The Texan Podcast - Speakers Race, Speakers Race, and More Speakers Race: Smoke Filled Room Ep. 11

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

We can't stress it enough. The Texas House speaker race is growing more contentious each day, and the players in the game along with it.On the latest episode of Smoke Filled Room, Senior Editor McKenzie DiLullo and Senior Reporter Brad Johnson cover top players, background noise, and unseen deals regarding the race for the most powerful position in the Texas House.

You didn't get that reference, never mind. I have no clue what you're talking about. Somebody listening, your husband probably would get that reference. He keeps walking in to grab things and like tiptoeing in the back. He's like... He's trying to avoid disturbing this riveting discussion. Yeah. Well, howdy folks. Merry Christmas.

And welcome back to another episode of Smoke-Filled Room. It's Mackenzie DeLuo here with Brad Johnson. Recording remotely. Well, not really here. I mean, you're back elsewhere in the country. Bradley, you have interrupted me so many times in the last 48 hours where I am about to say the thing you're criticizing me for, but you don't let me finish a freaking sentence. And this just happened again. I'm calling you out because yesterday, if you listen to our weekly roundup that just went live on Friday, you will hear it happen at least once. I don't know how many instances were caught when

we were actually recording versus before or after, but at least one had to have made it on the podcast somehow. And you've been doing this so much lately. I literally, the next words out of my mouth were that we were remote and I was mid-sentence saying them when you sassily interjected. You're a little touchy today. I don't even know what to do with you. Maybe I should just like talk about how, um, Oh my gosh.

Should you just tweet this? Okay. That's not a horror. That's not the worst picture I've ever seen. I will say. I took a better one for you. For me. Oh my gosh.

Um, Brad did tweet at three several days a uh um anonymous text ledge account who is a frequent listener of our podcast thank you very much and engages with us all the time we're super appreciative um a screenshot or like a photo of brad's recording setup and the initial one that Brad wanted to send. Actually, I'm just going to show it. This is the initial photo that Brad took. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see this. I don't even know who that person is. So Brad did take a second one. I did not realize he had already tweeted it out um but Brad you have any rebuttal to your rude interruptions that have been so

habitually woven into our interactions lately as with many things you are overselling them you're an unbelievably skillful master at making people feel crazy. People, I mean me. Hey, what would a smoke-filled room episode be without us catfighting at the beginning? We usually don't, though. That's what's crazy is this usually happens when you have an audience on the weekly roundup and people who will laugh at you.

The smoke-filled room is actually when you're usually the nicest to me. I don't know. I think you're about to be on Christmas break, and that's feeding this, uh, I don't know, spunk. I am excited for a break. What are you going to do bradley um i am going to be here and i will be playing a buttload of golf and i am excited for hopefully everyone in the speakers race to take a dang break from clawing each other's eyes out although i know that is a tall task and probably will not happen but hey a boy can dream huh a boy can dream it's very true well i'm excited uh for you to play golf because you've mentioned it as frequently as you said you've already set up a bunch of t times i know but you've mentioned it multiple times in the last few days um oh my gosh i'm just gonna out you

brad just texted me and said you're totally not crazy right now dot dot dot and thinks he's hilarious I don't even know what to do with you Bradley I'm in Arizona visiting for my husband and I are with my side of the family we were with his side for Thanksgiving we're with mine for Christmas our dogs stayed at my parents for the four months that we were abroad this summer um as Brad likes to say gallivanting and oh my gosh holly's saying she's okay i can't even with this right now holly just said you're her hero in slack and i don't know why and i don't really care to know why but this is an unfortunate day for me um but our dogs have immediately switched their allegiance back to my parents they do not care

about andrew and i They just want to be near basically my mom and go play with my dad. So we're dogless for all intents and purposes now that we're here. But it'll be great. All the siblings are coming in with their spouses. It's going to be a great Christmas. So we're excited. And Merry Christmas to everybody listening. That's right. We're just a couple of days away when this goes live. We are going to talk all things speaker race today. So that's the aim of this pod is just to recap where we are on the speaker race.

This will be the last smoke filled room before we have a speaker. Most likely, unless something crazy happens, that is where we'll be. So we figured a recap was in order order even though we've talked ad nauseum about this at this point we are still obviously so much to talk about but that's the goal walk through everything recording this the friday before this goes live so let's hope the weekend is chill and then this is updated by the time we get to monday i think we have a good chance of

that being the case being that it's so close to Christmas. So on that note, Brad, do you want to give like a 30,000 foot overview and then talk about one of the candidates kind of even calling for not a ceasefire, but kind of a ceasefire over Christmas? Yeah. And before we do that, I just want to slightly mention the fracas going on in DC right now. And the now, the new, not the new, but the renewed feud between Donald Trump and Chip Roy. And the only point I want to make about this is that, you know, Trump tweeted out displeasure with Roy, not really new calling for him to be primaried, also not new, but this time he did, he made sure to do so before the filing deadline had closed. That's your favorite part of this whole debacle is reminding folks of that.

It is. Well, last year he tweeted something similar about Roy, but he did so, or his staffers did so, like a week or two after the filing deadline had closed in Texas. And nobody had filed against Roy, at least as a Republican. So he's getting out in front of it this time, getting at least slightly more familiar with Texas politics. Or this could be a chance happening where he was just like, hey, Chip Roy's at something I don't like again, tweet at him and it just so happens to be before the deadline. Right. Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens. I'm sure someone will jump in and the task will be on them to get Trump's endorsement, which he seems pretty primed to give at the moment. So, yeah, now moving on to the Texas speakers race, the topic at hand today.

