The challenge to House Speaker Tom Craddick is the first real race for legislative leadership since Sens. Bill Ratliff and David Sibley faced off after the general elections in 2000 that put Gov. George W. Bush in the White House and Lt. Gov. Rick Perry in the Governor's Mansion.
The Senate was in Republican hands. Both of the leading contenders were Republicans. Outsiders kibitzed and chattered without really knowing what was going on inside. And the race went to a floor vote in spite of running predictions from the chattering class and other gasbags who said it wouldn't.
Ratliff won a close race, unanimously. That's always the way; see the result — a vote one way or the other — then ask for unanimous consent. That's a way of protecting members (at least in public) who supported the loser.
But until the votes were actually counted, it wasn't clear to anyone in the room how things would turn out. The unusual challenge to Craddick — this just doesn't happen much in Texas politics — is just as uncertain.
Ratliff got there because he won most of the Democrats to his side. He put Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, in charge of finance, and that appointment spurred conservative Republicans to revolt against Ratliff when it came time to elect Perry's successor two years later. Ratliff and then Sibley and then Greg Abbott all got out of the way after initial efforts to win a full term, and David Dewhurst won his first term as the Senate's head guy. That's a cautionary tale for Craddick's two challengers, Brian McCall and Jim Pitts. Challengers to Craddick start with more support from Democrats than from Republicans.
The experience and most of the outside GOP apparatus — such as it is — belongs to Craddick in this race. But his enemies have been successfully sniping at his supporters and some of his lieutenants. Ron Wilson and Talmadge Heflin fell two years ago, taking out one of Craddick's most influential Democrats and his Republican Appropriations Committee chairman. Democrats picked up a seat in that first election cycle. This time, they picked up six seats (including one in a special election last spring). Three ranking members fell before the general election. Public Education Chairman Kent Grusendorf of Arlington lost the GOP primary. Democrat Vilma Luna of Corpus Christi won in March and would have won in November, but dropped out last summer, giving up spots on three powerful committees to join the lobby. Al Edwards, D-Houston, lost his seat and his chairmanship in the Democratic primary. Those don't include the races that flipped seats from the Republican to the Democratic column.
Opposing a sitting legislative leader is risky, but it's also supposed to offer safe haven come election time, protecting members and obliging them to their protector. Less protection lowers the obligation. And Craddick's side hasn't won many "punitive" elections; the risk of opposition is low. For some members who don't have powerful positions, there's no political reason to remain loyal to the current leader. The conservatives come after Republicans who don't back Craddick. The liberals go after Democrats who do support Craddick, and general election voters are in a vaguely blue mood that the Republicans didn't offset this year. Members are insecure about it.
Craddick has 40 committees to appoint. He lost nine chairs to retirement and defeat this year, and ten vice chairs (there's some double-counting in there because of people who held two positions and left) to defeat, resignation and retirement.
He lost some more after the elections were over.
When McCall pulled the trigger on his challenge a couple of days before Christmas, Craddick lost four more chairs, who decided to give up their current gigs to support someone else. One — Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie — decided to give up the House's most powerful committee job to challenge the guy who gave it to him. In addition to Pitts, three declined to sign a letter from chairmen supporting Craddick: Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, Pensions & Investments; Allan Ritter, D-Nederland, Economic Development; and Robert Talton, R-Pasadena, Urban Affairs. All three appear to be supporting McCall.
McCall and Pitts haven't made the names of their supporters public. Craddick did, twice, and in a way that made it look like he was standing on one of the icebergs Al Gore is so worried about.
After the election, he issued a list of 109 members he said had signed cards pledging their support for a third term in the high chair for Craddick. That was a defensive move, designed to quell talk of a challenge. And with nobody declaring a challenge, it looked smart. But McCall filed papers declaring himself a candidate as the holidays began. After McCall filed, Craddick released another list. This one had 84 names on it along with a statement that he'd checked with House members who wanted to strongly reaffirm their support.
One of them — Pitts — announced his challenge to Craddick a few hours later, making that second, shrunken list look shaky.
If everyone is telling the truth, there are about 175 people in the House. That 's what the votes claimed officially and unofficially by the three candidates add up to, more or less.
This is the only kind of election outside of high school where the candidates actually know all of the voters and have some information about the likes and dislikes and weaknesses and grudges and favors that will influence their votes. And knowing all of those things makes everyone skittish about claiming victory and putting names to it.
Craddick's list gives Pitts and McCall access to better information than the speaker himself possesses. They know who's promised to them, and they know who's promised to Craddick. He's not sure about their lists, and they're not offering assistance. He can only assume everyone who's not on his list is against him. And he knows — this is always true in these elections — that some of the people who are on his list could flake.
It takes 76 votes to win, but the candidates have to determine who's honest and who's not, and under what circumstances. The day Craddick announced he had the votes to become speaker four years ago, then-Speaker Pete Laney had well over 100 pledge cards. And when Laney won in 1993, he had more than 80 votes in hand but his opponent, Jim Rudd, didn't think that number was a real one.
Even the candidates don't know the exact vote counts.
And if they don't agree on a winner by next week, we'll get a show like the one we saw in the Senate six years ago.
