Naked City

If George W. Bush ascends to the White House and Rick Perry to the Governor's Mansion, who will step in to govern the Senate? (Photo By Alan Pogue)

As if the spectacle of waiting to find out if Gov. George W. Bush will ascend to the White House weren't enough, another drama is playing itself out inside the halls of the Capitol: If Dubya leaves town, and Lt. Governor Rick Perry takes over the mansion, who will replace Perry as president of the Senate?

Besides appointing committee chairs, determining the order in which pending bills are considered, and casting the deciding vote when there is a tie, the lieutenant governor also wields power over redistricting as a member of the five-member Legislative Redistricting Board, which zooms into action if the Lege deadlocks on reapportioning districts.

And, if chatter around the halls of the Capitol is any harbinger, the chance of deadlock is more than a conspiracy theory. In fact, it is widely agreed that the reapportioning of the state's voting districts -- done every 10 years to reflect the demographic changes reported in the Census -- will be the No.1 hot topic of the 77th Legislature, convening Jan. 9, 2001. Redistricting can herald long-term changes in the majority party at the Lege, among other seismic shifts.

So it's hardly surprising that potential successors to Perry -- most prominently David Sibley, R-Waco, and Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio -- have been jockeying for the position for some time. The full Senate must vote to choose Perry's successor, who must win a majority to assume control. With the Republicans holding only a one-seat majority in the Senate, Democratic senators could have a heavy hand in deciding who will rule the floor.

The thinking is, with a number of Republican candidates in the forefront, it will be hard for any one GOP Senator to get all 16 Republican votes. So, if the Dems align their caucus behind a single candidate and woo one Republican vote to their side, they could decide the race. In theory, anyway. "It's nice to hear that," says Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, "but reality says Democrats often disagree. You know that old story: Someone asks, do you belong to an organized party? And you say, no, I'm a Democrat."

Indeed, getting the 15 Ds to agree on one candidate could be more painful than oral surgery. As one source at the Capitol put it, getting the Dems to agree on anything "is like herding cats."

Still, agreeing that their power as a group is undeniable, the Senate Democratic Caucus met last week -- reportedly for nearly five hours -- to discuss the potential job vacancy. "It was all over the map," Barrientos says. "It was raucous, it was funny, it was intense, and it was hell to keep order."

In the end, the senators issued an official statement of their position: "In the event of a vacancy in the office of the Lieutenant Governor, it is the position of the members of the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus to remain uninterested until after all interested candidates have been interviewed by the caucus."

In essence, it all comes down to this: a fairly rowdy pageant of candidates auditioning for the assembled caucus. "It is a pageant, and for the talent portion, if you haven't been practicing your piano, you could really be in trouble," says another well-placed Capitol source.

Redistricting, and its resultant juggling of constituents, is certainly at the fore in many senators' minds. And it is true that some senators' dreams of increasing interest in, say, colonias, could be best realized under one particular lieutenant governor. Then there's the even more distant issue of who'll be where for the next round of statewide elections. For Democrats itching to seize some spots back from the GOP, this is a major question mark. Suffice it to say alliances will be powerful and behind the scenes.

Of course, all of this will depend on whether Bush can pull out a presidential win, and with all the current legal wrangling, it's still anybody's guess. Until then, not many are talking -- not too loudly, at least -- about whether the Democrats will endorse a candidate. (Indeed, even the usual suspects, including Sen. Royce West, D-Houston, and Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, president pro tem of the Senate, declined to elaborate on the Caucus' official statement.) "When [you're] in the minority, you have to consider that there is [more] strength in numbers than if you stand alone," says Laura Silagy, press secretary for Sen. David Bernsen, D-Beaumont. "It's a terribly important position, but it's not all that easy to get even the people of the same party to reach any consensus."