So this thing is has gone wildly back and forth constantly. You know, I think, when did we do the last one on this topic? Was that October? I don't even know. I can check. You keep going. I'll check. We did, we did one all about speakers race previously and a lot's changed since, of course you have. I think there's been multiple on the speakers race. There was one that was called, All About the Speaker's Race. I don't remember what that was. September 30th and then October was the one before the election and then after that was

right after the election. Okay. So right after the reform group meeting where David Cook won the nomination, the endorsement from them. So right now, you know, or since then, we've had the Reform Group get behind David Cook. He's still in the race. We then had Dade Phelan, the incumbent, drop out. That happened pretty quickly. When was that?

Early part of December, late part of November. I can't remember. It's all running together. But he dropped out on a Wednesday. At least he told members on Wednesday. And then eventually the word got out on Thursday that he had done that. Those members, Republicans supporting him, had coalesced, at least for the most part, behind Dustin Burroughs, chairman of the House Calendars Committee, who has long been a staple of the House. He's a political survivor. He's gone through multiple, as he would describe it, renditions of being from the penthouse to the outhouse. Those outhouses were most notably being in the bad graces of Speaker Joe Strauss after having voted against him in his first term in the House Bonnen scandal that's where they offered Bonnen and Burroughs basically offered floor press credentials to Michael Quinn Sullivan and Empower Texans in exchange for help taking out some Republicans on the more on the more moderate side of the caucus who had opposed a taxpayer-funded lobbying ban.

And now we have this clash between these two candidates with remarkably different records. But really, this race is not about record, conservative or moderate. It's really not. This is about personalities. This is even more than that, about the direction of the House, which way it goes, and who has influence over it. You've got on the one side, the Reform group who wants substantial changes to the way the House operates. And the other side who wants to preserve, as they describe it, preserve the autonomy, the independence of the House. There will be contentions on both sides on who's telling the truth on that, where they're right, where they're wrong.

But they are two visibly different visions for the way the House should operate. You know, the most market example is Democratic chair appointments. How is that going to be handled? Cook has said, I'm outright opposed. We're not going to do this. Burroughs has said something different that a vote will leave it to the House. He's outright opposed to Democrats being chairs. Like, he's on board with that plank.

Correct, yes. The reform, yes. And Burroughs has been less pointed, but he has said, I'll leave it up to the House in a vote. So we'll talk about that in a bit later. But this race, as any speaker's race, is a contest to 76 votes. And we saw what happened on December 7th, where the Republican caucus gathered. In the first vote, David Cook got 48 votes in support, and Burroughs had 40. This was significantly different than where both sides thought they

were going to be on the first ballot. The number I was hearing from the Burroughs camp was like 43 on the first ballot, with expectation that 10 to 12 or so would flip on the first ballot with expectation that 10 would flip or 10 to 12 or so would flip on the second ballot. The Cook camp thought they had upwards of 50 with 10 flipping on the second ballot. That didn't happen. Now, my theory is, and we have no way of proving this, my theory is that we saw more than one person flip on the second ballot. The second ballot finished David Cook 47, Burroughs 41. So Burroughs actually gained a vote. But my theory is that we saw more than one flip. It just was a net change of one. So maybe five one way, four the other. Right. So we'll never know. But based on how much the odds that only one person flipped is pretty slim, I think. But maybe not. Who knows? We'll never know. And after that, we saw the the boroughs camp at 26 of their of their ranks, including boroughs. tried to, first they tried to hit pause after the second round of voting to discuss in the room where this was going on. And, you know, they say they were denied of that. There was an objection

to it from the other side, which said, you know, we can hit pause after we finish these rounds of voting. there were two more left and i should have noted that in the first two rounds you needed 59 votes to win the caucus nomination there were 88 republicans there one of which was feeling right which is a very notable part of all of this like the person who is currently holding the gavel the speaker currently who dropped out of the race like two days before the caucus meeting. So very notable that he was there and will be very interesting as a whole other topic, but it'll be very interesting to watch how he navigates this

next session after he is said he'll finish out, you know, but he will not be speaker. That's going to be very interesting. And what committees he's assigned to, you know, that's going to be fascinating to watch all that. So this breakdown happens in the caucus. Eventually 26 members walk out. I think some returned, but not all of them. And we have this like two, three hour standoff. Nobody knows what's happening. Both sides, the reform group side and Cook side is trying to get them to come back in. Some of the members do come back in that left. Others do not. vote, David Cook wins that vote on the lowered threshold, I think, which was, so on the third ballot, third and fourth ballot, the number to get the endorsement would drop to 53. It dropped even further because the line to gain is determined by how many people are in the room at the time of the vote. So with that many people leaving and not coming back, the number dropped, I think it was to 36.

He got 48 votes again, 14 votes, 48 votes for him, 14 votes against him in the reduced gathering. They come out, they say they're not declaring victory, but they're declaring victory on the caucus endorsement. And they have a big press conference with most of the members backing Cook behind him. And it's all about optics, right? They want to put on a good face and a good show of support. And they had, you know, 25 or so, 30 maybe, members behind him. And basically said, you know, we're going to start reaching out to Democrats now. And now that the caucus process is over with and we will move forward to try and hit 76

and work with the Republicans who left as well. Now, right after that, the Burroughs camp, Burroughs himself held his own presser in the speaker's room. And when I got the notice, I knew instantly what it was going to be. He's going to announce he has the votes. And this is the Bonnen playbook. It started with Dennis Bonnen announcing, having the, you know, the I have the votes announcement, at least in terms of, you know, vis-a-vis the Republican caucus endorsement. That did not exist. That process did not exist under Strauss. It was, in fact, created because of Strauss. So we'll talk about that in a bit, too. But the announcement, Burroughs comes out in the speaker's press room.

He has a bunch of members flanking him, showing their show of support, right? All Republicans. And he says, I have the votes. This race is over. Shortly after that, releases a list of 76. And from there, all hell breaks loose. You have, I think at this point, it's a few handful of Republicans who say, I never agreed to be on the list to varying degrees of believability, first of all, because some of the people who said, I did not want to be on a list were at the Burroughs press conference.

