And They’re Off!

The House elected a new speaker. The Senate started with a partisan dogfight. The comptroller filed a gloomy forecast on the state’s revenue for the next two years. The Republican candidates for governor — that’s an election more than a year away — revealed multi-million-dollar bank balances. Once all that had rolled out, lawmakers left for a week. The House will return next week for a day, then do rules the week after that. And the Senate is gone until January 26. Soon enough, it’ll seem like they never left.

Kay Bailey Hutchison’s term in the U.S. Senate runs through 2012 and she now says she won’t resign earlier than the end of next year if she runs for governor. She has formed an exploratory committee.

Add two more official candidates for Speaker of the House, calls for the head of House Parliamentarian and former Rep. Terry Keel, a constitutional amendment that would allow future coups in the House, and a “Solve for X” strategy and you’ll be up to date on the contest for control of the Legislature’s lower chamber.

Kay Bailey Hutchison answered the “Does She or Doesn’t She?” question about whether she wants to run for governor, filing the papers required to run a campaign for state office.

Blame Irving. The combination of a slow count in Dallas County and an impending excuse to back off (that’d be Thanksgiving), there’s not much happening at the moment in the race for Speaker of the Texas House.

The balance has shifted.

A lobbyist who doesn’t want his name in this newsletter or anywhere else offered up a new phrase for this phase of the race for speaker: Legislative Osteoporosis. He’s referring to bone loss in the spines of some lawmakers.

Get used to that headline — we’re keeping it until the race for speaker is over.

The dollars in Texas political races tell you what the moneyed folk are interested in: They’re interested in the Texas House.