader of minority party forces in the Texas House accused Senate Republicans of partisanship gamesmanship on Wednesday night when he indicated that the jury was still out on whether Democrats would rally again behind GOP Speaker Dustin Burrows in a second bid for the gavel.
State Rep. Gene Wu - a Houston attorney who chairs the House Democratic Caucus - told Spectrum News that the Democrats would not have a verdict on Burrows until after the regular session closes for business early next month.
"That's sort of a question that's still up for debate," Wu said during an interview with James Barrigan on the show Capitol Tonight. "The speaker made a lot of promises and commitments to us."
Wu declined to criticize Burrows for anything specifically, he offered mixed reviews on the Lubbock lawmaker's performance in the position that he won on the session's opening day in January with all but three of the lower chamber's 62 Democrats in his corner for the leadership vote.
"The session is not over," Wu said. "And there's some things we've been, like, happy about - and there's some things we've been really unhappy about."
Wu is a former Harris County prosecutor has been a member of the House for the past dozen years. But this is Wu's first session as the minority leader in the Capitol's west wing. The wait-and-see attitude on the next speaker's election is predictable for the sake of leverage in the early stages of the regular session's closing weeks.
But some of the House's most experienced and battle-tested Democrats are giving the first-term speaker relatively good marks in private conversations for keeping legislation they view as garbage off the chamber floor up to now in his debut.
Two Senate bills that seek to bring religion into the public schools could test that perception after scoring committee hearings in the House in the last two weeks. The Senate's Ten Commandment mandate cleared the House Public Education Committee a week ago but hadn't been set for a vote on the floor by Monday night. The panel left a Senate school prayer mandate pending on Wednesday and could become a victim of the clock with fairly swift action in the House.
Wu said the House had passed more than 100 Senate bills as of Wednesday when only two measures that originated in the lower chamber had gained Senate approval. The Senate doubled that output when it approved two more House bills on Thursday. The Democratic caucus boss also noted during the TV appearance that the Legislature had sent 34 Senate bills and one House proposal to the governor's desk. The House - as of Thursday - had passed 124 bills that were conceived across the rotunda.
Wu said it appeared that the Senate had been refusing to take action on House bills because they had Democrats as authors or co-sponsors. Wu estimated that 95 percent of the measures that have cleared the House advanced on bipartisan votes. Wu suggested that the Senate stalling was an insult to rank-and-file residents around the state.
"These are the lives and dreams of Texans - and when you say we're not going to pass those bills because of who the author is - you're telling Texans you don't matter," Wu added. "You're telling Texans you don't have a place in our society. You don't have a place in this state. That's shameful."
The Democratic Caucus chairman said the House should unite as a legislative body to keep from being rolled over by the Senate where the Republicans march in lockstep to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and rubber-stamp all of his personal priorities.
more to come ...
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