The Texan Podcast - Interview: Rep. Tom Oliverson Talks Texas House Reform, Speaker's Race

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) sat down with The Texan’s senior reporter Brad Johnson to discuss his bid for Texas House Speaker that he announced last month.Oliverson discussed his reasons for running, his views on the outcome of the last legislative session, his position banning Democrats from holding chair positions, and his thoughts on the “Contract with Texas” being pushed by several GOP incumbents and nominees.“I looked the day after the primary, and I saw clearly, clearly the Republican voters of Texas were calling for change,” said Oliverson. “It was a pretty dramatic election result if you look at it in terms of the number of primaries that didn’t work out exactly the way people thought they might have.”Be sure to subscribe to The Texan for complete access to all of our content on state political news: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/

Hey everybody, this is Brad Johnson, Senior Reporter at The Texan. Today I have with me on the podcast Chairman Tom Oliverson. Welcome. Thank you. Chairman Oliverson chairs the Insurance Committee in the House. How long have you been a state rep when you were elected? So I'm in my fourth term right now. Came in in 2017.

And now you are making the jump running for Texas House Speaker. Yes, I am. Which is the onus for us speaking today. And when you announced, what was that, about a month ago or so? Yeah, the end of March. Of March. You know, that sent a lot of shockwaves in the Texas political sphere. You were the first to jump in, at least other than the current incumbent, House Speaker Dade Phelan. And you laid out, you laid out a ton of reasons why you made the jump in. Give us the rundown of why it is. What was the onus for you jumping in this race? Sure. I mean, I think the straw that broke the dam, so to speak, if you will, was that I looked

the day after the primary, and I saw clearly, clearly the Republican voters of Texas were calling for change. It was a pretty dramatic election result if you look at it in terms of the number of primaries that didn't work out exactly the way people thought they might have. And so, you know, I saw that as a mandate for change and started thinking about what it is that the people were asking for, what have they been asking for. And I think the main issue that percolates to the top is that the Republican Party in our state is just not satisfied anymore with excuses for why the majority can't govern as a majority and why we have to share power with the minority and why we still have Democrat chairs, why do we waste so much time getting started?

Why is it that you come home every session on some platform priority that we really cared about, said, you know, we just ran out of time. Sorry. And I just think the people of this state are just, those are not satisfactory answers anymore. The party has moved on and it's time for the House to change in order to keep pace with the direction the voters want to see us go. Nine incumbents lost, I think eight more pushed to runoffs. A lot of your colleagues. A lot of my friends. Yeah. Tell me about that. What was that like seeing? It was tough. It was tough. You know, I lost several classmates and I have other classmates that are in runoffs. And, you know, there were some votes and some decisions that

were made and some things that are tough and the voters didn't agree with. And so, you know, they're working through that right now, those that are in runoffs. And it's really hard for me to see a session like what we had last session, which I thought right up until about the end of May was a really good conservative, especially a socially conservative session, Get completely upended by this atom bomb that dropped out of nowhere that nobody, nobody knew was coming with the impeachment of Ken Paxton. I think it was an incalculably bad political decision. And I think the results of the elections are bearing that out. You were absent that day. I think you said you were at your son's graduation. Yes, I was. I was. Good example, right? That was known weeks in advance.

And then it was sort of like, oh gosh, you can't be here for that? Well, you know, and I was just like very clear about it. My son is graduating from high school. What do you want me to do? I'm not going to miss a once- a lifetime opportunity to be with him. I think it's interesting that we have a situation right now with President Trump, right, where this judge is punishing him by saying he can't go to his son's high school graduation. That's an important thing for a father to be there. You mentioned the session and at least until the impeachment, what you thought was a quite good session. Where did the House and or Speaker Phelan fall short in your mind that has drawn out this challenge? So I think several things.

