May, 2007:

Listen to me carefully here, people. Be very careful what you wish for.

Consumer groups are calling on Gov. Rick Perry to order the state Legislature back into session to make changes to Texas’ competitive electricity markets.

AARP Texas and Texas ACORN, which advocates for low-income families, said a bill that died in the final hours of the legislative session on Monday fell short of making the kinds of changes they wanted to see, but would have been better than nothing.

A spokeswoman for the governor said he has not yet decided to whether to call a special session.

Bonnie Mathis, an ACORN board member in Dallas, said in a prepared statement that the group was glad $170 million was returned to the Systems Benefit Fund designed to give some low-income customers some relief.

“But that’s not enough to solve the utility crisis we face in Texas,” she said. ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, wants rate reductions and protection from electricity shutoffs for the elderly and low income who fall behind on their bills during the summer, Mathis said.

AARP Texas State Director Robert Jackson said in a letter to the governor that he wanted legislation in a special session to provide a 20 percent rate reduction for customers and to address a wholesale pricing system that he said inflates rates across the board.

I didn’t follow the saga of SB482, the bill that was supposed to help with electric rates but got killed at the end by a point of order. Maybe it was a good bill, maybe it wasn’t – you’ll have to forgive me for not giving anything sponsored by Phil King the benefit of the doubt. If we could have a special session that did nothing but reconsider SB482, I’d have no qualm with that. But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where the Governor sets the agenda for a special session, and as sure you’re reading this one of the items on the agenda for a special session would be voter ID legislation, which by the way is something that the AARP and ACORN both oppose, for good reason. Is the benefit of one – and again, forgive me for having my doubts about whatever would get passed here – worth the cost of the other? I for one say no, and while I respect the right of AARP and ACORN to think otherwise, I sure hope they’re taking the full cost of what they’re requesting into account here.

Burka thinks the Turner for Speaker campaign is a stalking horse.

There’s no way for Sylvester to win. Republicans can’t vote for a Democrat for speaker. The best Turner can hope for is to hold the Craddick Ds (who may not be as solid as they were before the blowups) and to add some of the WD-40s and some of the more independent Ds like Strama. Let’s say he can get to 25-30 supporters. That gives him a chance to be kingmaker, but not king–and we know who he’ll be kingmaker for. More likely, this is not a play for speaker at all. It is a play to protect the Craddick Ds from a primary challenge. Turner’s candidacy gives the Craddick Ds the opportunity to pledge to a Democrat. This removes the main argument that can be used against the Craddick Ds in the primary. Then, safely reelected, they can deliver their votes to Craddick in January 09.

Much to think about in there. One point I want to make is that of all the Craddick Ds, I think Turner is the least vulnerable to a primary challenge. Unlike some of his Craddick-crat colleagues, Turner has a real record of accomplishment (think HB109, for starters), and is very well liked in his district. He’s not an apostate like Ron Wilson was. He’s not an out-of-touch relic like Al Edwards was. Mounting a primary challenge against him would be very difficult. While I can see him laying down cover for some of his colleagues who’ll need the help, like Kevin Bailey and Dawnna Dukes, I seriously doubt he himself has anything to worry about. As such, I reject the notion that he’s doing this to protect himself next March.

On a side note, be sure to check out this video at BOR that compiles editorial reactions to Tom Craddick’s power grab. Good stuff.

UPDATE: Two points from the Chron story, which I didn’t get to earlier. One is further evidence that it won’t be Sylvester Turner unifying Democrats in his Speaker’s bid:

“Mr. Turner has worked against the interest of Democrats by propping up Mr. Craddick. That is not something that is forgotten,” said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston.

Coleman, who has had differences with Turner, said he doesn’t believe Turner can win. It takes 76 votes to win in the 150-member chamber. The current makeup of the House is 81 Republicans and 69 Democrats.

“It’s not because Sylvester isn’t smart and has the tenure. It’s because he’s made bad choices,” Coleman said, adding that “if Sylvester is a serious candidate, Craddick is dead. He is defeated now.”

From your lips to God’s ears, Garnet. Until somebody else actually gets elected Speaker, I’m going to assume that Tom Craddick isn’t really dead but merely comic book dead. It’s too risky to think otherwise.

Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, Appropriations Committee chairman, said he’ll support Craddick if he runs for re-election as speaker but that he hadn’t heard from Craddick about his plans.

He also said it’s possible that a Democrat could be elected to the top spot in the House, noting the group trying to unseat Craddick came from both parties. He said he believes there are Republicans who would vote for a Democrat for speaker.