They were there. There's photo evidence of them being there um but there were others that were not there and not just there right but behind so in the house and legislative any anything if there is um a motion being made a bill being brought forward an amendment at the um on the floor being considered the the speaker who is putting forward whatever at the press conference or authoring the bill stands at the dais talking. That's just the nature of the gig. And people who are supportive of whatever is being talked about stand behind the speaker saying, not the speaker of the house, the speaker at the mic, the representative at

the mic saying like, hey, I'm putting my support behind this. Oftentimes there's a, you know, if there's a resolution, like a memorial resolution from a local district where somebody in Harris County passed away, you'll see Democrats and Republicans standing behind somebody presenting this resolution in honor of this person to show their support.

And it's essentially showing, hey, we have this kind of uh coalition in support of whatever's being presented it could be a bill or anything and that is just how it works the optics are very clear so these people which i asked you i think on the weekly roundup because now that i'm thinking about it a lot of this speaker talk that we've had we've talked about it so much has been on the weekly roundup lately but um i think i asked you okay were these people who were just in the room standing in the back watching because they were curious about what was going on or were these people who are standing behind burrows showing

support with the body language right with their standing behind speaker and support and you said these were people standing behind, which tells us a little bit of something, right? That either there was a change of heart afterwards or something, but these were not people who were just standing in the room happening to be there. Yeah. And some of them were standing directly within a few inches of Burroughs as he's giving his speech.

Jeff Leach was one of them. That tends to indicate how strong their support is. So this happens. Members start to defect from the Burroughs list. And the borough's list was carefully curated, by the way, to have 38 Republicans and 38 Democrats because they know the PR problem that would come from having a Democratic majority coalition for the speaker. So they were trying to avoid that and instantly got kind of blown to smithereens. Then you start having talks about censures of these Republicans, public pressure, texts going out, all this stuff.

And it's just been a mess ever since. It really has. This is just, we've heard of organized chaos. This is very much unorganized chaos. And we don't really have any resolution on this at this point um you know we're recording the friday before christmas uh there sounds like it might be a there might be a truce coming on for the for the next week but in all likelihood probably not um we thought we'd have some sort of resolution after that caucus meeting, and there is basically none. Yep. I mean, Burroughs still maintains he has the votes. Cook has not said he has the votes, but he has said as much as he can that he has the vast majority of the Republican caucus behind him. The number I've heard floating around is 62 for Cook among Republicans. You know, he's going to have to, if that's his ceiling among Republicans,

he's going to have to get Democratic support. And he is soliciting Democratic support. He said it. He's been meeting with Democrats. And now it's just a wait and see game. You know, does Burroughs actually still have the support? Does he, maybe he does have 76 with a majority Democratic coalition. The question is, does he want that?

Or is that inviting too much of a headache, at least before we get to January 14th, right? This thing is where it's been for a while, I think, up in the air. And at least that's my read on it. Burroughs kind of has it if he wants it, at least provided enough Democrats go with him. Which is another question that's unique to this speaker fight, at least in recent history, because we've seen time and time again, Democrats choose what they consider to be the more moderate, maybe not even moderate policy wise, but the more amenable speaker candidate to giving them chairmanships, letting them be part of decision making or processes. But this time, Democrats are certainly more willing to stand their ground and say, hey, we're going to vote for one of our own. And there is a Democrat in the race, Anna Maria Ramos, who has been very ardent about her position on all of this and saying, I'm not going anywhere. So it's going to be very interesting. Let me jump in on the Democratic stuff. So during this

whole fracas on December 7th, the question was, what are Democrats going to do? And they were meeting throughout the day trying to figure it out. Eventually, the caucus chairman, Gene Wu, and the caucus itself put out a statement. The new chairman, too. The new chairman. Yep. Saying they were going to release their members to vote for whomever they like, except for David Cook. Yeah. So I'm not sure how much teeth that has, but if all the members adhere to that, Cook has no ability to get any Democrats. I spoke to one Democrat yesterday on the phone, and I had heard that Cook went and met with him.

I asked him and he said kind of frantically, no, I am not, or I did not, and I am fully behind Dustin Burroughs. It's hard to see Cook being able to get there, at least as things stand right now. This thing has had so many wild changes that who knows, right? You always got to give that caveat. But it's a very tough uphill climb for Cook right now. But I've also heard that there are a few Democrats that are friendly to him and might be behind him secretly. It's an open question. We won't know until January 14th, I think. I don't know if there's a few members have said

we have hope that we can have a resolution to this before we hit January 14th. Shelby Slauson said it on the radio. Matt Shekin said it on a TV show. I'm not sure I believe that. Can you also explain to listeners why January 14th just keeps coming up? How do we know that that's the day that the speaker vote is happening? That's the first day of session. And the first thing the House has to do is, other than be sworn in, is elect someone to lead the body, which is the speaker. You know, there's a lot of discussion about how that's done. Traditionally, they adopt a resolution governing the contest, the rules of the contest, the way of the procedure. So if you have four people up there, odds are you're probably because of the voting board, we only have three options.