I think, first of all, the impeachment thing was a mistake. It was not handled well. It's interesting to me that when I came back and I talked to a lot of the members trying to understand, you know, how they voted, why they voted, stuff like that. The thing I kept hearing over and over again was that people just felt like this was a terrible process. There was no due process. There was not enough time to consider, you know, the materials that were being presented. It was sort of a we've done all the work for you, take our word for it. And a lot of members just couldn't swallow that. And I think rightly so. The House had never done that before in the history of the House with regards to impeachment. I'm not aware of any time where we've ever tried to rush a process like that without having a debate, without having a chance

to talk to witnesses or really have some thought process there. I don't know, to this day, I don't know why it had to be so cloak and dagger. But it clearly was, and it literally just ruined everything. Even despite that, though, what was it in the 130-ish number that still voted for it, including, I think, 60 Republicans? Sure. Have you heard as to why, you know, despite the concerns about transparency there, it was still, you know, pretty lopsided. I mean, look, I think there's some people that got there and believed that, you know, that the Attorney General had done wrong things

and that they needed to send it over to the Senate for impeachment and a closer look. And I know there are some of my colleagues that are still to to this day, are arguing that, some of whom are no longer in office, but, or won't be. But they are sticking by that, saying if I had to do it all over again, I'd still vote that way. But I think you have to acknowledge that the grassroots, the voters, didn't see it that way. So, I mean, I just think it was a, it was not handled well at all, and it essentially ruined what was otherwise, I think, a pretty good session. I know when I got home, nobody wanted to talk about gender modification or saving women's sports or any of the things that we did. All they wanted to know about was impeachment. Any policy shortfalls that you see?

Well, school choice was a huge policy shortfall. It didn't have to end that way, and it shouldn't have ended that way. And I think that if you actually are counting the bodies, right, in terms of the races and how they went up, I think what you'd have to say is that school choice was a big contributor to some of these seats flipping. And I don't think, I do not believe, in fact, I know that we were not out of options on that. And I just don't think that leadership in particular, I don't think the speaker did everything in his power to move that bill across the finish line,

even knowing full well that the governor was going to unload on any one of his colleagues that didn't support it. Do you think the speaker should have been more assertive in whipping votes on that? Is that what you're suggesting? Well, I think he kind of left the door open either way on that issue. He remained very hands-off, right? I think he was, right? I mean, he voted for impeachment. He voted for the budget.

He voted for a bill that had to do with postpartum benefits for Medicaid. But he gave us no indication throughout the entirety of the regular session or the special session in any way, shape, or form where he personally was on that issue. So, I mean, you don't have to vote on every bill, but, I mean, if it was that important, it was certainly important to the governor and it was certainly important to a lot of voters, and the Senate seemed to have no trouble passing the bill, and I don't think you could make the argument that everybody on the Republican side in the Senate was totally happy with the idea, but they figured out how to pull together and work it out.

Maybe the calculus has changed with all these seats that have flipped on school choice. But during session, you know, the votes weren't there in the House for at least everything the governor wanted. Sure. How would you have, as speaker, found a way through that and navigated a compromise? Well, I mean, again, I think it's an issue of whether or not you're at some point just going to throw up your hands, you know, and just sort of wash your hands and say, you know, well, I'm done here. You know, their blood is on your hands kind of stuff. I feel like that's sort of, at the end of the day, the place we got to. And I still think there were some maneuvers that could have been done that would have given us another chance to pass

something I understand that there was a lot of back and forth I've talked to Chairman Buckley I know he worked his tail off on this bill and sometimes the people that were working against him weren't necessarily the people that were against school choice it was people that wanted more. So I think we should acknowledge that. But I don't think we did everything we could have done. Moving back to the speaker's race, you were fairly active in some of these primaries. I think I saw you up in Stephanie Click's race. Maybe you will be there for her in the runoff. But as a speaker candidate, it reminds me of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, or at least before he was speaker, going in and spending a lot of money or campaigning to get a majority. Do you plan on getting involved in many of these races in order to solidify votes for yourself? So I think personally, I'm probably not going to get involved in those races. As the chair of the caucus, I will absolutely do what is in the best interest of the caucus as a chair.

That is my duty, and I take my duty very seriously. I've always been a rule follower. I've always been someone that takes roles and responsibilities seriously. So the caucus will do what the caucus can do to protect the members of the caucus. But I don't see how me personally, individually, as a member waiting into any of these races is really going to help anybody. There was a bit of a push to get you to resign from the caucus chairmanship after Chairman Goldman resigned himself. You were appointed to that or automatically moved up to that from vice chair position. What was your reasoning in not abiding by that? Well, my reasoning in not doing that was the number of members that I had that

reached out to me and said, please, dear God, don't resign. You're the only person that we trust right now. And I'm going to tell you flat out that the ratio was about four to one. So it was certainly something that was in the back of my mind. We had talked about it. The pressure actually began long before Goldman resigned. I received multiple phone calls. I think you saw that I put something out on social media about this. As vice chair, you should resign.

