Money Talks
May 15th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
It was eerily quiet on the House floor this afternoon. The real action was happening behind the scenes. Eastland Republican Jim Keffer announced his run for speaker next session, and pointedly told a Republican caucus meeting that he wouldn’t challenge Speaker Tom Craddick this session. Any thoughts of imminent revolution dissipated. Immediately afterwards Craddick put out a short statement that he was going to run again.
There’s been a lot of talk that some Republicans fear drawing primary challengers if they don’t pledge to Craddick. We took a peek at the campaign finance reports this afternoon. The speaker from Midland had $4.18 million in his campaign account at the end of the last reporting period in January. Craddick has been holding this money mostly in reserve for several years — he gave hardly a penny to candidates from this account in the 2006 cycle. Some folks have speculated that Craddick has been saving this money to either scare off challengers or protect himself in a future speaker’s race. Jim Keffer reported $348,702 on hand in January (lawmakers can’t raise money during the session).
With all this talk of speaker pledge cards, primaries, and campaign money, we shouldn’t forget the speaker’s statute, which prohibits candidates from offering items of value in exchange for pledges or votes in a speaker’s race.
Meanwhile, the House kept churning out legislation today, including one ethics bill that cleans up a little mess lingering from the speaker’s race of 2002-2003. SB 129 requires public officials to disclose to the Texas Ethics Commission the amount of any gift they receive of more than $250. Current law requires disclosure of only the gift, not the amount. What damn fools came up with that foolishness? That would be the Texas Ethics Commission.
Last year, Bill Ceverha jumped right through that loophole. As you may recall, Ceverha — a Craddick crony who serves on the board of the $22 billion Employee Retirement System — declared that he’d received a “check” from mega-donor Bob Perry, but refused to name the amount. In a ludicrous ruling, the Ethics Commission decided that was kosher. (After public pressure, Ceverha later divulged the amount.) Bob Perry was giving Ceverha money after Ceverha was driven into bankruptcy due to his role in the TRMPAC-Tom DeLay scandal and the resulting civil suit. Of course, TRMPAC was instrumental in boosting Craddick into the speaker’s chair in 2003.