You're probably going to have to do a paper ballot. And then that has invited concern about secret balloting, which I'm sure it's been discussed. There's not much precedent for it, but there is some. In 2007, Charlie Guerin proposed an amendment to the Speaker resolution to provide for a secret ballot. And that would, it would have made them secret until committee assignments came out and then they would be released. And when you say there's concern about it,

there's concern about it from the Cook camp that there would be secret ballots because yes as of right now how the politically how this is kind of working out is that burroughs wants more republicans that there would be significant backlash for republicans many of them depending on their district depending on their political id you know ideology but depending on a lot um if they were to support burroughs being that cook is the gop caucus nominee and the person that is certainly coalescing the support of major republican leaders in the state the state party local activists like that's where the momentum is for republicans um and so that's why there is some talk about it behind the scenes or concern on the Cook side saying, hey, if there's a secret ballot, dang it, that may give some of the people

we have coalesced behind us some excuse or willingness to vote for boroughs because there would not be retribution in terms of their name being specifically assigned now of course we found this out so often you find out who votes which way regardless and like you said there's not a ton of precedent to suggest that this would be possible um but it's being talked about right but that's that's the angle there is cook supporters are nervous about it because it would remove some of that potential retribution for republican members if they did decide to vote for us. Well, and let's say something is proposed like that.

There are other ways to have the same vote, which is call for a record vote on a motion to table. And that amendment. And so that would serve as a de facto vote for this, or at least for the people who are looking to primary, it would. So really, there's no getting out of this, picking a side. And I think at least some on Burroughs' team have acknowledged that to me, said, yeah, we're not running away from this it's it's going to happen one way or the other so um it might be there's it might be a pretty straightforward day it might be pretty contentious you know if if you have multiple rounds of voting where nobody gets it on the first one then you'll have likely one of the four candidates the lowest vote getter get dropped and then you'll re-vote and that'll happen until you have a winner so this is it's not uncharted territory but it it's it's not something we've dealt with

frequently because normally this thing's decided well before the first day of session so i think it is worth saying too that if any at if at any point there is, um, if any camp feels like they can secure the votes by a method like this, there will be discussion about it. This is a high stakes situation, situation. Both sides are very willing to, um, do what it takes to a certain extent to make this happen. So, um, you know, certainly don't count it out, but it would be an uphill battle for something like this to actually happen and not have, not just significant backlash, but like the legalities and the house rules and all of the, like all of those

details would need to be ironed out. It's not a simple situation. Exactly. And lots up in the air still. We see, at least up until today, the increased fight going on in the media. Dustin Burroughs did multiple interviews, one with me. You can read it on our site. He also did he did a radio spot with Chad Hastie Jared Patterson state rep from Frisco

did as well and then a couple on the Cook side Ellen Troxaclair and Shelby Slosson both did radio spots so this thing is increasingly becoming a a public fight and we'll see if things calm down a bit for the holiday. I don't know if I bet on it, but I sure hope it happens.

You need to make your tea time, Bradley. That's really what it comes down to. I need to make my dang tea times, guys. Come on. I always love to, when we're on podcasts, Brad censors himself so much because his word he typically uses is not dang so um we are uh very much unalike in that regard bradley you are so distracted right now what are you doing i'm listening to you my phone's blowing up it's

always blowing up i know i know um regardless that's where we're at. So then do you want to talk about the Cook letter? Yeah. So that leads us into, does this, does this thing actually calm down for a week or two? And Representative Cook put out a letter calling for a truce. And he said, I'm not gonna read the whole thing. It's actually a pretty well-written letter. I recommend reading it, and he talks about basically how kind of dirty this thing has become. But he says, quote, as we head into the holidays, I want to call on everyone involved, both inside and outside the chamber, to take a step back. Let's have a ceasefire for Christmas. Let's use this time to recharge, reflect, and spend precious moments with our families.

I don't know if it'll be agreed to by the other side. I know almost everyone, I'm sure, if not everyone on both sides, really wants just a bit of a break from this. It's been a slog. Everyone's tired of it, regardless of what side you're on. I think there's a good chance that it happens. And so maybe we have seven days reprieve from this. And before we ramp it right back up.

But that was a letter that was issued. Yeah, we'll see where it goes. Let's jump into the radio appearances. You've alluded to multiple of them at this point, but different members of each coalition on the Republican side have been busy hitting radio waves, talking about their side's points, talking points, arguments, et cetera, and the candidates that they're choosing to support. But of course, Burroughs himself went on, like you said,

at Chad Hastie's show out in Lubbock, a hometown crowd for him, hometown host for him, walk us through that. And he talked about the Dem chairs, points of order, rules of procedure. Walk us through what he had to say on that in that conversation. Well, first and foremost, he said, I have the votes. It's just plain and simple. That's that. Then he went into some more details. He listed his top priorities, property taxes, education.

He said this is going to be an education session. I have a whole thread. You can you can read those there if you want. But he went through a bunch. I think he said taxpayer-funded lobbying ban as well, which is something he's been big on going into this session even before he was in the speaker's race. So he ran through those. And then I think the most notable thing he said was that on the issue of Democratic chairs, I will let the House decide. I'm going to leave it up for a vote. Now, that's notable because the last two sessions, we have not had a vote on this. In fact, leadership deliberately avoided a vote. I'm not sure.

Did it get tabled? Did the amendment get tabled in 21? I can't remember what happened there. I think that's what happened. I'm not sure. But in 23, I do remember exactly. There was a maneuver where the housekeeping resolution for the rules debates put in a very and said, actually, this amendment would be using House resources for political purposes, partisan purposes, I should say. And that killed the amendment. So, you know, that precedent's still there. The question is, there was a couple of questions. First question

is that, does Wood Burroughs rule the same way on that point of order? The statements he said in that, I'm not going to put my thumb on the the scale kind of indicates not, although, you know, who knows, right? Then the next question is, let's say this does get up for a vote and it fails, do you still appoint Democratic chairs anyway? Because that's the crux of this, is that yes by house rules um the speaker is the person who assigns these committee chairs like that is the person appointing the specific names specific people to these positions vice chair chairman whatever leadership speaker pro tem these leadership positions in the house it is the speaker naming these people regardless of what the rules say so even if the ban on democratic chairs does not pass the House, like let's say that that vote is not favorable to the issue if it makes it to the floor, the Speaker is still entirely empowered not to appoint Democratic chairs.

