Meet the New Boss
January 5th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, your new speaker of the Texas House: Joe Straus.
Or so it would appear. The mild-mannered Republican from San Antonio announced at a midday press conference in the Capitol rotunda that he had collected pledges of support from 94 of his House colleagues. That would be more than enough to elect him the new House speaker when the 81st legislative session opens on Jan. 13.
He would replace Midland’s Tom Craddick, who was seeking a fourth term in the big chair but dropped out of the speaker’s race over the weekend. (A speaker candidate, of course, needs to win a majority of the 150-member chamber — that would be 76 votes, for the mathematically challenged out there.)
Reporters, lawmakers, staffers and onlookers packed into the Capitol rotunda today, standing elbow to elbow, to hear from Straus and his supporters. Straus put himself forward as a loyal conservative, though he now has support from nearly 70 Democrats and about 20 Republicans. “I’m proud of my Republican roots,” he said. “That’s what gives me the confidence to be able to reach out to Democrats and not apologize for it.”
Straus, only 49, has served just two sessions in the Legislature and wasn’t exactly high profile. Most Texans could be forgiven today for asking, “Joe who?”
Following the national trend, Texas House members are poised to elect a fresh-faced, young moderate with an appetite for compromise.
That willingness to forge consensus is what made Straus so attractive to the group of Democrats and renegade Republicans who were looking for a compromise candidate to topple Craddick (they reportedly settled on Straus on Friday night).
And today Straus pledged to end the bitterness that dominated the past several sessions, to run the House in a bipartisan manner, to seek consensus, and to follow the will of the lower chamber no matter his personal views.
That would be a welcome change from Craddick’s highly partisan, domineering style. Straus noted today that the bitter fight to dislodge Craddick had paralyzed the House at the end of the 2007 session.
“The speaker’s role, I believe, is to help the members, all the members, do good things for the people of their districts,” Straus said during his opening statement.
The five House members who followed Straus to the microphone at today’s press conference all praised his even-handedness; four of the five used the phrase “reach across the aisle.”
Still, there are many lingering questions about the presumptive speaker. As Andrew Wheat reported in the Observer’s Dec. 12th issue, Straus’ family is deeply involved in the horse racing industry. Asked today about his stance on gambling — expected to be a major issue in the upcoming session — Straus said he would recuse himself from any issue that could benefit him financially, as he says he’s done in past sessions. While that sounds good, it’s awfully hard to recuse yourself from major issues like gambling when you’re speaker and control the legislative agenda.
Little is known about many of Straus’ policy positions. He brushed aside policy questions today by saying he would follow the will of the House on most issues. “As speaker, I’m going to be influenced greatly by the position of the Texas House.”
For House members, who have endured six years of Craddick, that must have sounded sweet indeed.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Why is this blog here?
I mean that question to be a serious one. This post tells those of us most interested in Texas politics nothing that we didn’t already know more than 24 hours ago. And it has the tone of a newspaper report the day after as well.
Where was this blog when the biggest upheaval in the state’s power structure in, what, five or six years, took place in the 72 hours prior to this post?
I know too well the constraints of operating a nearly non-profit enterprise like the TO, but if you aren’t going to use the medium to its full potential, and in situations where it is most needed, and can contribute the most good, why even have a blog at all?
I would really like to see this blog turn into the kind of free-wheeling, inquisitive, broad-ranged lefty equivalent of the magazine in its heyday. The medium lends itself to that. Instead, you’ve stood back and let BOR and Kuff and ITP take the irreverent tone and central information roles that the TO previously enjoyed.
Use it or lose it.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:59 am
If only you guys had found a smart, irreverent, frankly adorable reporter to work your blog for you back when MCW moved away. Such a person might have lent it the surliness and apblomb that a blog needs to coax the odd armchair-new-media-expert right of their high horse. Sigh.
January 12th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Why would a liberal need to bring up the right wing red herring about the ties to horse racing and gambling that are often repeated regarding our next Speaker? I personally hope very much that Texas will allow those who want to gamble (outside of the lottery) to do so without having to travel to our neighboring states to throw away their money.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a small time breeder of horses. Our business is in a major decline and more Thoroughbred horses are now bred in Louisiana than in Texas. Why? Easy answer, their race tracks have VLTs. A bit of trivia. I own a two year old filly named MollyAnn — after Molly Ivins and Ann Richards. I would love to race her in Texas, at a race track where it was possible to pay the bills out of the purses. Right now, it cannot be done.
It is going to be a new era, and I hope that the new speaker is just the beginning — one small step toward a more civil and more progressive political environment.