GOP House Speaker's Belated Blooming
Gives Bad Legislature Redeeming Grace
Capitol Inside
November 19, 2021
Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan was more of a rubber stamp than a leader during the first two special sessions that the 87th Texas Legislature conducted in 2021. Phelan seized the gavel in January in the face of pressure that would have been unfathomable in the world before Donald Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic. He was overwhelmed from the outset by outside circumstances beyond his control in a House where the ruling Republicans needed a shepherd more than an old-school speaker who'd never ever let the Texas Senate or forces at the national level tell the Legislature's lower chamber what to do.
Phelan gave his blessings with little resistance to an agenda that represents an unprecedented expansion of state government powers in the lives of individual Texans and businesses. The Legislature's historically conservative summer sessions revolved on manufactured issues that make Texas look racist, backwards and mean. The House on Phelan's watch endorsed an abortion law that robs women of the right to control their bodies with a bounty hunter enforcement mechanism that makes a mockery of tort reform. Phelan bowed to pressure from the far right by allowing the GOP majority to pass the most restrictive voting measure in the nation in the face of stiff opposition from the Texas business establishment and groups that represent minorities. The speaker's lowest moment in a tumultuous debut arguably came when he captured the essence of the fight over voting rights with a ban on the word racism in the debate on the plan that will discriminate against minority voters.
The Texas special sessions were an ugly example of bad government at its worst. But the House speaker who'd been the weakest link in the GOP power triad all summer gave the Legislature a rare silver lining with his performance in special session number three in 2021. After getting rolled by the state's more experienced leaders throughout the spring and summer, Phelan emerged as a real leader in special session this fall when he finally decided to stand up to the bullies across the hall and above for the sake of protecting his fellow House Republicans.
While the bar has never been so low, Phelan left Austin last month as the Legislature's most valuable player in special session this year. The competition wasn't really close. Phelan made the lunar leap from lightweight to lion as the summer turned to fall - systematically spurning Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Texas Senate Republicans and Trump himself in October in clashes over covid vaccine mandates, penalties for voter fraud and election audits that have become a MAGA obsession.
The Capitol Inside all-star team for the Texas special sessions in 2021 also features the veteran GOP lawmakers who drew the new maps for the Legislature and Congress - State Senator Joan Huffman of Houston and State Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi. No two lawmakers have ever made such a delicate and convoluted task look as easy as Hunter and Huffman did in the third special sessions as the chairs of the redistricting committees in the third special session this fall.
Huffman led the charge to tighten Texas restrictions on bail for criminal defendants with legislation that she crafted in the second special session and passed with a half-dozen Democratic senators on board. The same bill cleared the House with only three Democrats voting aye in late August.
A former criminal judge, Huffman guided a bonus pay bill for retired teachers through the upper chamber in the second summer session along with a measure that's designed to fight family and dating violence. Abbott had inserted those proposals into the second summer call as bait for Democrats who'd fled to Washington D.C. to protest the elections bill by blocking a quorum back home. Huffman drafted the new maps for the Texas congressional delegation and the State Board of Education as well.
Hunter had been the perfect choice for the Redistricting Committee chairman's job as a former Democrat who's been one of the least conservative GOP members in Austin since returning to the House in 2009 as a Republican after a 12-year hiatus. Hunter was the only Republican on the Phelan A-team with the experience, expertise and temperament to tackle redistricting in a way that could get the job done with minimal bloodshed. Hunter knew that the Democrats knew that he'd be the best they could hope to get as a Republican sponsor of redistricting bills in Texas in 2021.
Republicans expect to pick up two more House seats in 2022 after a gift this week when State Rep. Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City switched from the Democrats to the GOP. A three-seat gain is modest, however, compared to the possibilities that Republicans had without the obstacle of preclearance. The GOP stands to flip one Texas Senate seat on the map that Huffman devised. Huffman's map for Congress gives the major parties one new seat apiece. The plans that Hunter and Huffman guided through the third special session with an artful ease were drawn with the next decade in mind at a Capitol where the Republicans have been obssessed with instant gratification on other issues without concern for consequences.
The selection of GOP State Rep. Trent Ashby of Lufkin as the chairman of new Select Committee on Constitutional Rights & Remedies was the best move that Phelan in his debut at the helm of the House. Phelan created the special panel in early July as a bypass around the House Elections Committee after its repeated fumbling of the GOP voting bill in the regular session.