And that's a very important thing to note is that when Burroughs is saying, hey, this is something that could be left to the will of the House, certainly, absolutely it can. But then let's say that that vote does not go through. Let's say that's not added to the rules, that you have to have the majority party as the leadership positions. Well, then what what are you going to do? That's the question. Really very interesting. Yeah. And it's not something he has, he has answered. Um, I think he would keep it pretty vague if he was pressed on that. Um, but the message he's trying to send is I'm not going to be, I'm going to let the members run things and not be an iron fist, which is what every speaker says. Every speaker says that.

Some do it better than others. A lot of the appeal of a new speaker candidate is like, hey, I'll be administrative. Like if a bill has a lot of support, it'll make it to the floor. If this happens, I'll rule on points of order with, according to the house rule, I'm not gonna push things based on how I think a bill

should either pass or fail. Like I will be, i'm not going to push things based on how i think a bill should you know either pass or fail like i will be um you know i will follow the rules i'll just be the person facilitating all of this does that always happen absolutely not the speakership is a very powerful position and parliamentarians which we'll get into in a minute but like parliamentarians and how they rule on points of order um who you appoint as chairman and whether or not they have conversations about hey can you drop this bill or not like all those things happen behind the scenes and eventually that's kind of just the nature of the position so um i think that's but that's a selling point is like i'll be an administrative

speaker who allows the members to vote their districts to take care of the issues they want if a bill has x amount of support with co-signers co-authors i will certainly let it to the floor that kind of thing well and you know on the flip side the question for cook is he's talking about all these reforms make the speaker less powerful how much how feasible is that first of all because by nature the speakership is a powerful position you're elevated above the rest of your colleagues out of necessity right somebody has to do it a lot of these reforms require support of the house too so there's like yeah

not all of them certainly some of them are just like a decision made by the speaker himself. So how many of these reforms make it through if Cook does become speaker? Absolutely. And you know, how much is possible, but then even more than that, how much of it is preservable? I wrote a piece on this and the power of the speakership. Check it out if that's your cup of tea. But back after the Sharptown scandal in the early 70s, a similar kind of speaker was elected, promising these reforms to make it less top-heavy. And Price Daniel Jr. got elected, served one term. And then it went almost immediately right back to being a very powerful position. It's just, first of all, it's human nature to want someone else to take the blame for everything. And with blame comes power. If you want someone to handle things and take the responsibility off you, then you're going to naturally have to give them the ability to do things.

We've seen that in D.C., the presidency. So many powers from Congress have been Article three branch, the judiciary. And so that's it naturally happens. Now, it doesn't happen all in one go. It gradually does. But that's why this thing exists. And clawing that back is very difficult. And so that is why my biggest question is, you know, how can, not just can you do this if you're a speaker, but how do you keep it in place? How do you make it a norm for the people who come after you? Right. So there's that. Another question for Burroughs is, do you keep Mike Toomey as chief of staff and Hugh Brady as parliamentarian? You know, that especially the latter was a big millstone around Dade Phelan's neck.

Brady pissed off a ton of people in the House, not just those on the right that that um you know say oh he's an obama lawyer uh he pissed off a lot of people that were in phelan's camp with the way he ruled on things i covered this a ton last session the the points of order the stuff on the background and purpose statements pissed so many people off so many of like when a bill is presented you have a background purpose statement which is basically just saying like the background purpose of the bill and if there is a miss and this is where a bill no matter how supported the bill is no matter what or even just the relating to clause like relating to and then the bill subject you are smirking so much bradley it's distracting um but

the all of those things need to be done accurately and according to the rules, because if there is a slight mistake or let's say the relating to clause, I think the bill gets amended to include more than it originally did. But the relating to clause is original and it does not include everything that is the bill topic anymore. That is subject to a point of order. Right. There is those kinds of things are incredibly important and those are largely administrative tasks that are the responsibility of staff in the house both for the member and ledge council um that's where a lot of this comes in and comes into play is like dotting your eyes crossing your t's and you're not going to have somebody who's friendly to the bill point of ordering it for no reason just because they see a mistake but the opposite side is true that there will be people who are opposed to your bill who will gladly take a moment to go and point of order your bill um essentially ruling it and saying hey you know asking the parliamentarian and the speaker's staff to examine what they have found to be an inaccuracy or a mistake and then therefore

the bills kicked back to committee or essentially killed depending on what time of session it is that's what we're talking about here and that's why i was so contentious is because a lot of these bills that were priorities of whoever in the legislature were being killed because of these kinds of issues yeah so that's something burroughs if he is elected speaker is going to have to figure out and and h And Hugh Brady was a parliamentarian who was receiving a lot of it. That's who was making these calls and these rulings. Right. Absolutely. So that's something he's going to have to decide on if he does win this thing.

I'll run through the other three interviews pretty quickly because I want to get to the other stuff we have to talk about with this. Patterson was on first Chad Hastie and then Mark Davis's program with Chad Hastie and was really laying into Cook. And he's the attack dog of that faction of the house. And he was ripping into him. You can see the thread on Twitter if you want. Then on the other side, you had Ellen Troxclare and Shelby Slauson. David Cook has not done any media appearances in a long time. I'm not sure the last one he did. And notable too that Burroughs, we did do a phone interview, you did a phone interview with Burroughs and we also, of course, had reached out to the Cook camp as well to do something similar. Cook, why they think he's a good candidate, and how they can try and, you know, amend

these relations. And ultimately, whoever wins this, that is going to be a very difficult thing for them, task for them, to mend the fractures that have just been ripped wide open during this whole thing. And because of the personal nature of speaker fights, this thing is taken a lot more personally than other things are. And that just adds on top of the insane, bloody 2024 primary that we saw and the general election. It's going to be very difficult to, there's a lot of talk of unity,

and I'm not sure how anyone actually gets to that because nobody is going to be done fighting after this. The losing faction is going to want to blow stuff up and there's going to be more people trying to blow stuff up than there has been in a long time in the house whichever way this goes you know the the 20 25 new republicans who got elected aren't coming in to play ball with the way things have always operated they're either coming in to change it or to cause hell to raise. And then you have the members. Most of them, right. Yeah, most of them.

