Why the election for Texas House speaker is always a members-only affair
The election that will have the greatest effect on how state government operates over the next two years will be one in which the ordinary voters of Texas have no direct say in the outcome.
There will be no bumper stickers on the cars you wait behind in a traffic jam. No giant campaign signs at the busiest intersections or smaller ones on your neighbor's lawn. No glossy placards in the mailbox with photos of candidates with their family and pets. No block-walking, no polling data. And perhaps best of all, no breathless texts, calls and emails begging you for money.
What we're talking about is the traditionally out-of-public-view jockeying for who will be the speaker of the often fractious 150-member Texas House. This is a members-only affair in which the politicking is mostly one-on-one.
A House member who is an ally of one candidate or another might make a pitch to a colleague or two. An outsider might try, but he or she likely as not will be advised to butt out because House members can probably expect to hear directly from the hopefuls who want to lead them.
Let's recap where things stand in the current battle over how the House is run. The speaker is Rep. Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who has been a House member for almost 10 years and has been in charge of the chamber for the past four. He turned 49 on Wednesday and is hoping to still have his title when his 50th birthday comes along next year.
In Phelan's way is a bloc of Republicans, many from the party's most conservative wing, who believe he's been too accommodating to the 67 House Democrats. A handful of them chair committees and enough of them have formed situational alliances with some Republicans to block such GOP priorities as school vouchers.
The upshot is that no fewer that five other Republicans have formally declared their candidacies for speaker once the 2025 legislative session starts in January. One Democrat has also filed the paperwork to mount what would be a long-shot campaign for speaker.
Now let's recap how the House leadership got where it is. The speaker before Phelan, Angleton Republican Dennis Bonnen, served a single term in the top post. Bonnen wasn't quite 25 when he got to the House in 1997, and by the time he won the speaker's gavel 22 years later, he had a pretty good handle on how things worked around the Capitol. What he didn't know was that he'd be surreptitiously recorded saying unkind things about some of his fellow House Republicans.
The recording was made by a conservative activist who believed Bonnen was too accommodating to House Democratic lawmakers by allowing them to chair some committees and to block some GOP priorities. Because of the recordings and their content, trust in Bonnen had been compromised and he declined to run for the House in the 2020 election cycle.
Bonnen got to the top of the House food chain after five-term Republican Joe Straus abruptly decided to end his bid for a sixth term amid criticism from some conservatives members and activists that he had been too accommodating to Democrats by allowing them to chair some committees and occasionally blocking some Republican priorities.
Admittedly, some of this might be a trifle oversimplified, but the pattern holds.
But each of the past three speakers — and probably their immediate predecessors — emerged victorious by working the membership through basic retail politics. The magic number has always been 76 votes, and the coalitions have never been strictly limited to one party or another.
In addition to Phelan, the announced candidates for speaker as of Friday were: Reps. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress; Shelby Slawson, R-Stephenville; David Cook, R-Mansfield; James Frank, R-Wichita Falls; John Smithee, R-Amarillo; and Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.
There's a move afoot in this iteration of how Texas elects its House speaker to change the paradigm. A group of 46 Republicans, most of them House members and some of them likely to be elected to the chamber in November, have signed a letter saying they'd only back a speaker candidate who promises to end Texas' tradition of bipartisan chairmanships. As an aside, the Senate under Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has already ended that tradition.
And some Republican House members and would-be House members have called for the GOP caucus to vote as a bloc to select the next speaker, thereby shutting out the outnumbered Democrats.
The Quorum Report, a Capitol-centric newsletter, posted an inside baseball, subscriber-only story Friday saying that about 25 Republicans had huddled privately and that Cook , who was elected to the House in 2020, had emerged as the group's consensus pick. Simple math suggests he'll need at least 50 more votes to prevail.
Phelan issued a statement calling the gathering "little more than an orchestrated scheme to generate headlines and fuel social media clicks" that is causing "unnecessary chaos" in the GOP caucus.
The statement, issued publicly, also suggests that Phelan wants this speaker's election process to remain mostly a private matter between the members.
"I invite every member of the Texas House, including those pursuing the Speaker's gavel, to join me in setting aside our differences and working hand-in-hand to advance our common goals," he said.
