Craddick Crashing?
May 8th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Short of being removed in the middle of the session, last night was as bad as it could get for Tom Craddick as speaker. After rumblings all session, beginning with the attempt to depose him in January, the House finally erupted. By a convincing margin, representatives voted to overturn a ruling by Speaker Tom Craddick. This is rarer than an apology from the Bush administration.
The entire revolt started when Craddick ally Rep. Ryan Guillen (D-Rio Grande City) laid out what seemed to be a local bill on the Major State Calendar. The Quorum Report succinctly sets the stage for what happened next:
Rep. Sefronia Thompson (D-Houston) raised a point of order as to whether the bill should be placed on the Major State Calendar by the House Calendar Committee. The point of order was overruled by Craddick, based on the precedent that the House Calendar Committee has been given broad discretion to place the bill on the calendar of its choice. That led to the appeal, which was begun by Rep. Charlie Geren (R-River Oaks) and completed by Rep. Robert Talton (R-Pasadena). (emphasis Kronberg’s)
The stand represents many members’ long-simmering frustration with the tightly controlled Calendar Committee, which has kept many local bills — the goods members take home to their districts for election season — off the House’s Local & Consent calendar. The feeling that Craddick and his allies were blocking or stalling opponents’ bills was widespread as was the sense that the speaker did not respect the rules.
Rep. Rene Oliveira, a Democrat from Brownsville, put the response in dramatic terms. “This has never been done in my 12 terms here in the House, but I think there’s a good reason to do what we’re doing here today,” he said, before going on:
I regret to say I was not here Friday when many member members were very cut up and hurt by what’s been happening in this house. But I think it gets time to take a stand. We have defining moments in our career, and I think this is one of them. If this process, in this House, that we so much care about and we so much believe in is going to mean anything, then we should follow the rules. And the rules should not favor or oppose any specific member of any specific bill. They should be fair.
In the end, the vote went 87-50 against Craddick, with 11 members excused and 2 present but not voting. The two not voting would be Craddick and Speaker Pro Tem Sylvester Turner (D-Houston), who manned the gavel while Craddick sat behind the podium looking as if he’d just sucked on a lemon.
Among those who voted against the speaker were longtime supporters like Rep. Dennis Bonnen, Rep. Dan Gattis, and Rep. Mike Krusee.
“There is a sense in the Republican leadership that Craddick’s days are numbered and you are starting to see some of them begin to make the case that they could be a more reasonable alternative,” says Democratic Caucus Chair Jim Dunnum.
Harvey Kronberg at the Quorum Report has an interesting take on what happened.
In effect, Craddick handed his opponents the bright-line issue they had been waiting for. Guillen’s bill was clearly local, not statewide. He had even complied with the rule requiring posting in a local newspaper back home to establish it was local. It had never been set on the Local calendar and rejected. It had simply gone straight to Major State.
Finally, there was a vote before the full House pitting the speaker against House rules.
It is important at this point to note that Speaker Craddick is not the first to put local items on Major state or vice-versa. But that’s not the point.
Speakers are elected to protect their legislators. They have to find that uneasy balance that lets everyone have at the seat at the table while preserving the best seats for their team members. Every speaker bends the rules. The trick for a speaker is to keep their lawmaker constituents sufficiently invested in the system that a revolt does not hit critical mass.
After the vote, Turner returned control to Craddick, who simply moved on to the next bill.