Then you have on the other side, the members who are rubbed raw about how this has gone, being attacked all the time in public, on social media and whatnot. And their view is that the House needs to be independent. And so if Cook wins and the forces behind him that they don't like have a closer seat at the table of power, they're going to blow stuff up on their own. And then a lot of it is just grudges, right? Everyone, there's grudges across the board here. So I don't know.

I don't see whichever way this goes, that there's a kumbaya moment that we, that they come together and, you know, put aside the differences. I just don't see it. And there's, it's a spectrum, obviously, because I think you and I could both name members on either side who would be more amenable to mending bridges afterwards.

Absolutely. And others who would say this is i am absolutely not willing to do so this has been so bloody and i'm you know disenfranchised entirely so there are there's a spect just with anything there's a spectrum so i think that's even fair to say among the freshmen too um there's very different members at the table and most of them are pro cook that's where most of the freshmen are sitting if not i would have to go look and see if there's any freshmen who would be on the burrows side right now um john mcqueenie okay yes yes it's yes um mclaughlin was on the list but then he was like i'm not on the list he was one of those paul dys. Yep. Paul Dyson said I'm not on it.

Jeff Berry is on neither list, so he's one to watch. Unclear where he's falling. Then you've got Denise Villalobos, who was at Burroughs' press conference, and she's been quiet. I've been told that she didn't agree to be on his list, but she hasn't come out and said anything. For these freshmen, it's a very difficult thing to navigate. You don't really know the ropes of this, how this usually works. And now you're caught up in this blood feud.

You're like, I just came here because I wanted to pass some stuff. Yeah. Fat chance of that with this thing going. Depending on who wins. Depending on who wins, right on who wins, right? But they're trying to navigate this. And first session for these members is wild. One incoming member was telling us the other day that, you know, this freshman class, I think what this person was saying, what a lot of folks don't understand is that this class is coming in with advanced knowledge of the process to select

a speaker because that's what a lot of the campaign was talking about was the speaker selection process and feeling and all of everything that was happening even before they were officially elected in November so they're coming in with all of this knowledge about the process and at least knowing the political wins too whereas a freshman class is not necessarily a freshman class of this size and I mean just period has not been faced with this kind of decision-making and political maneuvering so quickly in their tenure for a very long time I mean even Bonnet had the votes so early on it was it's an entirely different ballgame where it is really truly split. And so it's interesting to watch all of this happen. Yep.

What's next, Bradley? Let's talk the Wilson op-ed. Yeah. Yeah. So Colonel Terry Wilson, Republican from Marble Falls, put out an op-ed. It was actually referred to by Burroughs in his interview with me. I asked him a question. He said, I'll point to the op-ed when it comes out.

The op-ed was basically a review of what happened on December 7th and why that faction believes that the caucus process is illegitimate. He wrote, Colonel Wilson wrote, on December 7th, the House Republican caucus met to endorse a candidate for speaker of the Texas House. After two rounds of voting, no candidate secured the required votes, leaving the caucus deadlocked and exposing deep fractures within the group. Now, I will say, I should add that it was pretty clear nobody was getting the endorsement after the second round, unless something wild changed changed given the fact that cook dropped the vote and burroughs only gained one so put that out there he continued this failure was not surprising trust in the caucus process has been eroding for some time and the december meeting

only reinforced its illegitimacy this is an argument being repeated by those in the burroughs camp well before this whole speaker's race. I mean, they've been talking about this for a while. And so I guess we'll start with the origin of the caucus process. To win the caucus endorsement, you need on the first two votes, two-thirds support. On the second two votes, 60% support. And it's round by round exactly as, well, we saw it almost play out on December 7th, or at least start to play out that way. The origin of it was actually Speaker Strauss. And it was an attempt to try and get the Republican caucus on the front foot in picking the speaker rather than wheeling and dealing with both parties.

And so there was a committee that was appointed of members to try and draft this method. And I think it happened in 2018. Maybe it was, I can't remember the year, but it was while Strauss was still speaker. From my understanding, Burroughs was a part of that, as was Tony Tenderholt. And that's important for what we'll talk about in a sec. But it basically it's it created the section in the House Republican caucus bylaws that governs the speaker endorsement. So this has been debated a lot. Is it important? Should we follow it at all? Or is it, you know, kind of a bluddo, something we need to commit to?

The Burroughs Camp argues that it's shot through with holes, given how many members have, you know, violated these bylaws and not faced any consequences. Point to the Tinder Holt speaker run in 2023 where Dade Phelan won and he, then Tinder Holt still took it to the floor himself. Nate Schatzlein and now expelled rep Brian Slayton voted for Tenderhold on the floor. So this side of things saw it as you're deliberately violating these bylaws we agreed to. Then add to that when Tom Oliverson jumped in into the speaker's race, he was the first one to jump in against Phelan. He said he's taking it to the floor regardless. And so that, again, to them is a violation of the bylaw itself, the requirement that members go vote for the

caucus endorsed candidate on the floor. Then they point to the reform group meeting that met in September. They said it's essentially an extra legal proceeding that kind of defeats the purpose of the caucus vote itself. Now, the other side says, no way, that's just members getting together and trying to decide who they're going to support. No different than other backroom dealings that happen for example the one that happened when members on that side of things chose burroughs as their their guy after phelan dropped out so wilson wrote the texas constitution is clear on january 14th the full house not a fractured caucus will elect the speaker with a majority vote of 76 members. So all this, coupled with how things unfolded as tensions were high in the room, led to them walking out and determining that