You're conflicted, know blah blah blah the reality is is that the majority of caucus members didn't want me going anywhere we are a bit divided right now and that is a challenge that I'm desperately trying to pull the caucus together because I've always believed at the end of the day that the caucus is not there to serve the speaker the caucus is a safe space for all members, even the members that don't agree with the speaker, to be able to have representation, share their concerns. That is not the way the caucus was run this session, but that is the way that it should be run in my opinion. And so I will do my level best as the caucus

chair to represent everybody. I'm sure you saw that the caucus is out doing things, trying to help right now. The caucus officers are talking about what can we do. We're in the search right now, as you know, for an election for vice chair. And so the caucus will be there for the members of the caucus. After you jumped in the race, actually, let me go back to this. So one of your, when you announced, one of your points on your platform is it needs to be a GOP caucus-only speaker nominee, right? And that has historically not been how this has been decided, chiefly because the numbers haven't been there. The caucus itself has been split, you know, especially when Joe Strauss came to power. Do you think the numbers have changed significantly enough that this is even doable? I do. I do think it's very doable.

Mathematically, it's certainly doable. But even conceptually, I think it's doable. And I guess the way I would look at it, Brad, is I think you really went through, this is sort of the third stage of evolution of this process. So since the Republicans took power in the Texas House and became the majority, you know, we've essentially had, I think, since that time, we've had a leadership team that was composed mostly of Democrats with a handful of Republicans under Joe Strauss. I think everybody acknowledges that. And then when we moved to a Speaker Bond and Speaker Spielen leadership style, it was,

we'll go out and get a majority of the caucus. But then in order to get to 76, we'll fill in with a bunch of Democrats. And that will be our leadership team. And so what I am proposing to do is that we function more like at least 41 or 40-something other states in the union, all of whom can pass a budget, all of whom seem to be able to transact their business, where the majority party essentially has all the chairmanships. We're a collegial body. I said this in my comments. This is not a game of, you know, like they do in California. I'm not envisioning that we take bills away from Democrats and give them to majority party members and we tell them to just

sit there quietly and do nothing. I want every member, as I said in my comments, to be able to have bills that they can point to that they passed. I was here. I represented my district. I did what was important. But at the end of the day, I think at this point, the voters of Texas are really asking us to lead as a majority, which is quite frankly how four fifths at least of other states currently do things. And I would add to that, people will say, well, Texas is setting an example. Texas is not setting an example. Texas is at the tail end of a phenomenon here. We are, there is no state, and I'm aware of, that's moving in our direction on this issue. You know, regardless about a lot of the discussion of, oh, this is tradition, this is a bipartisan body. You know, the reason at root for Democratic chairs especially is the lack of a supermajority

and the ability to hit 76 votes as a speaker, right? Sure, sure. And look, I think, you know, one of the things that I've heard from the members, the reform-minded members at least, is that they feel as though power over the last several decades has become increasingly concentrated in the chair, at a degree to which it never had been in the past. And I think part of that stems from the fact that when you have a bipartisan coalition behind you, you're not really susceptible to angering a handful of your own party members and colleagues, right?

I've actually had people say, well, you know, we have to keep the status quo, so what happened to McCarthy doesn't happen here in Texas. Well, I would say that I think that the Speaker of Texas should be accountable to the members of the majority. During your opening press conference announcing your run, you said that your experience hasn't been that any Democratic chairs have killed your Republican priority bills. It's been more. Not since 2019. 2019. Yeah. It's been Democratic chairs taking vendetta out on you personally.

I think you were referring to SB 14, right? Yes. 2014, right? Yes, this last session. But the session before that, the reason that the In God We Trust Act passed as a Senate bill and not a House bill is because the Democrat chair of public education kept telling me he would give me a hearing on my bill, chairman to chairman, but he never would. Now, you ask yourself, why would a Democrat chairman of public education not want to hear a bill or vote a bill out of committee that basically requires every public school to put, in God we trust, framed on the wall right when you walk in the school, I mean, I could think of reasons why that might get them a primary opponent.

