The Speaker’s Race: The Revenge of Carter Casteel
I have been a holdout against the prevailing belief that Tom Craddick does not have the votes to be reelected as speaker and can’t get them. The outcome of the special election in District 97 has caused me to change my mind. Craddick has himself become an issue, and that is something he couldn’t afford. Dan Barrett’s victory isn’t as significant as Mark Shelton’s loss. With Shelton tainted by Craddick’s support and the robo-call controversy, Bob Leonard becomes the favorite to win the primary. He has said he intends to make Craddick the issue in the race. If Leonard is the Republican nominee against Bartlett, whoever wins the general election will be an anti-Craddick vote. I’m not writing Craddick off, but I think the tide has turned against him. I think the conversation about a Republican future beyond Tom Craddick has begun.
How did Craddick’s speakership deteriorate to this point? After all, he has had a lot of success as speaker on subjects near and dear to Republicans’ hearts. Many speakers can point to significant legislation that passed WHILE they were speaker. Craddick can point to legislation that passed BECAUSE he was speaker: tort reform, congressional redistricting, tuition deregulation, the property tax cut, restrictions on abortions, billions of dollars worth of budget cuts, mammoth overhauls of the state’s approach to human services and transportation policy. He played a central role in all of these. So why is he in such trouble?
I believe that the problems for Craddick really started in the 2006 Republican primary. Six Republican members who had opposed school vouchers found themselves with lavishly funded primary opponents: Roy Blake, Carter Casteel, Charlie Geren, Delwin Jones, and Tommy Merritt. Craddick said that he supported all Republican incumbents, but no one believed him, because the money to finance the challengers of the targeted members came from longtime Craddick ally James Leininger, the principal advocate for vouchers, who put around $3 million into these races. (Pat Haggerty, another targeted member, faced a smaller infusion of Leininger cash; his opponent’s race was primarily funded by another Craddick ally, Bob Perry.) Perception is reality in politics, and the perception was that Craddick had put the bull’s eye on his own members. Blake and Casteel lost.
Blake’s loss was not a surprise. He was a freshman. His opponent, Wayne Christian, was a former member who had lef the House to run a losing race for Congress in 2004 and was seeking his old seat. Even without Leininger’s money, Christian would have been favored to win. But Casteel’s loss was a different story. She was a solid, well respected member, albeit a bit on the crusty and theatrical side. A former teacher who was a strong defender of public education, she had friends on both sides of the aisle. But her opponent, a political unknown, had so much money available that on election day, aircraft were circling over polling places with anti-Casteel banners. She lost by 46 votes.
The consequence of these races was to scare the hell out of Republican members who might entertain the idea that they were entitled to vote in a way that represented their districts. The message was clear: Tom Craddick cares more about his supporters outside the Capitol than he cares about his supporters inside the Capitol. If you don’t toe the line on issues that matter to Craddick, this could happen to you.
Fear alone does not make a rebellion. It has to be accompanied by a sign of weakness. When the Republicans lost five House seats to Democrats on election day 2006, to go with a seat in Austin that had been lost in a special election earlier in the year, the scent of blood was in the water. Craddick had to fight to hold onto the speakership, and it was Democrats who provided him with his margin of victory.
But the speaker’s race did not end with Craddick’s election on the first day of the session. Republican members who entertained thoughts of independence still faced the same threat. They knew that Craddick’s ties to Republican donors enabled him to amass a huge warchest to be used against Republican members. They knew that Craddick would not hestitate to use that money, even against talented members like Casteel. They knew that Republican donors and friendly PACs would be afraid of contributing to Craddick targets, for fear of retribution. And so, they realized that they couldn’t afford to wait until the next election of the speaker, in January 2009, to unseat Craddick. They had to do it during the session, before the 2008 primary elections, before Craddick could bring his nuclear arsenal of big money into their races. The closer it got to the end of the session, the more imperative it became to make the move, and that is why, on that amazing night in late May, they sought to move to vacate the chair, only to have Craddick flee from the podium and return three hours later, with new parliamentarians and his claim to absolute power. But at a price: By turning on his own members, