Texas Democrats hope to benefit after boosting Dustin Burrows to House speaker

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When Democratic lawmakers cast their votes for speaker of the Texas House on Tuesday, the vast majority of them saw a clear choice between two Republicans.

On the one hand was Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, a known entity they had grappled with for years. Much of Burrows’ support came from moderate and establishment Republicans who Democrats had worked with in the past to gain small victories for their districts — and limit what they saw as the most extreme elements of certain GOP bills.

On the other was Rep. David Cook of Mansfield, a newer member who was backed by the chamber’s rightmost flank and GOP activists who routinely blasted House leadership for any perceived compromise with Democrats. Though viewed as an affable colleague and middle-of-the-road conservative, Cook had pledged to box the minority party out of leadership positions and stymie their ability to pass legislation.

Given that binary choice, the decision was easy.

Forty-nine of the 62 Democrats ended up supporting Burrows, handing the six-term lawmaker the speaker’s gavel and one of the most influential roles in Texas government. Cook, who courted Democratic support despite his vows to limit their influence, wound up with just three Democratic votes.

Burrows was an odd bedfellow for Democrats. Two years ago, he spearheaded the passage of a sweeping law that kneecapped the power of cities and counties to pass progressive policies, a signature accomplishment of his decade in the Legislature. He had supported stricter abortion laws, thwarted stricter gun laws, and played a lead role in lowering how much property tax revenue local governments can collect.

He was also a supporter of Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher legislation last session, which Democrats had worked with some Republicans to kill. Abbott wiped out many of those GOP lawmakers in last year’s primaries and has made passing that bill his top priority this session.

And though Cook had said he would end the chamber’s bipartisan tradition of appointing members of the minority party to lead committees, Burrows had not made pronouncements either way, saying he would leave it to a vote of the Republican-led chamber.

So why had Democrats gotten behind him?

State Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who leads the House Democratic Caucus, said that in Democrats’ talks with Burrows, it became clear that he was intent on protecting at least a modicum of the chamber’s bipartisan traditions and ethos — while Cook had agreed to a litany of changes that would virtually shut Democrats out of the legislative process.

“Many members came to the obvious conclusion that we must have a speaker who would not simply trample all over the minority and take a pledge that says, we will not pass any of your bills — we won't even work on your bills — until we pass every single one of our bills,” Wu said, referring to Cook’s vow to ensure that GOP bills reached the floor before any Democratic measures.

Since 2019, when he became chair of the House Republican Caucus, Burrows has been an antagonist to House Democrats. That year, then-speaker Dennis Bonnen also elevated him to lead the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

From those two posts, Burrows was a key GOP lieutenant pushing for property tax legislation that Democrats opposed. He also backed unsuccessful attempts to prevent cities and counties from hiring lobbyists to advocate for them in Austin — an issue that Burrows’ counterpart in the Senate, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, has named as a priority this year.

Burrows’ reputation among his colleagues took a hit after the 2019 session, when it was revealed that he and Bonnen urged a right-wing activist to target 10 GOP members in the upcoming primary.

To Burrows’ colleagues, the actions — captured in an audio recording that was released to the public — amounted to a shocking betrayal, especially after Bonnen had threatened consequences for any incumbents who campaigned against fellow members. Burrows resigned as chair of the House GOP Caucus and retreated from the spotlight, though he quickly found his footing when Rep. Dade Phelan of Beaumont won the race to succeed Bonnen — who had retired — and put Burrows in charge of the powerful Calendars Committee.

Democrats who supported his bid for speaker said the episode changed Burrows by teaching him the value of keeping his word to fellow lawmakers. Since then, he has worked with several of them to pass bipartisan legislation.

Rep. John Bucy, D-Austin, said he had worked with Burrows to include language in Republicans’ 2021 election overhaul bill that would have spared Crystal Mason from incarceration. Mason is a Fort Worth woman convicted of illegal voting in 2016 while on supervised release for federal tax evasion. She had always maintained she did not know she was casting a vote illegally. The law change made it necessary to prove that a person knowingly tries to cast an unlawful vote.

The Senate, which wanted the strictest version of the election bill passed, stripped out the language aimed at protecting people like Mason. Bucy said Burrows, who was part of the House team that negotiated the bill with the Senate, fought to keep the language in the bill but ultimately lost.