We put them in these positions, and then we're surprised that they use their power. That's politics, right? I mean, you gave them the power. When you announced you listed a whole bunch of priorities, no Democrat chairs was on that. What are some of the less known or lower priority ones you think are important? So, again, so we talked about majority functions as a majority, and I think the biggest point there has to do with the Democrat chair issue. But I would say the other thing is, is that, you know, we have gotten into a habit in the House of getting off to a really slow start. Some of that is constitutional, but a lot of it is just choice.

We actually could move faster, especially on emergency action items, if we actually wanted to. But there's this prevailing wisdom that we won't do anything serious or conservative or you know remotely controversial until after the budget passes. So all we do for those first few weeks is just sort of kumbaya right. That is certainly not the way the Senate handles their business and that is certainly not the way other states handle their business. I've never understood why we have to waste all that time. We could be using that to pass some of these priorities, and if we did, I think it would be much less likely that we would go home at the end of session and say, well, we ran out of time. But then you have to ask yourself, maybe that was the point. Maybe clock management was really the thing that drives the status quo.

Okay. The Senate has a supermajority, which is why they can move so late and quick. But not everything requires a supermajority to act. You mentioned the constitutional provision on emergency items, right? But we hear that every time the governor lists out these items. And then usually, I think in both chambers, it usually doesn't, things really don't get rolling very quickly on that. Is that just, as you said, an excuse to clock management? I think clock management is very important to the status quo. I think they

like the delay. I think that the delay creates uncertainty, which allows you to honor certain agreements that you've made in the back hallway about things not passing. And it looks very nebulous. So it's hard to point the fingers to say whose fault it was that this bill ended up on the last calendar. And so I do think that clock management has traditionally been a tool that has been used by the majority to appease the minority. When, right after you announced, Speaker Phelan responded and said something along the lines of, you know, I know Tom, he didn't call me about this, and essentially, I don't know why he didn't. What's your response to that? How are you supposed to have that conversation? First of all, you know the Speaker's statute says that you're not supposed

to have these conversations until after you file. But how would you even have that conversation with somebody in that position of power, in the middle of their own situation that they're dealing with? I think people that are focused on that as opposed to the substance of what I had to say and the fact that I am calling for a paradigm shift and a change in the way that we lead the house are focused on the wrong thing. I mean, I just, I don't even know how you would open that box, right? What would you say? Good question. And you mentioned the reform-minded members in the House. How many do you think there actually are?

A lot. And obviously, they're probably not all aligned on every reform, right? Everybody's trying to figure out kind of where they are. But I think generally speaking, my sense of things is that more than half the caucus, I would say bordering on a supermajority, feels that the status quo, even if they've gotten stuff done under the status quo, the status quo leaves them open to criticism that they're, you know, if there was a different way to do it, if somebody was willing to step up and do the, and do these quote hard things that we're talking about, just say, look,

let's just get this done. So this can be taken off the table. Um, I don't have to hear about it anymore. I mean, you got to remember this, no Democrat chairs thing was a, was literally a party platform priority this last session. And we just sort of blew right past that. Like it didn't even matter. I remember seeing Trey Martinez-Fisher's response to something you put out discussing maybe I need to reconsider my friendship or something like that. of the practical consequences, if no Democratic chairs happens, is the potential, at least, for more consideration of a quorum bust, especially because Republicans don't have a supermajority. Sure. Is that something you're thinking about?

Absolutely. Do you think there's a lot of risk for that? No. I mean, I think you have to plan for that. And I think you have to have rules that make it clear that there are consequences to doing that. Fortunately for us, we sort of walked through that in a very public way at the end of 2021 and the end of the regular session. And so I think that's still very fresh

on members' minds that, you know, yes, you could do that. There will certainly be consequences. And the question is, how often are you going to pull that trigger? Are you going to try to kill the budget and defund public education? Because I'm not sure that that's going to pull that trigger? Are you going to try to kill the budget and defund public education? Because I'm not sure that that's going to play well in Democrat districts either when teachers don't get paid. There's a public relations price to be paid by it, right? Absolutely. Even though it paid off for the Democrats in 21 for a while, eventually took a toll. It certainly did take a toll. And I think if you talk to some of them, you know, I have a lot of friends in the Democrat caucus, right? And I think, you know, Trey said exactly what I thought he would say. He's sticking up for his side. He's trying to be

