Inside the race to become Texas Speaker of the House: FOX 7 Focus
AUSTIN - The race to lead the Texas House of Representatives is far from over after a series of GOP votes last weekend left two Republicans predicting they would be the next House Speaker.
Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) and Rep. David Cook (R-Mansfield) are battling for the chance to take the Speaker's gavel.
FOX 7 Austin's John Krinjak spoke one-on-one with Scott Braddock, the editor of QuorumReport.com, about the race.
JOHN KRINJAK: First, let's recap what's happened last weekend and since then. You had [former House Speaker] Dade Phelan ally Dustin Burrows essentially claiming victory in the Speaker's race, but Republican David Cook actually winning the GOP endorsement for Speaker. Talk to us about what happened
SCOTT BRADDOCK: It's kind of wild isn't it? You and I talked, John, before that meeting last Saturday and you remember in our conversation I said I don't think that that meeting is going to really resolve this, settle anything. It only settled one thing, sort of, which is that this guy, David Cook, a representative from Arlington, does have the endorsement of some of his colleagues, some of the Republicans in the House, and he's calling that a victory. At the same time, you have a different person claiming their own kind of victory and that's Dustin Burrows, who you mentioned, and Burrows is saying that he's got enough votes to be Speaker. Last Saturday he announced that he had 76 votes to be Speaker, but right after that you saw some of his support start to fall apart. So, as you said, there's a long way to go. I would say there's a lot of baseball left to play.
JOHN KRINJAK: All this, obviously, playing out after the current Speaker Dade Phelan, at the last minute pulled out of the race, sort of the day before that vote happened. What do you think his calculus was there? Did he say, you know, hey I just don't have the votes?
SCOTT BRADDOCK: He didn't say that and, in fact, I can imagine that if he had stayed in the race he might have just about as much support as Dustin Burrows has right now. How's that for irony? He dropped out, and he might be doing well if he was still running. But look, I do think there was a political calculus that was made, a calculation made, by Speaker Phelan and his team. All of the attacks that he has sustained from Donald Trump himself to Don Jr to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and some others and Ken Paxton as well, Phelan became a political liability to other Republicans in the House.
JOHN KRINJAK: You alluded to this a moment ago, but what could happen in the coming weeks? We already see Burrows calling himself Speaker-elect. How do you see the race playing out between now and the new session, which begins in exactly a month. You said maybe we could see more candidates?
SCOTT BRADDOCK: Right. Absolutely, we should be clear that he is not the Speaker-elect even though he did call himself that, as you said, and he was calling himself that last weekend, publicly and privately, but then the beeping you heard was his campaign backing up a little bit earlier this week. He stopped calling himself Speaker-elect, at least publicly, and I do think over the next month you're going to see, I know you're going to see, a lot of attacks on Burrows. This is the first Speaker race where it is legal for third party groups to spend millions of dollars if they want to in a Speaker race. They're going to be attacking Burrows because he's being painted as the establishment candidate, but, look, David Cook, who's also running for Speaker, the gentleman from North Texas we mentioned, he's going to be attacked by others. This is going to be a long, drawn out process.
JOHN KRINJAK: One thing we saw in the last couple of days, there's now apparently a new Texas GOP rule to try to compel Republicans to vote for Cook and not for Burrows. Can you explain what that is?
SCOTT BRADDOCK: The Republican Party of Texas has been inching toward this for years, and now they say that they would be able to implement it, although I know there would be court challenges. What they want to do is threaten Republican members with the idea that they would not be able to run for re-election as Republicans two years from now. They would be excluded from the GOP primary ballots, but as I said there would be court challenges to that. I can't imagine that that would stand up in a court challenge, but it would be something to keep a close eye on.
JOHN KRINJAK: So it could be Cook, could be Burrows, could be another Republican. How much of a swing, how much of a difference could the ultimate winner make in what we see as far as the agenda here?
SCOTT BRADDOCK: Look, this is going to be a conservative session no matter who the Speaker is. I think that on the margins you might see some differences in which policies are passed. A lot of this has to do with how well whoever the Speaker is gets along with Governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Patrick as well. We'll have to all find out together.