So Chisum disagrees with Burka about Republicans voting for a Democrat for Speaker. We’ll see who’s right. For what it’s worth, I can’t speak for Republican primary voters, but to revisit the cases of Ron Wilson and Al Edwards again, it wasn’t their support of Tom Craddick that galvanized the opposition that eventually ousted them. Wilson was a huge enabler of the 2003 re-redistricting, and basically spent that entire year openly pissing on the Democratic Party and his colleagues. The campaign ads against him wrote themselves. Edwards made some bad votes in 2005, but the real clincher was the Sexy Cheerleading bill, which turned him into a national laughingstock. Point I’m making is simply that one’s vote for Speaker, at least historically, has not been that big a deal in and of itself. Admittedly, things are different now (thanks again, Tom!), and given where we are today I’d probably consider a vote for Craddick in 2009 to be an unforgivable sin for a Democrat. Whether the Republicans see it the same way from their perspective, I couldn’t say.

Yesterday, the Chron Texas Politics blog reported that House Speaker Pro Tem and staunch Tom Craddick ally Rep. Sylvester Turner was non-committal about who he’d support in 2009.

Turner says he’s a free agent as far as the 2009 speaker’s race is concerned.

Turner, who was already back in his Houston law firm Tuesday afternoon, said he’s had enough speaker’s politics to last him six months.

“I don’t want to think about the speaker’s race for the duration of the year,” said Turner. “I haven’t made any commitments or signed pledge cards.”

The first question members need to ask themselves is whether they plan to return to Austin in 2009, he said. Beyond that, they must assess who will best govern the House.

“Anyone who commits or tries to nail something down now would be acting prematurely,” Turner said.

Apparently, Turner is disregarding his own advice, because it seems he is thinking about the ’09 Speaker’s race, and he does have a candidate he’s committed to: Himself. QR has the scoop.

SYLVESTER TURNER FILES TO RUN FOR SPEAKER IN 2009

Key Craddick supporter jumps ship

In his statetment, Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) said, “I don’t ever want to have another legislative session like the one just completed where taking care of the people’s business took a back seat to political agendas. We have too many problems in this state to waste most of a legislative session on political agendas that do not include providing lower electric rates to the low-income and elderly or more funding for mental health programs.”

“I have worked effectively in the House under a Democratic majority,” Turner said, “and I have worked effectively in the House under a Republican majority. I have sought to treat every member with the utmost respect and I have worked to operate the House with the utmost degree of integrity.”

“I sincerely hope that over the next 18 months, members will evaluate and assess my abilities,” Turner continued. “I believe I am the best person to serve as Speaker in 2009 and I hope the members will give me the opportunity to serve as their Speaker.”

Turner’s full statement is here (Word doc). This just got a whole lot more interesting, and a whole lot messier for Craddick. The question is whether Turner can unify Democratic support, or if they’d prefer to stick to Senfronia Thompson. I have no idea right now how this will play out. But it’s all good from where I’m sitting. I don’t see how Craddick gets to 76 votes without Turner in his corner. That’s the best news I’ll hear this week.

UPDATE: Early indicators are not positive for Turner as the One True Democratic Candidate for Speaker, at least as far as BOR is concerned.

According to Grits, Governor Perry’s first veto of 2007 was for HB770, a “bipartisan bill that drew no organized opposition at the Lege”. But it would have made it easier for ex-cons who have fully served their sentences to vote, and we just can’t have that. Read Grits’ analysis for why this was such a petty thing to do.

The legislative session is finally over. Before they adjourned, the House voted to finish up business left undone by the Sunday quorum busting, which meant the last day was a lot busier than usual. The good news is that this meant HB1919 got passed; the bad news is that SB11 also got passed. One bill that didn’t pass was SB482, which was supposed to provide some electric bill rate cuts, but it died on a point of order. Paul Burka thinks this might be a fulcrum for Governor Perry to call a special session. I can’t begin to tell you how much I hope he’s wrong about that.

So that’s all she wrote. Let the 2008 elections begin.

Talk about your anti-climaxes…After the fireworks this week and especially last night, the House appears to be conducting its normal business today, what will hopefully be the last day they’re in session until 2009. Bills are moving, with the parks bill passing easily (that ought to make PM Bryant happy). Governor Perry has finally weighed in – sort of – on all the chaos. Still no indication as to whether or not he thinks there needs to be legislative overtime. As Ryan Rusek points out, Perry has some political calculations to make, too.

Meanwhile, the “Democrats for Real Reform” are tooting their horn about things that did get accomplished this session. Vince takes a closer look at their claims and finds them wanting.

Finally, for future reference, click More for a list of things said recently about Tom Craddick by his fellow Republicans. Enjoy.

(more…)

If passing the budget wasn’t the big news yesterday, then this would have to be it.

Tempers finally spilled over on the House floor this morning with two lawmakers shoving each other and members walking out of the chamber after Rep. Pat Haggerty began taking a roll call on who supported Speaker Tom Craddick and who wanted to remove him from office.

The House had to adjourn when the walkout left the chamber without a quorum.

