The Idiot’s Guide to the Speaker’s Race 
1. Tom Craddick
How did Tom Craddick become the most powerful Speaker ever— and the most powerful Texan today? Let us count the ways.
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The Hard-Liner
YOU DO NOT NEED to spend much time around the Capitol to realize that there are two wildly divergent views of Tom Craddick. His Republican supporters see him as an honest broker, a fundamentally fair man who, as he tells it, has appointed more women, minorities, and members of the opposition to committee chairs than any Speaker in history and who does what Speakers are supposed to do, which is to let the voice of the majority dominate. His Democratic opponents see him as a ruthless, partisan hard-liner and iron-fisted autocrat who deliberately and systematically shut them out of all the major legislation last session. It is impossible to reconcile these two views. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that both are partly accurate.
To be fair to Craddick, he presided over what was, by historical standards, a legislative train wreck. The Republican majority collided with a $10 billion budget deficit, a bitterly partisan redistricting fight, and an attempt to do what many skilled politicians, including George W. Bush, had failed to do in the past: reform the way Texas finances public education. The Democrats crashed headlong into a wall of long-harbored Republican frustrations and grudges and a desire to push through bills that had long been locked up by the old Democratic majority. Toby Goodman, a Republican representative from Arlington who was not committed to Craddick until late in the process, reflected, “It was going to be a rough session no matter who sat in the chair. Democrats were sometimes aggressive and disruptive, and the Republicans responded by pushing hard their political agenda.”
Still, Democrats were furious at what had happened to them, and they held Craddick responsible. They were not used to losing, and Craddick, who had gotten regularly beaten up for 34 years without disrupting the process, was never—and is not now—even slightly sympathetic. After losing vote after vote on bills and amendments, Democrats often struck back the only way they could, contesting every major bill with procedural points of order and parliamentary inquiries that ran into the hundreds. The result was often harsh, unforgiving partisanship: Democrats were sometimes prevented from even asking questions during committee hearings. Craddick employed a parliamentary maneuver called “moving the previous question”—in effect shutting down all debate on a bill—an astonishing eight times. Pete Laney had used the tactic only twice in ten years. One of many memorable moments occurred in May 2004, during the special session on school finance, when Democrat Steve Wolens, of Dallas, went to the back microphone to protest Craddick’s decision to shut down debate on the education bill. Craddick had the microphone turned off while Wolens continued to yell in protest from the rear of the chamber.
Democrats are convinced of two things: that Craddick deliberately excluded them and that everything the House Republicans did—meaning most of the legislation—was done at Craddick’s orders. It got so bad, said Jim Dunnam, a Waco Democrat who is the leader of his party’s caucus in the House, that on one occasion he and some colleagues decided to test their theory of Craddick’s draconian control. The idea was to introduce an amendment so fundamentally conservative that Republicans would have to vote for it. “It was during the tort reform debate, and I said, ‘Let’s think of something they just can’t vote against,’” said Dunnam with a mischievous smile. “We proposed an amendment that said that the tort reform protections would not apply if the injury was caused by someone who is harboring or assisting a terrorist. Now how can a Republican vote against that? They all voted against it.”
Dunnam also points to another moment during the tort reform debate as evidence that Craddick was telling the Republicans what to do. A Democrat proposed an amendment and a Republican effort to kill it failed—a rare event. “Then,” Dunnam said, “Craddick just shut down the House for forty-five minutes. He called Republican members who had voted for the amendment up on the dais, in public. Forty-five minutes later we voted again and lost. I think the average Republican veteran is as concerned about what happened as I am. Suddenly you are in power, and you have less say than ever.” Republicans interviewed for this story said that they were not told what to do, but at the same time they acknowledged Craddick’s unusually powerful presence. “No one ever approached me to vote in lockstep,” said Goodman. “But there was certainly more central control in this session than in previous ones.”