a good caucus chair. I get that. He and I are still friends and we'll continue to be friends. And if Trey comes to me and asks for help on something, policy matter, and it's good policy, he knows I'll bend over backwards to help him i always have i always will and that promise will go the same for every member of the house which is why i said in my initial announcement that i think local bills bills that are important to communities that are not those of these big statewide impact things that that members should be able to pass those bills. No one should be punished and unable to represent their district. Everybody has a right to represent the people

that elected them and the people who elected them have a right to have their voice heard vis-a-vis the members that they chose. So we're going to do a much better job of not putting our thumb on the scale if I'm the speaker. We're not going to lift up bad policy that the body is not supportive of, but we're also not going to hold down policy just to, you know, show you because you stepped out of line. And I think that's something that I've consistently seen in the past that just has never sat right with me, that you have members that are judged, you know, too conservative to play, or they did something very embarrassing the day before, so now we're going to make them sit out for a little bit.

I mean, this whole kindergarten cop stuff, just never understood that. We're all adults. We all came here to serve. I think people should be able to serve. As we record this, last week the contract with Texas came out. It's a group of, I think, now up to 25 or so members or potential members. Some of them are still in runoff, so we'll see how many of them win. They signed on to this list very similar to the list you provided when you announced your speakership. Yet they haven't endorsed you or everyone's keeping their powder dry, right?

What do you make of them, you know, kind of coalescing, but not jumping behind you? Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing I would say is that I stepped out, I laid out an ambitious plan, a change that I thought we needed, and they picked it up and ran with it. And you're right that they haven't endorsed me for speaker yet, but they have certainly endorsed the paradigm shift. And that's encouraging to me, and I think that will be encouraging to other like-minded reform members. I suspect that they won't be the last group that puts out and articulates, well, this is kind of what we hope to see in the next Speaker. What makes me really happy is that essentially everything I talked about is everything that

they put into their platform. So it is my platform. It is being taken up by the body, the members. And I feel like if nothing else, me stepping out as early as I did has started a conversation that has emboldened members to talk about what they think is important in a speaker and the change that they'd like to see. And I'm proud of that. Obviously, everyone's really kind of waiting to see the results of the runoff and specifically Speaker Phelan's runoff. But once we get past that point, how many more speaker candidates do you think or expect to jump in? Any idea? I mean, I know there's some that are talking. And, you know, it's sort of one of those things where you're not a speaker candidate until you file the paperwork. Right.

No matter how many supposed, you know, hypothetical work around the statute kind of conversations that you have. But I do think there may be others. And look, like I said in my announcement, if the caucus nominates another reform-minded person that can get there to a greater extent than I can, but they support the paradigm shift, I will work my tail off to make sure that person wins in the caucus in December. What do you make of members frequently behind the scenes saying Speaker Phelan's done, it's over, before the runoff even happens yet not publicly saying that well i mean or at least most of them because some of them have said yeah i i mean look i i think it's i think change is hard brad yeah and i'm not going to fault anybody for what they said or didn't say um you know obviously i've i've made my position pretty well known i think most people that know me as as a member know that I may not always tell you what you want to hear, but I'm never going to lie to you. You're going to get the straight stuff, right?

When I came in, somebody told me the best advice I can give you is let your yes be yes and your no be no and remember that your word is very important around here, right? So I think I've been pretty transparent. I think I've been pretty straightforward with folks. I'm not going to criticize somebody for what they did or didn't say behind closed doors about races where the votes haven't been counted yet. And I think we just have to leave it at that. It's all leading up to, I think it's December 1st, right? That's the caucus meeting. That's the caucus meeting. Yeah. And so you had talked about this earlier, but I think it's important to remember that we've never actually gone to the caucus meeting and chosen the speaker there. There's always been a premature announcement.