Phelan made the colossal mistake of allowing an inexperienced conservative handle the voting restrictions package that was being forced on the GOP majority from powers above at the heart of a national agenda for battleground states. Phelan packed the select committee with relatively moderate Republicans and Democrats who he could trust to keep the damage to a minimum on the greediest partisan power grab in Texas history outside the realm of redistricting. Phelan's second most significant move in the second special session came when he appointed Democratic State Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston as vice-chair of the select committee.
The select House committee gave Phelan a place where a deluge of single-shot bills aimed at restricting voting even more went to die. Ashby's committee - more importantly - kept bills bottled up that sought to increase the punishment for voter fraud to a felony after lowering it to a misdemeanor in the election bill in the second special session in a move that Patrick portrayed as a clerical error amid an uproar from the base.
The speaker also named Democratic State Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso to the special panel after a ceremonial demoting of him the month before from his job as the speaker pro tem as punishment for spending most of the first summer session in Washington D.C. with dozens of minority party colleagues in a quorum-busting walkout to stall the election bill.
Moody had been among a large group of missing Democrats who Phelan targeted in arrest warrants that the speaker signed in June in a move that set off a court fight on whether an official "call on the House" had any teeth or was purely for show. A victory at the Texas Supreme Court exposed the Republican threats of drastic retaliation as angry bluffing when the state police posse that GOP leaders rounded up failed to net a single wayward Democrat for transport back to the Capitol for a vote on the election bill.
All of the 52 House Democrats who had their names emblazoned in a formal summons for their arrests are members of the special session all-star squad collectively in one of the five spots that features Phelan, Ashby, Huffman and Hunter as well on first team. That is an incredible badge of honor that they will have to show off to friends and family over the years.
The Democrats had no chance to kill the bill that they saw as a direct attack on the voting rights of minorities. But they milked the measure for all it was worth - parlaying the walkout into public relations gold with a national stage to protest the elections bill while pressuring Congress for a federal law to invalidate new state restrictions. The Democrats laughed off the empty threats from Austin and returned to the statehouse on their own time and terms after an experience that had the makings of a fundraising pentathlon.
State Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas was the most effective Democrat inside the brass rail in special session this year. He had no real competition in that regard. Anchia puts his talents as a courtroom lawyer on display as the leader of the floor fights for the minority party on all of the bills that were destined for legal fights from the elections bill to redistricting. Anchia helped Democrats establish records with impassioned and piercing arguments that hit nerves at times among Republicans who'd confronted him during debate on the floor.
All of the Republicans combined were no match for Anchia in terms of debating skills on issues that were dear to the Democrats hearts but not so much for the Repubicans. A nine-term lawmaker who entered the House in 2007, Anchia may be the most influential Democrat in the lower chamber as the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. Anchia has been a committee chair in the past regular sessions on three GOP speaker teams with the top job on the Pensions, Investments, and Financial Services Committee as his current station. Anchia was clearly at his best in special session in 2021.
Thompson - the longest serving Democrat in the Legislature as a House member for almost 49 years - was the most powerful and credible spokesperson that the minority party had in Washington D.C. during the holdout on the voting bill in the first two special sessions. An 82-year-old attorney who shows no signs of age, Thompson pulled off something no other Democrat accomplished during the mapmaking sweepstakes when she persuaded the select committee to put U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston back into the district that Senate Republicans had pulled from under her.
GOP State Rep. Andrew Murr of Junction had a good showing as the replacement sponsor of the voting bill - steering the measure through a hostile House in a way that avoided confrontation and traps. Republican State Rep. Dan Huberty of Humble served a similar role on the critical race theory bill after Phelan enlisted his help in keeping the measure's harm to a minimum. Huberty and Murr are listed here as honorable mention.
Democratic State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville and GOP State Rep. Jared Patterson of Frisco are honorable mention as well as the sponsors of the resurrected dog cruelty bill that Abbott had vetoed after the regular session.
Patterson faced the more imposing challenge - putting his debating skills and temper on display in an impassioned defense of the dog tethering measure while fighting back repeated attempts by rural colleagues to water the legislation down. Patterson - according to Capitol lore - got worked up enough to head butt a fellow House Republican. It was nice to see a Republican with some fight in them for a change.
Note: All photos taken from the individual lawmakers' Facebook pages. |
