State Rep. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, is throwing his hat in the ring to be the next speaker of the House.
Texas House of Representatives
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Straus to Chisum: “Have You No Shame?”
The speaker’s race drama continues! House Speaker Joe Straus is hitting back — hard — at challenger state Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, calling on Chisum to “stop the threatening letters, mean-spirited emails, and angry phone calls.”
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Chisum Wants Straus Pledges [Updated]
“Republican to Republican, I have to ask the Speaker to ‘Let our people go,'” said speaker candidate state Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa. It’s the latest salvo in an ongoing back-and-forth between the two speaker candidates.
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State Government
TribBlog: Hughes Leaves Team Straus [Updated]
The latest defection from Speaker Joe Straus’ list of supporters is state Rep. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who claims the speaker’s team is “using the redistricting process as retribution.”
Posted in
State Government
The Most Unpopular Fraction
Whatever the size of their majority in the Texas House, Republicans in the Texas Senate have to contend with the rule requiring two-thirds of members to agree to bring a bill up for vote. That’s 21 out of 31 — and there are only 19 Republicans in the upper chamber. As Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, some in the GOP want the rule changed.
Posted in
Demographics
The Crackdown Begins
Republican state lawmakers, buoyed by their party’s resounding victories on Election Day, have filed several bills ahead of the next legislative session that signal how far they’re willing to go in tackling illegal immigration. State Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, filed a nine-bill bundle that included a proposal to require picture IDs at polling places.
Posted in
State Government
2010: Donna Howard Wins in a Squeaker
It appears state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, will keep her seat in the Texas House. After overseas ballots were counted Monday, the final vote tally gave Howard a 16-vote victory over Republican challenger Dan Neil.
Posted in
State Government
HuTube: First to File
It’s the first day to prefile bills for the next legislative session, and lawmakers lined up early to get in their legislation. (Some lawmakers were more eager than others.) Our latest HuTube post has the action from inside the House clerk’s office.
Posted in
State Government
What 99 Means
When a party wins everything, as the GOP has in Texas this year, it gets almost everything its way. It also has everything to lose.
Posted in
Politics
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Our wall-to-wall Election Day coverage — complete results up and down the ballot and county by county, the all-hands-on-deck Trib team on the Republican tsunami, my conversation with George W. Bush’s media adviser and Rick Perry’s pollster about what happened on Tuesday, Stiles and Ramsey on what 194 candidates spent per vote this election cycle, Hu on how the GOP rout will affect the substance of the next legislative session, Hamilton on the Texas Democratic Trust’s unhappy end, Ramshaw and Stiles profile the new arrivals at the Capitol in January, M. Smith on what’s next for Chet Edwards and Ramsey and me on six matters of politics and policy we’re thinking about going forward — plus Thevenot and Butrymowicz on a possible solution to the high school dropout problem: The best of our best from Nov. 1 to 5, 2010.