I have the votes. The race is over. I have 76 votes. But then when you count the votes, it isn't 76 Republicans. Right. count the votes, it isn't 76 Republicans. And so I think my commitment to the process is that I know for a fact, because I was here when we adopted those rules in the fall of 2017, that that process was designed to prevent somebody from basically circumventing a process where the majority would choose the speaker. And so that you would never have this sort of minority-majority kind

of coalesce sort of thing. I think we've improved over time, but we've never actually followed the bylaws exactly as they were intended to be followed, which is, to my way of thinking, the only press conference one could ever have before December 1st is in the event that they have 76 Republican signatures of members who will be voting on the floor in January of 2025, and they're saying, this is my person. This is who I support. That's the only legitimate press conference to hold. That has never happened. Walk us through the process once you get to the caucus. How does the voting go? How many rounds are there? How does that work? Well, it kind of depends on how many members are

nominated. We have a hard two-thirds rule. So, you know, with the initial ballot, if somebody obtains two-thirds of those members present in voting, they automatically become the nominee. That's a pretty high bar. If that doesn't happen, we go through successive rounds of voting until we get down to two members. So we're the lowest vote getter would drop out each round, right? So then when you get down to the two last two members, you go through a few rounds of trying to see if you can get to that 66%. And then if you can't you go to one last round of three fifths and then if that fails you basically un-nominate everyone and you essentially open it back up for nominations and you start that process over again so it really is a i think for lack of a better term it looks a lot

like a papal conclave kind of thing you know we're really literally supposed to be there until the white smoke will there be any white smoke i hope so i believe so yeah um okay, you know, we're really literally supposed to be there until the white smoke. Will there be any white smoke? I hope so. I believe there will be. Okay. So, you know, long runway to go, right? Leading up to that. Or maybe beforehand, depending on how things shake out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything else you want to say about the speaker's race? I mean, I think it's a good process. I think it was designed to ensure a majority-run, majority-elected speaker. If we could just follow it, I think we could confidently go to the floor in January of 2025 and know that we have done what the grassroots has asked us to follow the caucus rules on this. There's a reason for that, because that's what they're asking us to do, too. You Republicans, pick one of your own, stand behind that person, and nominate that person without any support from the minority party. Now, that doesn't mean that when you get on the floor, you may not have people from both parties voting for that member. I hope that you will. But as a bare minimum, you get those 76 Republican

votes first. You mentioned RPT, and there's another race going on there for Texas GOP chairman. Sure. What do you think of the field so far? I'm glad to see that it's drawing a lot of interest. You know, I'm not going to wade into, you know, who's the better candidate and all those kind of things, but I will be there at the convention. You delegate? I am a delegate. And so I'm looking forward to hearing from the candidates and seeing what their vision for the future is going to be. And I look forward to working with them, whether I'm speaker or just House member.

As a member of the party, as a delegate to the party, I look forward to working with the new chair of the party, whoever that is. Last thing I want to ask you about, we mentioned SB4, and that was a contentious fight on the floor. How many hours were you defending? SB14? I'm sorry. Yeah. I was like, SB4, was that the, yeah. Right. SB14. I lost count, honestly, Brad. It seemed like it was, it seemed like it went pretty fast. Yeah. Really? I was told it was pretty fast. Really? I was told it was many hours. My feet started to hurt sitting there watching.

So, you know, I'm not a stranger to those. I don't know if you remember, but I also carried SB 23, which prevented counties from defunding police in 2021. That was also a pitched battle over two days. You know, my philosophy is that you just hang in there and take them one amendment at a time, work your way through the process. I will say that I was terribly frustrated that we didn't even get I didn't even get to speak on the bill until the third try. Yeah. There are three points of order. That's a whole other kettle of fish we hadn't even talked about. But in terms of reforms, I did speak about that in my remarks, that the parliamentary process is, for lack of a better term, weaponized against members. It's broken. And we have to look at that. You shouldn't have to be a lawyer to pass a bill. Do you think that's due to the parliamentarians themselves and

