The speaker race is now officially on, with eight state representatives having filed their paperwork with the Texas Ethics Commission. Here’s the confirmed scorecard to date:

Republicans: Tom Craddick, Midland; Fred Hill, Dallas; Delwin Jones, Lubbock; Jim Keffer, Eastland; Brian McCall, Plano; Jim Pitts, Waxahachie

Democrats: Senfronia Thompson, Houston; Sylvester Turner, Houston

Thompson already has a campaign Web site live, although it’s actually the one from her brief run for the recently ended 80th session. Still, with a bit of polish it should do fine. It’s odd that she would chose a Web site to reach this electorate (all 150 of them), but it could be that she’s trying to keep the public pressure on her fellow reps, to remind them what a disaster the last session was.

That’s not the only puzzler: Since the next regular session isn’t until 2009, and potential candidates don’t have to file with the ethics commission until basically the day of the vote, why is everyone filing so early?

Have they got caught up in the – ahem – excitement over the interminable preprimary crawl to the White House? What if one lost their seat in the ’08 elections (unlikely, since all eight were either unopposed or won by healthy double-digit margins in ’06)? And who will appear as the House’s own Fred Thompson or Al Gore (to quote Lewis Carroll, “Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?”)

Or is someone expecting the question of speaker to become an issue before then? There’s no serious rumor about a special session yet, and considering how badly dented by the in-fighting of the last session Rick Perry, David Dewhurst, and Tom Craddick ended up, would it really be in the vested interests of the state’s three most powerful elected Republicans to call one?

This article appears in June 1 • 2007.

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The Chronicle's first Culture Desk editor, Richard has reported on Austin's growing film production and appreciation scene for over a decade. A graduate of the universities of York, Stirling, and UT-Austin, a Rotten Tomatoes certified critic, and eight-time Best of Austin winner, he's currently at work on two books and a play.