Chris Russo – President, Texans for Strong Borders
On Saturday, the Texas House GOP Caucus met in Austin to elect a nominee for Speaker of the Texas House for the upcoming 89th Legislature. When the dust settled, Rep. David Cook of Mansfield won the caucus nomination with 77% of the 62 votes on the third ballot.
However, the race for Speaker of the Texas House is far from over. Even though all 88 Republican House members attended the caucus meeting, Cook’s opponent, Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, staged a walkout of the caucus after the second round of voting, where he was behind Cook 41-47.
After their colleagues, including Caucus Chair Tom Oliverson of Cypress and Cook himself, urged all members to return, more than 62 members returned to the caucus and voted for a third round. Almost immediately after Cook was announced the winner, however, Burrows held a Press Conference in the capitol claiming he had secured 76 votes from both Republicans and Democrats and that the race for the Texas House speakership was effectively over.
When Burrows released the names of 38 Republicans and 38 Democrats later that day, however, 8 Republicans and 1 Democrat requested their names be removed from the list. After the State Republican Executive Committee and several county GOPs passed resolutions threatening censure of members who do not vote for the caucus nominee, Mano DeAyala of Houston and Sam Harless of Spring indicated that they are supporting David Cook’s nomination.
Furthermore, multiple statewide and national figures, including Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Donald Trump Jr., Dinesh D’Souza, and others issued statements urging members to support the candidate who won the support of the Texas House GOP Caucus.
At present, neither candidate appears to have the 76 votes necessary for winning the speakership. However, it is clear that in order to win, Burrows will require a supermajority of his support to come from Democrats, who will almost certainly extract concessions from this process. At a minimum, any priority border legislation which was strongly opposed by Democrats in the Texas House last session and is explicitly condemned by the Texas Democratic Party platform is dead on arrival.
In an election where President-elect Donald Trump won Texas by nearly 15 points and Republicans picked up 2 seats in the Texas House, it is clear that border security has a popular mandate and must be a priority for the 89th Legislature. David Cook has committed to reform the Texas House to prevent parliamentary games that killed key border legislation last session, while Burrows will require majority support from a faction that has consistently opposed any common-sense border security legislation.
We at Texans for Strong Borders encourage anyone who cares about the security of our border and our territorial sovereignty, Republican or Democrat, to support the speakership of David Cook. It is clear that the current system in the Texas House is totally broken, and Rep. Cook has committed to serious reforms that will allow legislation to pass without being pushed to the end of the calendar or being killed with cloak-and-dagger parliamentary vetos by the minority party.