State GOP Chairman Abraham George warned on Friday that the party would not accept the appointment of Democrats as Texas House committee leaders after Rick Perry contended that Republican Speaker Dade Phelan is on track to win a third term in the leadership position.
Perry - an original Donald Trump cabinet member who served as Texas governor longer than anyone in history - hit a nerve in a television interview on Thursday when he poked fun at State Rep. David Cook of Mansfield as the consensus challenger for conservatives in the speaker's election in January.
"I will suggest we'll just wait until the votes happen and see who was right," Perry said in an interview on the Austin NBC affiliate KXAN. "I'm not sure I could pick Representative Cook out of a lineup. I'm sure he's a fine young man and I wish him well. But he's not going to be the speaker when the gavel comes down."
The former governor who served as energy secretary under Trump drew a heated rebuke from George, who posted an excerpt from the television exchange on X but declined to mention Perry by name.
"Let's get this straight.@DadePhelan and his team claim they have the votes," George said. "They also claim they will keep appointing Democrat chairs.
They also won't release a list of supporters but admit it's mostly Democrats.
The @TexasGOP and Texans will not tolerate this. We are the only state giving power to Democrats after a landslide Republican victory!!!"
Cook's campaign for speaker has appeared stagnant since he published a list with pledges from 47 Republicans who will be members of the Legislature's lower chamber in 2025.
Cook's initial supporters included one Republican who lost a bid for the House last week in a fight with an incumbent Democrat.
A candidate for speaker would need 53 votes in the House Republican Caucus to secure the party's formal nomination in the battle for power in the Texas Capitol's west wing. But the caucus nod is non-binding and purely for show as a consequence despite attempts by Cook supporters to portray it as a critical step in the process. Phelan doesn't need the nomination from the caucus to keep the gavel for two more years as long as he has Democrats in his corner and 14 Republicans at least in a chamber where the GOP will have an 88-62 edge next year.
The lion's share of Phelan's apparent supporters from the GOP are committee chairs who could expect to have them stripped away if a new speaker is elected on opening day of the regular session two months from now. But Phelan critics are counting on his supporters to give up the power they've coveted amid fear of conservative voter retaliation in their next primary election that's 16 months away.
Perry laughed off the threats of voter vengeance and asserted that "It makes total sense" for Phelan to run for re-election as speaker with a coalition that includes House Democrats and some of the Republicans. Perry said that he'd been "dealing with the legislative process 40 years now" and could testify that there had Democratic committee chairs in the House under every GOP speaker up to now.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who joined the upper chamber 18 years ago as a senator, released a video on social media on Thursday on why Republicans should remake the Texas House in the Senate's image.
"The difference between the Senate and the House - we don't let the Democrats run the Senate," Patrick claimed in the message that he post on X. "We don't let Democrats pass bills with all Democrat votes and just two or three Republicans. That's what the House does. They'll pass a bill with all Democrats voting and a handful of Republicans."
Patrick argued that his leadership style was superior and should be a model for the House.
"We're a Republican conservative state," the lieutenant governor pointed out in the clip.
"We know how to work across the aisle without ceding power to the other side to let them run the Senate like Dade lets the Democrats run the House," Patrick added.
In addition to Phelan and Cook, the Texas speaker's race features a couple of Dallas Democrats who have no chance to win barring miracles in State Reps. John Bryant and Ana-Maria Ramos.
Cook won a third term in the House in the general election last week. Like most freshman and sophomore representatives, Cook had little opportunity for significant accomplishments as a lawmaker up to now.
George claimed the state party leadership post in June after a failed bid for the House in a Collin County district where he lost by 5 percentage points to State Rep. Candy Noble of Lucas.
