State Government

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.

It took five days in 2004 to get the first 10 percent of the voters to the polls. It took three days this year. Early voting in those first three days was up 73 percent in the state’s top 14 counties, according to the Texas Secretary of State.

When it comes to campaign cash, the adage “better late than never” holds true. But the question remains: How much better?

If we listen only to Republican consultants, they’ll sweep the statewide seats, hold off Democratic challengers in two congressional seats, knock off one and maybe two Democrats in Congress, hold onto all three contested state Senate seats, and gain a net of four seats in the House, ensuring another two years with the GOP in control of all statewide offices, the congressional delegation and both chambers in the statehouse.

Uncertainties over the presidential race, Hurricane Ike’s after-effects, and the rapidly changing economic news have political people on both sides of the aisle looking at bloated lists of hot races in the Texas House.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison told her colleagues in the Senate that she won’t be seeking reelection to her Senate leadership job, and on a little (but not much) more private level, she’s telling colleagues she’ll soon form an “exploratory” committee to start raising money and gathering intelligence in anticipation of a 2010 run for governor.