Both Sides Claim Victory After Leadership Walkout, House GOP Speaker Nomination Vote

December 8th, 2024 Andy Hogue

Txlege UpdateAlthough both sides of the Texas House Speaker battle claimed victory on Saturday, their two candidates remain valid contenders ahead of the formal vote in mid-January.

On the incumbent House leadership side: Rep. Dustin Burrows became the favored candidate after incumbent Speaker Dade Phelan pulled out late Thursday. He’s claiming majority support from across the entire chamber — nearly equally between Republicans and Democrats.

On the “reform” side: Rep. David Cook continued as the opposition leader, clearly winning the House GOP Caucus’s closed-door nomination vote after several rounds and following a walkout of Burrow’s supporters.

Each candidate must now win a majority of votes on Jan. 14, the first day of session, in order to take the gavel.

Shortly after Cook and supporters claimed victory on Saturday afternoon (48-14 votes of the 62 who reportedly remained), Burrows and several who had left the meeting announced a list of over 70 supporters. Burrows initially reported 76 out of the chamber’s 150 Republican and Democratic members support him, but several members have since claimed they did not give permission for their names to be included. The exact count is unclear at this time.

Meanwhile, House Democrats doubled-down on their previous statement that they would not support Cook, but remaining silent regarding Burrows.

“The speaker’s race is over,” Cook said in a quick scrum outside the Texas Capitol extension room where the caucus meeting was held. “I have secured enough to be Speaker of the House for the next session.”

FROM THE HIP: If the math holds up until opening day of the 89th Legislature, Burrows will be the man to beat. Meanwhile, caucus and Texas Republican party rules are adding a level of stickiness to this situation.

Under caucus rules, all 88 GOP House members are beholden to support the nominated candidate come Jan. 14. If everyone follows the rule, that means Cook is in. And that’s a mighty big “if” given legislative tradition in the Lone Star State.

A little more than a decade ago, the caucus endorsement process just wasn’t done. At times, the Texas House was evenly or near-evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, but other Texas-centric issues kept party allegiances from being the main consideration. Rural and urban legislators continued to brawl until the mid-oughties, for example, and some Republicans were more liberal than the most conservative members of the Democrats. Not so any more under a more “Washington-ized” environment, with the lines more clearly drawn between the parties and national issues playing a larger role.

Burrows can easily claim a tradition of bipartisan considerations in the House when it comes to Speakers and committee chairmanships (something the GOP has strongly denounced in recent years). It seems he is doing just that by working the Ds. But grassroots Republicans are not likely to cotton to that level of co-mingling. Texas Democrats would be more forgiven — what choice do they have but to bargain with the majority party?

Now come the party rules: Recent rules changes gave teeth to the party’s power to censure elected officials. Under Rule 44, the Texas GOP claims the ability to remove a candidate from the primary ballot if censured — a process which starts locally among constituents and county executive committees. The State Republican Executive Committee (SREC, also meeting on Saturday) vowed to censure all who do not stand by the House GOP caucus’s nominee.

With the rightward tilt of both RPT, numerous counties, and the SREC of late, a censure of Burrows and possibly his supporters is all-but certain. What is uncertain will be any legal challenges resulting from invoking Rule 44 in this way.

According to the Texas Tribune, House GOP Caucus Chairman Tom Oliverson, who withdrew his bid for speaker to support Cook, said he expected the group’s members to abide by its rules and vote for Cook. Oliverson noted that Burrows helped to write those rules because of “what [former House Speaker] Joe Straus used to do” in terms of consorting with the Democrats. Long story there.

And there’s yet two more factors: 1) It’s a long time until Jan. 14, in political terms, and 2) there’s still a Democrat candidate for Speaker.

That Democrat is Rep. Ana-Maria Rodriguez Ramos, a North Texas-area House member who chairs the body’s Progressive Caucus. How many votes she can peel away as leader of what is essentially “The Squad” of Texas has yet to be seen, or if she’ll hang in there. But it’s clear she’s no Burrows-backer in the meantime.

(Ramos is referring to that Texas bill protested by Congressman Greg Casar, now chairman of the U.S. House’s Progressive caucus. Remember the water bottle pic? Yeah, that. Here’s RVIVR.com’s write-up on the non-controversy.)

Much can happen between now and mid-January. Expect some old school interparty deal-making and bargaining over the holidays. And lots of it.

One more consideration: Although the battle between Burrows and Cook may be portrayed as the moderate Republican establishment versus the more-conservative GOP opposition, it may not be as stark a difference when all is said and done. The Speaker’s gavel is indeed headed in a starboard direction since Straus (and a 74-74 split House the year he was elected Speaker), but according to numerous rankings and scorecards, Burrows and Cook are a hair’s-breadth apart in terms of their votes. Here’s one example that puts them neck-and-neck, and another that puts them about 10 points apart — both with Cook as the more conservative. At the end of the day, they’re both Republicans from conservative districts (Burrows from Lubbock in West Texas and Cook from Mansfield in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth). And Cook started as a Phelan ally.

For those playing the home game:

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