this is not a process that we feel we need to adhere to. On the other side, they argue that these arguments are themselves shot through with, if not outright hypocrisy, then holes. Both Bonin and Phelan courted Democratic support first before proceeding to the caucus. They also argue that past violations don't nullify the agreement currently made to support by participating in the process. So both sides have their arguments. There's really no bridging this gap. There's no reconciliation on this. You either believe one way or you believe the other. And members are really not going to change their minds. You'll have some that are kind of in the middle, at least on, I don't, I don't know. I don't care. It's I'll do it if I have to. I won't do it if I don't want to don't have to kind of thing. So opinions vary, but going forward, this kind of sets the precedent

that the caucus endorsement will be less important down the road if burroughs wins um because he you know is he walked out and now the way he was elected then right is he's he was not the caucus nominee and there was well sorry there was also for a while talk about a second caucus meeting and saying hey maybe we'll have a second caucus meeting and bring in burroughs could eventually find his way to be the nominee. But of course, it's all happened. And I think the road to that was unlikely. Yeah.

And there's also, I left this out in the Cook camp argument, but there's a video of Burroughs saying at a Tribune Fest panel that we need to support, we need to follow the caucus bylaws. Obviously, now he's not for that. And I asked him what changed. And that was when he referred to the Wilson op-ed. And the argument is just that this thing is flawed beyond repair and we should not be held to follow this. Obviously the other side disagrees and, uh, you know, the, uh, lots and lots of Republican

primary voters, at least the most active ones on Twitter are, you know, voicing their agreement with the cook side that you guys need to vote with for the caucus endorsed candidate. You now saw governor Greg Abbott come out and say that Dan Patrick has long been saying that. So there's a lot of back and forth conflicting arguments and, you know, effort to move the body one way or the other. It's just, it's a breakdown of beliefs and maybe out of pure convenience. I'm sure that's part of it. One's a convenient argument right now, depending on who you're talking to. As we've seen time and time again, be the case with these kinds of things, bylaws are always, and that's not an exaggeration to use such a definitive term, weaponized by the side,

the team that has the advantage, that the bylaws give them the advantage in that moment. And so this is all tale of Willis time. Rules are easy to stick to when it benefits you to stick to them, right? And you have the argument that, hey, if the bylaws are broken, if the caucus process is broken, let's fix it before we just throw it to the wind. Right? That's the argument of the other side is like, follow until we fix. Certainly. Certainly. Um, yeah, I think we beat that one to

death. Let's hit the last one. I want to talk through all the different forces from the outside that are at play in this. Of course, at the end of the day, when this vote happens on the floor of the Texas House, which all indications appear to be that it will be how this happens on January 14th, I don't foresee anybody dropping out here. But regardless, there'll be a vote either way. If there's one candidate, if there's three, if there's four, whatever. But walk me through. So, the members at the end of the day are the people making this decision but

the members are elected by a constituency. The members are also lobbied by different interest groups. It's just the nature of their position as elected officials. What outside forces are at play and who are they aligning with in these candidacies? So there's a lot happening here and everyone's gotten the text messages, right? I mean, surely everybody has received something like this or at least seen it on Twitter. It's all or the other.

In my newsletter, you can read more on this. My newsletter goes out on Tuesday, the day after this releases. But the way I described it there was with this naming, it's like Uncle Sam and Ronald Reagan projectile vomited all over our political discourse. And I think if I could push for one thing, it'd be some more original sounding names. But that, of course, is not the purpose. They don't want to be original. They want to be generic and to get their message out there. So what was once this very inside baseball contest is now very much out in the open being played out in the public square, a lot of which is happening on Twitter. Members are fighting on Twitter. People, voters are fighting with members on Twitter. We're seeing emails sent back out about it, responding to this. This is not new. – who do not vote for the caucus-endorsed candidate, which is Cook.

Local parties across the state have been doing it. The reason the censure issue is important now in this fight is that the Republican Party of Texas passed a resolution – or an amendment to Rule 44 that reads county chairman and or the state party chairman have the ability to keep censured Republicans off the ballot in the primary, if they so choose. There is a massive debate on whether that's legal in the first place, whether that's something the party can do. And if this happens, we're going to see it play out in court. It's going to be a massive fight. I don't know which way it's going to go. A lot of people think it has no legs. The party thinks otherwise. They think they can argue this in favor of it. At root, it's a freedom of association issue. Which way that goes depends on which position you have on

this. But that's something that's playing out quite a bit from the outside. Add to that these miscellaneous groups that we're talking about. Back in September during the reform vote, there was a text that was put out. Texans for New Speaker put out something that said, do your job here. We promise to have the the largest political fund in Texas history behind you to help stave off blowback from it. And nobody knew who that was. It was a ghost of an organization. There's no registering of it anywhere. There's no footprint whatsoever. So many new groups popping up left and right. And this was one of them, although they went quiet. We didn't hear from them at all. Well, now we know who it was. It was Amarillo businessman, Alex Fairley, who's gotten

increasingly involved in this world. He donated $700,000 to David Covey, donated to various other republican members or republican challengers primary challengers his daughter caroline is a representative elect in house district 87 and he announced this week well last week that um the that he was creating a new fund called the Texas Republican Leadership Fund with $20 million in it. And that will be used in the 2026 primaries and general election to, quote, make the House more conservative. That's pretty straight. You can guess where that's going. That's going to lead to primary members who vote for boroughs in this in this speakership fight. And that's a hell of a lot of money. That is just a massive bag to drop

on this on this political discourse. So that's going to affect a lot. You know, that's going to make people scared and move them one way or the other. So there's that. You know, this public pressure stuff is not new. Kind of the OG of it is Texans United for Conservative Majority, which of course used to be various other things, including Defend Texas Liberty. They've been doing this for a while, and they were big on it during the Paxton impeachment, and it worked. It was very effective. Just kind of this constant barrage of public criticism. It's also pissing members off, and that's a big reason why their involvement is a big reason why some members who might be gettable for Cook otherwise are digging their heels in so hard against him.

