Three term Republican Byron Cook (House District 8) is trying to amend Texas law to tell the Episcopal Church how to account for its ownership of property. Namely, he is making it more difficult for the Episcopal Church to govern through its legal Constitution. One might wonder why a self-described "old Southern Baptist" would be tinkering with the internal order of a church for which he is not even a member.
Since I'm not sure how many readers are familiar with the "larger issue", I'll spell this out after the flip.
It was a sea of people. Capitol staffers, reporters, dozens of elected officials from both sides of the aisle, and a few tourist all mixed under the rotunda today.
Every balcony was full with camera flashes and inquisitive pointing.
I sat front and center among TV cameras from across the city and state. Constantly bumped by paper media, citizen journalist and the unfortunate souls simply at the wrong place at the right time.
Because of the size, I broke the press conference into two parts-- Straus and Straus supporters.
The reality of it was that Straus spoke, his supporters from both sides of the aisle spoke, and then he took nearly 5 minutes of questions. The Q&A was particularly interesting because Craddick has avoided cameras since November 2008. Already we see a huge departure of access and transparency in the Speakers office.
Straus has already announced 96 Representatives pledged to support him or roughly 2/3 of the entire House of Representatives. One of the few names surprisingly missing is Rep. Frank Corte who also represents San Antonio. It seems Representative Corte would want a Speaker from San Antonio in order to better serve his district.
Tom Craddick's miscalculated political attacks are already having a negative impact on his party. As Phil reported yesterday, Tom Craddick has decided to go to war against Capitol staffers.
As Quorum Report and Phil quickly note the first three targets were three highly public critics of Speaker Tom Craddick.
Both House Democratic Caucus chair Jim Dunnam (D-Waco) and Craig Eiland (D-Galveston) have even been mentioned as possible speaker candidates should the House flip into Democratic control next November. Byron Cook's (R-Corsicana) personal privilege speech last session was remarkably forthright in referring to Speaker Craddick as corrupt.
As Quorum Report also notes, Craddick continues to bully "colleagues" by "ignoring the more traditional House practice of notifying members about possible improprieties and offering the members an opportunity to cure any problems. Instead, these "issues" that Phillips knew about in April went public in a May news story along with referrals to the Travis County District Attorney's office."
In any event, after the Statesman broke the story, House Administration Chair Tony Goolsby (R-Dallas) notified Dunnam, Eiland and Cook and gave them ten days to explain treating apparent part time employees as full time. We have posted Eiland's letter with a summary in a separate story.
After the Statesman broke the hit piece news story, House Administration Chair, Republican Tony Goolsby, told Dunnam, Eiland, and Cook they have 10 days to explain why employees were being listed as full time. In another moment of Republican hypocrisy, Goolsby as chair, told members to do as he says, not as he does.
Again, as Quorum Report states:
lobbyist Jennifer Shelley Rodriguez appears as a full time employee on Goolsby's Monthly Financial Statement from January to March of 2004. In January and February, her full time status earned her $500 a month. In March, she pulled down only $326.09. Rodriguez, the daughter of former Senator and current lobbyist Dan Shelley appears to have been a registered lobbyist in 2004 with at least 14 clients.
Again, according to the Monthly Financial Statement received by each House member, another full time employee making $500/month was Jennifer Fein. She held this status from September 2005 to January 2006.
In 2003, before SB1370 was passed, Goolsby had Eric Goldberg as a full time $500 month employee from January 20, 2003 to May 10 of the same year.
And finally, Ernest Stromberger, former executive director of Independent Insurance Agents of America shows up for 20 hours a week from December 2, 2002 to January 8, 2003.
We identified these issues and requested comment from Goolsby but had received none as of press time.
Republican Speaker Tom Craddick seems to be so singularly focused on keeping his job that he doesn't care who he takes down with him. As the Lone Star Project points out:
Few Republican's played a more prominent role in protecting controversial State House Speaker Tom Craddick than Goolsby. In addition to supporting Craddick for speaker, Goolsby was put in charge of "bringing in the muscle." After Craddick declared his "absolute" authority to rule the Texas State House, Goolsby brought in, "uniformed Department of Public Safety officers [who] guarded entrances at the front and rear of the chamber." It was an "unusual show of force," (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 27, 2007) and clearly intended to intimidate members of the legislature.
Now, rather than defending his partner in power, Goolsby is left defending himself from Craddick's politically motivated attacks. Speaker Craddick needs to take a nice long look in the mirror and ask himself if throwing his ever shrinking base of support under a bus is the best way to maintain control over the House. It seems unlikely.
With the comment that he understands it could very well cost him his political career, Rep. Byron Cook (R-Palestine) used a personal privilege speech to call on Speaker Craddick to resign.
We'll do our best to make the full text of the speech available online. This very well could be the first step in the process to vacate the Chair. Rep. Cook has drawn a line in the sand, and if Speaker Craddick doesn't surrender, the motion to vacate could follow later this week.
(Again great stuff from RBH. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Using the data on the election analysis page (for 2004, I'll update slightly when the 2006 data is posted), here are the 7 Republicans who are in the bluest districts.
Haggerty (HD78), Murphy (HD133), Goolsby (HD102), England (HD106), Harper-Brown (HD105), Latham (HD101), and Branch (HD108).
Haggerty hasn't been challenged by a Democrat since 1998. He was almost unseated in the primary though.
Murphy and Latham are freshmen. Murphy won with 56%. Latham beat an incumbent in the primary and didn't face a Democrat.
Goolsby won with 52%, England won with 49%, Brown won with 55%, and Branch won with 56%.