“Tonight was the only way that people could express their vote of no confidence in the speaker,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said. “The way this session has been run by the speaker has been an example of someone using absolute power to corrupt the democratic process.”

The House had approved a new state budget before the disruption, but the walkout jeopardized several other major bills, including a new water plan, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice sunset bill and a bill involving parks funding.

[…]

[Pat] Haggerty, an El Paso Republican, began taking a roll call during a personal privilege speech, which triggered an all-out rebellion.

Turner, D-Houston, a Craddick ally, told Haggerty he had to stop his roll call, which showed more members favoring Craddick’s ouster.

“It’s the only way to send a message,” Haggerty said.

He also blasted Craddick’s new parliamentarians, whom the speaker brought in Friday night after his parliamentarian and her assistant quit.

Terry Keel and Ron Wilson, both former House members, are Craddick’s allies and issued rulings indicating that Craddick had absolute power not to recognize members for a motion to remove him. Both Keel and Wilson lost elections.

“Where did they go to parliamentarian school that somehow makes them better than God?” Haggerty asked.

That’s my new favorite quote from the entire session. My sincere thanks to you, Rep. Haggerty, for providing it.

Among the many notable things about last night’s action is the increasing number of onetime Craddick supporters who are now speaking against him. El Paso Democrat Norma Chavez, who was quoted in that E-N story. Round Rock Republican Mike Krusee:

“This interpretation of our rules has erected a wall between the leadership and the membership,” said House Transportation Committee Chairman Mike Krusee of Round Rock, one of several House chairmen who began the session supporting Mr. Craddick and ended it vowing to replace him. “Mr. Speaker, we must tear it down.”

But earlier, Mr. Krusee acknowledged that Mr. Craddick held all the cards.

“When the speaker rules that he can overrule all the House rules, where do you go?” he said. “You have nowhere to go.”

[…]

“This will be dealt with in the rules next session,” said House Financial Institution Chairman Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, who carried the House rules through its ratification in January and said it was “never the intent of the rules” to give the speaker absolute authority. “Whether I do it again, or someone else does. But it will be dealt with.”

Solomons has spoken before about the way the rules he helped implement have been interpreted. One person to watch for is Warren Chisum, who was one of Craddick’s most powerful allies this session, and who’s known to be very respectful of the House as an institution. I suspect Chisum doesn’t much care for putting one person above the House as a whole. Should he come out and say so publicly, I’d consider that a death blow to Craddick.

Craddick’s supporters claim that since there were 94 legislators left on the floor after the walkout, that means he’s in even stronger shape than he was at the start of the session. Karen Brooks has a response to that:

[B]y my count, there are about a dozen who were voted in that 94 but may not have voted against a motion to vacate.

I’m not making assumptions about anyone, I’m being very conservative, so I’m going to give you the most obvious among those: Jose Menendez, D-SA; Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston; TODD SMITH (a leader in the insurgency); Chente Quintanilla was in the bathroom and didn’t walk out OR vote (though someone voted him.)

In short, however, this number is no more meaningful than the 87 who voted to overrule the chair a few weeks ago. The insurgents didn’t have 87 votes then, and Craddick doesn’t have 94 now.

What I’ve noticed is that there are no new voices speaking out for Craddick. Maybe they’re just keeping their mouths shut, but there’s a lot of new antis making themselves known. Make of that what you will.

BOR followed all the action last night for the insomnia crowd. Looks like several major bills, including the zombie version of HB13 are likely dead (again, in some cases), which makes the Observer wonder about a special. We’ll know when Governor Perry finally breaks his silence on all this. Stay tuned, the House convenes one last time for this session today at 2.

Cripes. Some bills just won’t stay dead.

Rep. Frank Corte, the House’s number one law-and-order-civil liberties-be-damned legislator is trying to ride to the rescue. According to sources on the conference committee, Corte is trying to shovel some of the worst provisions in HB 13 into his SB 11 (another awful homeland security bill). In particular, Corte wants to put the fusion center, a fancy name for a huge intelligence database that will house both private and public information on Texans, into the governor’s office.

The bad news is that Corte has gotten this past the committee conferees on SB11. The good news is that, as Grits notes, it’ll take a 2/3 majority to pass due to the route Corte took to get it this far. Surely fifty Nays is not too high a hurdle to kill it. Right? If all else fails, maybe the House just won’t have time to get to it. Keep your fingers crossed.

The following is from Rep. Rick Noriega:

Comments on Memorial Day

LTC Rick Noriega

May 27, 2007

Our great country is at war. This Memorial Day weekend, as we move from barbecue to pool, we need to take a moment and reflect on the true origin of this weekend holiday. We need to remember the sacrifice of those who have gone before, those who are serving now, and those who have lost more than most of us could ever imagine. Memorial Day has grown from various solemn remembrances of the sacrifices of our soldiers as far back as 1868 in Waterloo, NY, and was declared a federal holiday in 1971.