Now, on the other hand, you know, there's these 20 new members, many of whom, not all of them, but many of whom are very much aligned with TUCM. And so that is, that's a difficult straight to navigate for David Cook. So they're involved. They're sending out text messages. You have Texans for Conservative Leadership put out a text right before November. And that was the one that was mislabeled, intentionally, deliberately mislabeled, I'm sure, as a Tim Dunn-funded PAC. After the Dunn group came out and said it's not them and they got heat for it, they changed to Texas Leadership Initiative, and they're sending out a barrage of attacks against

Cook. You have the American Opportunity PAC, which is the group run by Mitch Carney, son of Dave Carney, who's Greg Abbott's top advisor. They put out a text. It did not say that Greg Abbott endorsed Dustin Burroughs, but it had a picture of them on it. An implication was made. An implication, yes. It's about the implications. You didn't get that reference. Never mind.

I have no clue. Somebody listening. Your husband probably't get that reference never mind i have no clue somebody somebody listening your husband probably would get that reference he keeps walking in to grab things and like tiptoeing in the back he's like he's trying to avoid disturbing this riveting discussion yeah so that the american opportunity pack is putting out kind of positive statements for boroughs and other groups like Defend Texas Freedom, Courageous Conservative PAC. Others have all put in, have all sent out text messages. is making what used to be this back room, behind closed doors contest, a statewide campaign, where the images of these two candidates is very important across the state in districts to either increase the pressure on members or decrease the pressure on members to go one way or the other. And that's a new twist that we've seen in this

race that is typically, like I said, it's typically been a very hush hush behind closed doors thing. Now, you know, I think I, I guess I'll maybe end on, I don't know, maybe something else to discuss, but it, it seems in hindsight to be a mistake for both camps to have put out their list of supporters, because in this environment, you just created a target list and created members that can create a targets to chip away at. And so this, this contest is all about bluffing, but there's been some pretty bad bluffing on both sides. And I don't, they kind

of shot themselves in the foot by doing that. Now that's hindsight. And if, you know, it's easy to say that now when traditionally the way you run this is by list, releasing a list and declaring support. So I don't know if this thing is a mess. It is not going anywhere, I don't think. There's no resolution around the corner unless something significant changes. We are in a deadlock, at least publicly. Maybe Burroughs does have a list of more than 76, including more Democrats than Republicans to be speaker, as certainly possible. But if he does that, it's going to invite a landslide of opposition, both within the chamber and outside the chamber for the entirety of his speakership,

however long that lasts. And then on the other side if Cook manages to cobble together a majority governing coalition you know they're going to be members who know the process pretty well they're going to be trying to blow things up constantly and whichever way this goes the question of whether there's a motion to vacate the chair is going to be- I was just going to say, yeah. Which is partially why the borough's camp is so keen, aside from the optics of being elected by a majority Democratic coalition, is so keen on term speakership where there's not as much solidification of leadership. You are quite literally forming your speakership first term. And it's a lot of, I don't know, you're basically forming the neural pathways of how the house will work and how folks regard your speakership. And so it's going to be, it's when you're most vulnerable, it's when you have the most to lose.

And of course, if you are elected by a coalition of folks that aren't necessarily able to defend you or is not big enough to ward off that kind of challenge, it's going to be a major, major issue, especially considering the political climate we're in right now, specifically in the House. It's going to be a major major issue especially considering the political climate we're in right now specifically in the house it's going to be very interesting and then when we get to session you invite dan patrick into this the three-ton elephant in the room who throws his weight around very effectively uh that's another rocky road that whoever wins is going to have to navigate.

How much do African elephants weigh? African elephants can weigh between 2,700 and 15,000 pounds. How is it possible to weigh 15,000 pounds as an elephant? Wow. That's five tons, right? That's a lot of tons. Yeah, 13,000 pounds. That's crazy. Well, I thought I ended things pretty smoothly, but then we did that, so.

Well, you said three ton, and I was like, wanting to know if that was anatomically correct. Turns out you severely underestimated the weight of an African bush elephant. I did. And that is on me. I left over that one. Although Asian elephants are much smaller. They're about 9,000 pounds. That would have been a little bit more, a little bit more, closer to accurate. Okay, cool. If you would have been a little bit more, a little bit more, a little closer to accurate.

Okay, cool. If you would have specified that it was an Asian elephant. Thank you for learning me. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Well, Bradley, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas and a Merry New Year. A Merry Happy new year. Folks, when we're back, it'll probably be a recap of what all happened the first month of session and in the speakers race. By then, again, like I've said, we'll likely have a speaker. It's going to be a wild ride in the next few weeks.

Brad, any predictions you want to make before we jump off here? I do also want to plug we have all sorts of awesome content coming on the pipeline here over christmas and new year's including year in review podcasts including stories that are kind of both looking forward into 2025 and the legislative session which is the year at large and saying here's what to look for as well as hate in 2024 the wild political year there are all sorts of things to recap we have recaps up on different issues even specifically the border school choice choice, you name it. We have all sorts of content up for you to recap the year, kind of wrap your mind around where we're headed in the legislative session. It's going to be a fun and wild time. Wild indeed. Buckle in, buckaroos. Buckle in, buckaroos.

On that note, folks, Merry Christmas. Happy New New Year we'll catch you in January