their application of it or the rules? I think it would be, I think you would be missing the boat if you just said it boiled down to an individual. I mean, I really think there's a process there. And I also don't think it's something that happened overnight. And I've heard this from a lot of members. You asked me earlier about how many members are for change. And one of the biggest things I hear over and over and over again is we have to change the way the parliamentary process is weaponized. It has become too difficult. We, you know, so there's that. But yes, no, SB 14 was a long-pitched discussion. I don't want to say that it ever turned into a fight. I don't feel like there was a lot of fighting. I know there were some members that felt like, you know, well, they're calling you names, you know, stuff like that. I remember telling people, look, this is all part of the process. You know, just let it play out. I know this bill. I know this subject matter. Just let, you know, I'll take it. Right. I have thick skin. I don't know if you noticed, but I kind of have thick skin and I don't keep a record of wrongs. I don't keep score with people. You know, I don't, I'm not going to be the kind of person who's, if I'm speaker, who's going to be constantly keeping

marks, you know, well, this person, you know, did this. So therefore there has to be a reaction, stuff like that. I think sometimes you just have to let people represent their districts. And even if that means that they're going to attack you because at the end of the day they don't like your bill, you just have to let that process play out, right? At the end of the day, we were able to pass the bill. We got the policy. I've always been one who's cared more At the end of the day, we were able to pass the bill. We got the policy. I've always been one who's cared more about the policy than the personality, which is why

a lot of my really best pieces of legislation that I've written or contributed heavily to the formation of don't even have my name on them because I'm the policy. I care about the policy, not the personality. That first day when the first point of order hit and was found valid was quite the spectacle. Have you ever seen anything like that before? No, I haven't. And I will tell you, I was... And it wasn't just what was happening on the floor, too. It was the rafters as well.

So look, here's the deal. I had committee clerks that came to me at the very beginning of session that expressed concern about how this had evolved. At the beginning of session, there were some changes that were put forward that the background and purpose was suddenly going to be looked at a lot more carefully, and there could be the potential for points of order. And I had not just my committee clerk, but other committee clerks as well that came to me and just said, this is a terrible idea. This is literally weaponizing a document that is essentially the introductory paragraph of a thesis paper. And it is going to be a universally applicable way for somebody to kill essentially any bill. And I guess it's not surprising that the two points of order that were sustained against SB14 were both on the background and purpose.

The first one, mind you, is because I used the word pediatrics instead of pediatricians. And the second point of order that was sustained was because I removed the sentence containing the offending word, and then the allegation and the argument was made that I didn't have enough in my work cited to be able to defend the assertions that the introductory paragraph was making. Now that's really ticky-tack stuff. I don't see anything in there that has to do with policy, that has to do with unintended consequences,

that has to do with the cost or the benefits or the negatives. I'm great that we should have debates on these matters, you know, and some of them are very controversial. But I really, really, really think that our debates and our discussions should be confined to the substantive merits of these legislative matters. And we shouldn't be, matters shouldn't be living or dying based on whether somebody forgot to put a period or a comma somewhere.

I mean, that's just ludicrous and absurd. I'm glad you mentioned the background and purpose because it was, there was an interesting, I think it was Representative Busey killed a bill by Representative Swanson. And that started this run on these BNP statement points of order that eventually, I believe, led up to SB14 and a couple other higher-profile bills getting pooed. Was that a concerted effort to kind of change the way BNPs were done? I have no idea where that came from. All I can tell you is that the committee clerks didn't know about it at the beginning of session, but they had a meeting soon after session began,

and they began expressing strong concerns about why was this change being implemented. This seemed like this was literally going to open up the strike zone on points of order so wide that as long as the ball got across the plate, it was a strike. You know, I mean, it just made it impossible to defend. Well, that and many other things, should you win, are I'm sure on your list of reforms. Anything else you want to say? No, I appreciate the opportunity to be with you. And obviously this is a marathon, not a sprint. We're going to

be continuing to take that message of paradigm shift and change and reform to the members as well as to the people of Texas. I know that the folks that vote in Republican elections in primaries, I've received a fair amount of support that, you know, this is what we've been asking for for years. Finally, somebody's actually listening to us. So we're going to continue to get that message out there. We'll see who else jumps in the race. We'll obviously see what happens on primary day. But I'm excited about being able to start a conversation of reform that I think is really going to move us in a very positive direction. After a crazy year, you're not getting much of an interim.

It's all right. It's all good. I came to serve. I didn't come here to make a long career out of this or because I felt like it was something I needed a job or needed to do. I'm here to serve. I'm not here for me. Chairman Oliverson, thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Brad. I appreciate your time.