Harrison Gets Laughs with Motion to Give
Texas House Republican Speaker the Boot
Capitol Inside
April 2, 2025
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows cracked an April Fools day joke in response to a conservative critic's attempt to get him fired from the leadership post on Tuesday with a surprise request for an ouster vote that sparked more laughter than drama inside the Legislature's lower chamber.
GOP State Rep. Brian Harrison of Midlothian set himself up for a snub with a series of parliamentary inquiries that he used for lodging accusations and criticism on the way that Burrows has run the House since he claimed the gavel in January. Harrison cited the House's deliberate pace in the first half of the 2025 regular session, alleged rules violations in the appropriations process and a Burrows ruling on a quorum that didn't exist late last week.
When Burrows refused to answer the questions on the grounds that they were improper, Harrison decided to go nuclear with a motion to vacate the chair. That's another term for firing a speaker in the parliamentary vernacular of the House. It's a feat that only had been tried once before in modern times in Texas before Harrison made history with the maneuvering Tuesday on the floor.
But Harrison appeared unprepared and perplexed when Burrows declined to recognize the motion "on April Fools Day" because it wasn't presented in a valid resolution as required by the chamber rules. Burrows told Harrison he could feel free to file such a resolution if he wanted to try again with a motion that could lead to the House's second speaker's election in less than three months if successful.
Harrison could expect the same results - however - in a chamber where the Republican speaker isn't bound to officially acknowledge such a motion. Harrison could consult Republican colleague Tom Craddick for insight on the process for giving speakers the boot during a session.
A half-dozen House Republicans sought to overthrow Craddick on the final weekend of his third regular session as the speaker in 2007. But the attempted coup had been in the works for weeks - and the tension was at an all-time when the GOP members who'd been plotting Craddick's demise as speaker tried to pull the trigger on the motion to vacate the char.
But Craddick had been a member of the House since 1969 - and he was prepared for the historic power play when the chamber returned from a break with two new parliamentarians who'd been committee chairs on the speaker's team in his first two terms in the dais. With Terry Keel and Ron Wilson telling him exactly what to say during the ordeal, Craddick spurned the renegade Republicans' repeated attempts to be recognized for the motion that could have sealed his demise.
Craddick had the gavel for another 18 months before Republican Joe Straus seized it at the start of the 2009 regular session with a bipartisan coalition that featured all of the House Democrats and relatively moderate GOP members who'd been behind the motion to vacate the chair two years before.
Harrison's attempted mutiny appeared to be more spontaneous and failed to produce the drama in which the bid to give Craddick the boot was shrouded. But Harrison's protests and verbal zingers have become of the House's daily routine in his second regular session as a lawmaker. He runs the risk of being dismissed as a contemporary version of the boy who cried wolf if he sticks the same aggressive strategy that's guaranteed him more attention than colleagues as the only real effect.
more to come ...
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