Burrows then came back to the House and authored a resolution affirming the chamber’s view that a person who unknowingly tries to cast an illegal vote should not be criminally punished. That resolution was cited by an appeals court last year when they overturned Mason’s conviction.

“That’s the kind of character we need in a speaker,” Bucy said.

Rep. Chris Turner, a Grand Prairie Democrat who was Burrows’ counterpart in 2019 as leader of the House Democratic Caucus, said he has gone toe-to-toe with Burrows and often disagrees with him on policy. That experience convinced him to support his frequent Republican foe in the race for speaker.

“I’ve found him to be honest and reasonable and if he makes an agreement he keeps his word,” Turner said.

But some Democrats argued that the minority party’s best bet would be to stay on the sidelines and force the GOP candidates to earn their votes through specific concessions — or produce a stalemate that could bring a new, more palatable candidate into the mix.

The 150-member House is made up of 88 Republicans and 62 Democrats. Heading into Tuesday’s vote, Cook had more than 50 Republicans and one Democrat in his camp — well short of the 76 needed to claim the gavel. Burrows, too, needed Democrats: even if every remaining Republican broke his way, he would need support from a majority of the opposing party’s caucus.

Some Democrats held out until the end. Twenty-three sided with Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos of Richardson, their party’s lone speaker candidate, in the first round of voting Tuesday. When Ramos was eliminated after that first ballot, 12 Democrats who had supported her switched to Burrows in his head-to-head runoff with Cook — the decisive push to win him the speakership. Burrows won with 85 votes: 49 Democrats and 36 Republicans.

Still, nine Democrats marked themselves present without voting for either option and another, Rep. Yvonne Davis of Dallas, was marked as absent.

One Democratic holdout, Rep. Christina Morales of Houston, said she could not bring herself to vote for Cook or Burrows because both supported school vouchers and had voted for recently enacted laws banning abortion and restricting the LGBTQ+ community’s rights. And they had each supported GOP bills cracking down on border security in ways that Morales argued would harm her predominantly Latino district.

“We should have held out longer,” said Morales, who voted for Ramos in the first round after supporting her in a floor speech. “I think we could have been more strategic, because I clearly don't understand the concessions that we, or some, may have gotten. I still don't know.”

Bucy pushed back against the idea that a third, more moderate Republican candidate was going to ride in and save the day for Democrats. He said those in Burrows’ voting bloc had explored other potential candidates but that holding out longer would not have made a difference.

“It hasn’t just been the last weeks, we’ve been making phone calls for months,” he said. “I don’t know who’s saying that but I think they need to put down the paper and count votes.”

Democrats are being tight-lipped about what, if any concessions, they got from Burrows. But his supporters say that the new speaker had pledged to continue the chamber’s bipartisan traditions – a veiled suggestion that they might keep Democratic chairs. An early test will be the House’s vote on allowing Democrats to lead committees, which is scheduled for next week.

Cook had promised to ban them in a nod to calls from conservative activists. But some Democrats believe they have a chance to continue the practice under Burrows despite the pressure that conservative activists are putting on the House’s 88 Republicans to vote against it.

“I’m not giving up on it,” said Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, who backed Burrows on the second ballot after supporting Ramos. “88 Republicans had pressure that they should not elect Dustin Burrows and 36 of them elected Dustin Burrows. In this scenario, you only need 14.”

Several members of Burrows’ voting bloc also said that Cook’s commitment to the “Contract With Texas” drafted by Republican lawmakers as a sort of purity test for GOP speaker candidates was disqualifying. Beyond the Democratic chair ban, the document also calls for passing all GOP priorities before taking up Democratic bills and preventing Democrats from using procedural tactics to kill or delay conservative legislation.

Some pro-Burrows Democrats also framed the race as a choice between continuing the House’s independence as a body or bowing to Patrick, who leads the Senate, and West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who had driven the House to the right by funding Republican primary challenges.

Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Dallas Democrat who gave one of Burrows’ nominating speeches, put her caucus’ decision bluntly.

“This time around we had a bad choice and a stupid choice,” she said. “And I didn’t have to make a stupid choice.”