One of the things this holiday may represent is that people have died for our right to disagree. In the face of such service and sacrifice, using overheated, incendiary language normally used to typify armed conflict to describe divisions in the Texas House of Representatives is not helpful and possibly irresponsible. “Insurgents,” “rebels,” “storming,” “charged,” “anarchy” are not appropriate terms to describe the occurrences in the Texas House this weekend. It is dramatic to use such over-the-top expressions, but it is not accurate or appropriate.

Genuine differences in opinion, concern about appropriate use of Texas House rules to stifle debate and disagreement, fundamental discussions of the use of this great state’s resources to meet the needs of its citizens–all are in play at the Texas Capitol this holiday. In the face of such drama, it is tempting to go over the top to try and convey the intensity of the discussion and the strong differences in opinion of the members of the Texas House. For the sake of accurate reporting and the gravity of the discussion, it might be more responsible to take the language down a little and leave the war analogies to CNN and Fox News.

Democracy is messy. Democracy at its best is not everyone agreeing, of not knowing the answer to every question. Democracy is hashing out all the sides and listening to all the voices, and bringing forth the common ground for the common good. We would challenge you to not silence the voices of discontent, but instead embrace the fundamental tenet of democracy, that of listening to a different view.

We are at a critical time in our history and in the Texas House of Representatives, and there is fundamental bipartisan disagreement in the Texas House about our future, its leadership and the rule of law.

As our men and women overseas defend our freedom to argue and discuss and compromise and disagree, please honor their service by a responsible use of language. And please understand that our duty and responsibility for the common good, for democracy, suggests that the current bipartisan effort in the Texas House must have its voice heard. God bless Texas.

I see that Burka is still using the language of “insurgents” and whatnot, but he’s got a pretty clear-eyed view of te situation (see here and here for more), so I’ll let it slide this time.

Elsewhere, Vince is liveblogging, BOR is keeping track of the Craddick Ds, and the Texas Democratic Party is calling on people to sign their petition to “encourage Speaker Tom Craddick to respect the will of the people as represented by our elected Representatives and ask that he either resign immediately or allow the Texas House to vote on a motion to vacate the Chair”. Stay tuned.

So we’re down to the wire for the Lege this session, with a lot of unfinished business to deal with amid all the Speaker strife. I know that Tom Craddick will be more powerful if he makes it through to sine die as Speaker, but there’s a part of me that would rather see his deposing put off till 2009 if the alternative is not passing the budget and going to a special session. While I don’t doubt that there are some budget items that need scrutiny, a special session means that all kinds of bad legislation that we thought were dead is back in play (at least one such bill has already been resurrected). Basically, a special session means the two nasty voter ID bills become law.

Given that choice, I’d rather go home and fight it out in the elections. I’d rather have the specter of Tom Craddick as Supreme Dictator For Life be the dominant image from this session rather than give his supporters the chance to claim that the opposing forces put the Speaker fight above House business, with the special session as proof. Especially since it’s looking like more Craddick supporters are reassessing their positions going forward.

“Obviously, he’s damaged goods after this deal, in terms of leading a bipartisan Legislature,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum said about 24 hours after the House had descended into chaos over Mr. Craddick’s use of the rules to quash any effort to unseat him.

[…]

“We have respected him as speaker up to a point, but there’s a lot of dissatisfaction in the House over the way it’s being run,” said House Financial Institutions Committee Chairman Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, who has staunchly supported Mr. Craddick’s speakership. “Three sessions [as speaker] is enough.”

Mr. Solomons, who carried the resolution writing the House rules in January, said he was stunned at the speaker’s interpretation of his own power.

“As the person who did the rules and served under a number of parliamentarians, I was unaware that there was that absolute power on the part of the speaker,” he said. “The speaker always had a lot of power, but not absolute power. That was not the intent of the rules. … No legislative body in the country provides absolute power to any one individual.”

[…]

Dallas GOP Rep. Dan Branch, a loyal Craddick ally since he entered the House in 2003, said that he was “reserving judgment” about 2009 until the House can make it to adjournment on Monday – and that he wants to focus on state business until then.

“After that,” he said, “I look forward to sitting down with the speaker and talking about his future and what’s best for the state.”

Asked whether he would support Mr. Craddick’s drive for another term as speaker, Mr. Chisum, R-Pampa, said he’s still waiting to see if he’ll run.

“He’s going to have to do a lot of soul-searching before the rest of us can decide what to do,” he said.

I don’t know what will happen today, and to some extent you have to take remarks like these with a grain of salt. And of course with various filibuster threats on the budget, there may not be a choice in the special session matter. All I’m saying is that I hope we’re all on the same page strategy-wise.

I was going to do a roundup of news coverage of yesterday’s action, but South Texas Chisme saved me the trouble. As always stay tuned.