From Reps. Dan Gattis, R-Georgetown, and John Smithee, R-Amarillo:
It has become apparent in the last 12 hours that Rep. Straus carries enough votes to become the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, and that any effort to challenge him is not in the best interest of the Texas House. As a result we are both withdrawing our candidacies for speaker. Our priority is to take the focus off speaker politics and concentrate on how we can best serve the people of Texas in the 81st Legislature.
and Straus as gracious as ever (also from the Austin Chronicle):
"John Smithee is my friend and a highly respected leader in the House. I appreciated his courteous phone call moments ago and notification of his withdrawal. John's difficult decision and gracious gesture is another step towards unity in the House."
Update: Elise Hu did a great job covering this story beginning to end. The KVUE reporter has John Smithee on camera talking about his decision to withdraw his candidacy from the shrinking pool of Speaker candidates.
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.
Time is running out for Tom Craddick and John Smithee. Joe Straus has added three more to his list.
As KT reported earlier, Straus announced a list of 85 pledged votes. With the addition of the below mentioned Representatives, Straus is sitting on 88 or nearly 60% of the entire Texas House.
Speaker Pro-Tem Sylvester Turner
Representative Ryan Guillen
Representative-Elect Angie Chen Button
The h/t goes to Elise Hu who is doing a masterful job reporting the pre-session craziness.
Aaron Pena's twitter feed has been solid since the Speaker race started moving.
Pena points out Quorum Reports point that Rep. Senfronia Thompson has withdrawn from the race and thrown her support behind Republican Joe Straus.
Meanwhile, Speaker candidate QR Rep. Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston) has withdrawn her speaker candidacy and is contacting her supporters endorsing Straus.
Thompson told QR, "I am going to support this guy. I looked at the other candidates but he is the best. I think it might be the beginning of something different."
In addition, Pena confirms rumors that John Smithee has faxed in his paperwork to the Texas Ethics Commission to be a candidate for Speaker. However, sources are reporting Smithee's candidacy is a day late and a dollar short. It appears that Straus has locked this up. The question is who will be last to the Straus camp.
