On the cusp of a new year, it seems a likely moment to wonder if the Texas political winds are indeed beginning to shift in a more progressive – or at least more rational – direction. That’s the lesson being trumpeted by state Democrats in the wake of Dem lawyer Dan Barrett’s capture of the District 97 special election run-off over Republican pediatrician Mark Shelton, in a Southwest Fort Worth district that had been heavily GOP for many years, until vacated by retiring incumbent Rep. Anna Mowery. The turnout was a measly 11%, but most observers had presumed that Shelton, who bested a handful of Republican rivals in the initial voting, would gather most of those opponents’ votes to overcome Barrett’s 32% plurality. Instead, GOP voters stayed home, Dems (especially union members) turned out, and thanks to House Speaker Tom Craddick’s heavy-handed political muscle, the run-off became a referendum on Craddick’s speakership. The result, a 52% to 48% victory for Barrett, was hardly an endorsement for Craddick or his meddling. State Democratic Party Chair Boyd Richie declared breathlessly, “The revolution begins in Fort Worth.”
We shall see. Barrett will have to run again in November, with what will be a much bigger turnout, but even setting aside the Craddick question, it’s encouraging to note that the Democrat ran a campaign that opposed school vouchers, supported mass transit, children’s health insurance, and cleaning up North Texas air – none of these items high on either Craddick’s or Mowery’s priority list.
A few days earlier – very late on a Friday night – Craddick did win one vote that mattered, as Attorney General Greg Abbott crawfished an opinion on the speaker controversy that will allow Craddick to endure at least until January 2009. Asked by House Republican insurgents to rule on Craddick’s spring declaration of “absolute power” in rejecting any attempt by the House to unseat him, Abbott tap-danced through a lengthy and strained opinion on whether the speaker is an impeachable “state officer” – suggesting tenuously that he probably is – but finally declining to rule on the only question that mattered: whether the House members who elect the speaker have the right to unelect him. “The question asks this office to decide matters that are internal to the House,” mused the AG, in deciding on discretion over valor. No fool he.
Hands-on Housecleaning
In truth, it’s just as well that Abbott took a pass, as the Republican House members who would unseat Craddick were basically asking the AG to do their Housecleaning, a matter best left to those who made the mess. Craddick obstreperously prevented that last spring, but come next January, the insurgents will have only themselves to blame if they can’t muster the votes either to unseat Craddick or to rewrite their own rules to make explicit what anybody who’s ever held a public meeting knows by default: If we elect the chair, we can throw him out whenever necessary. That’s the real farce of the speaker battle – Craddick (along with his cronies Terry Keel and Ron Wilson) got away with a coup not just against his colleagues but against any semblance of democratic authority under parliamentary rules of order.
In response to Abbott’s ruling, Waco Rep. Jim Dunnam, the Democratic Caucus chair, thundered, “No person with a commonsense understanding of the fundamentals in our country, much less a trained lawyer, can condone Abbott’s opinion that Craddick should have the absolute power of a Tito, Mussolini, or Stalin.” While I can’t quite see Poor Tom of Midland as the Second Coming of the Madman of Steel, it was in fact Craddick who declared that he has “absolute power” to determine who can make a motion of any kind in the House, effectively a declaration of war against his own membership. Some were and remain craven enough to submit to him, but one has to ask: If Craddick could have survived a vote on his rule, why wouldn’t he allow one?
Put Up Your Dukes
Even while Craddick is recruiting candidates to run against GOP incumbents who have defied him – and such hopefuls could not have been encouraged by the fate of Shelton, who put his eggs in the speaker’s basket – Craddick has garnered a Democratic opponent, Midland City Council Member Bill Dingus, in District 82. Dingus will be very much a long shot, but it’s nice to know that Craddick may at least feel a speed bump on the way to his provincial recoronation. More importantly, House incumbents who supported Craddick may now begin to feel a well-deserved shift in the wind.
The local example, of course, is District 46 Rep. Dawnna Dukes, a seventh-term incumbent who has just drawn a fledgling opponent in attorney Brian Thompson, who has loudly founded his early campaign on Dukes’ support for Craddick’s speakership. Thompson too will be a long shot, and if Craddick is his only issue, it won’t be sufficient – but Dukes spokesman Colin Strother didn’t help his boss much when he snorted that nobody in her district even knows who Craddick is. Note to Strother: It’s generally considered bad form to begin your campaign by insulting the intelligence of your constituents. Dukes has earned a strong challenge, and Thompson should at least be a reminder that there are more issues at stake in Texas than who gets the plum committee assignments.
Frankly, I don’t much care about Craddick himself, but I do care that the state politics he represents – reactionary, mean-spirited, divisive, anti-community – should be steadily driven to the margins of public life so that the government of Texas might one day represent the whole of the people and not just our masters, employers, and economic overseers. That may be a quixotic ambition, but the journey could well begin with the simple recognition that we can’t have a fair and equitable community without an honest and democratic Capitol.
This article appears in December 28 • 2007.
