What to Expect From the New-Look Texas Legislature
Despite clear Democratic gains, much will be the same when the Texas Legislature convenes for the 2019 session. Republicans will still hold clear majorities in both the Senate and the House and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, thanks to his 4-point win in his re-election race with Mike Collier, will preside over the upper chamber. There will be some big differences, too, however.
Sometime in January, the House will elect a new speaker for the first time since outgoing top dog Joe Straus took the job in 2009. While that fight will likely still be decided within the Republican caucus, the dozen seats gained by Democrats in the House make the math more complicated for any potential speaker, according to Rice University political science professor Mark Jones.
"You think about the caucus as having three groups — this is simplifying it — but you have on the one hand the [arch-conservative] Freedom Caucus and its allies and on the other hand the [moderate, pro-business] Straus wing and their allies," Jones says. "The largest group is more this middle group — they're conservative, but they're not as dogmatic and conservative as the Freedom Caucus, but they're also not as pragmatic and centrist as the Straus wing. In the end, they're the pivot players."
Neither the Freedom Caucus nor the House's Republican moderates have enough power to force one of their preferred candidates for speaker on the other, so the big group of members who are conservative, but not Jonathan Stickland, have the power in the speaker's race, according to Jones. The only thing that could change that is if the moderates decided to go nuclear and align with Democrats, something Jones says is unlikely to happen.
Read more: https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/how-the-texas-legislature-will-work-in-2019-11343704