Craddick, meanwhile, says such accusations are just not true. “I will make this statement,” he said. “I never asked a committee chairman, ever, to bring a bill out or not bring a bill out of committee, and I did not tell them how to run their committees.” Craddick insists that the illusion of dictatorial control stems from Republican unity. “On tort reform, for example, all but three or four Republicans were for it. We all had the same view of tort reform. Members were for redistricting and insurance reform.” He does acknowledge being a hands-on manager. “When you have got all new chairmen and new leadership and a total turnover and a new philosophy and new majority, I think you have got to work with them,” he said. “When it came down to conference committees, you bet we helped them negotiate. One night we had one group in every room in this office.”
Craddick also believes, as do most Republicans, that, as Beverly Woolley, of Houston, put it, “The Democrats cut themselves out of the process” by being obstructionist. There is no way to resolve this. It was a mean session, feelings were hurt, and there was a great deal of finger-pointing and assigning of blame. Of the Democrats, Craddick said: “I have never seen as much bitterness and as many people who just can’t accept that they are no longer in control.”
Craddick’s relations with fellow Republican leaders Rick Perry and David Dewhurst were often prickly as well. Near the end of a tense debate on education finance, Perry said he would veto a key part of a Craddick-backed bill, which surprised everyone and infuriated the Speaker. Craddick retaliated by allowing the House to vote on Perry’s own plan, which failed embarrassingly, 126—0. Craddick and Dewhurst crossed swords over a number of issues. One typical contretemps: Dewhurst and the Senate worked for the better part of a year on a solution to provide property-tax relief and fund education with new revenue. The Senate passed the bill and sent it to the House, and Dewhurst thought he had a promise from Craddick to hold hearings on the plan. Instead, Craddick snubbed Dewhurst and the Senate by sending the bill back without taking any action, and Dewhurst responded with a blistering press release that appeared in most Texas papers. Speaking now, Dewhurst says, tactfully, “I may have had a little easier time than Tom through the last two and a half years, because I hadn’t spent thirty-four-plus years in the Legislature like Tom and accumulated a list of perceived bruises and slights. While he and I both stand on principle, we sometimes butted heads because our negotiating styles are so different. He’s a very bright and talented friend, and I know in his heart he wants to do what is right.” Or not.
As always, Craddick shrugs off the controversy. He says that he believes he has good working relationships with both Perry and Dewhurst. He points to what he and his colleagues accomplished: balancing a budget that had a $10 billion shortfall without raising taxes (albeit with deep and controversial cuts in services), enacting historic tort reform, passing a massive toll road program, putting state universities on a sound financial footing, and redrawing congressional districts. When asked if he felt he needed to change his approach this session or reach out to Democrats, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “We are not going to do anything different.”
The Irresistible Force
WHAT GIVES A ROOKIE Speaker such enormous clout? More than anything else, it is Craddick’s taste for personal political combat, his willingness to stretch the boundaries of his own power, his determination to win. This manifests itself in two ways: first, in his aggressiveness in pushing bills he favors, and second, in his refusal to negotiate once he has taken a position. There is perhaps no better example of his virtuoso power politics than the bill he passed last session that will allow state universities to set their own tuition. It was known as tuition “dereg,” short for “deregulation.” Dereg meant that the Legislature would relinquish control over the cost of college education and that tuition would go up. Fast. It was a subject that almost no one in the House or Senate, other than Craddick himself, wanted to touch. Politically speaking, it was like voting for new taxes.
This political inertia was at work in the House Education Committee when the bill came up for a vote. By one-thirty in the morning, after a wearying day of testimony, the prospects were looking dim. “I could tell it was going to be very close,” recalled Republican committee chair Geanie Morrison, of Victoria, the author of the bill. “I was looking at postponing the vote.”
It was then that, to the amazement of committee members, Craddick walked in. The Speaker was wearing a T-shirt, old blue jeans, and moccasins. He had walked alone from his apartment on the second floor of the Capitol building through the early-morning darkness to the Reagan Building, where the hearing was taking place. He stepped up on the dais, then knelt down next to individual members—the recalcitrant ones—and, as he puts it, “visited with them and explained to them why I thought it was important and why we needed to do it if we were going to fund higher education.” A little while later, he shambled back to bed, the deal done. The committee voted in favor of the bill, as he knew they would. It passed by one vote. Later, he would win the vote on the House floor because of his dogged efforts to allay members’ fears, with the help of dozens of university officials he imported to sell the idea.
My Library
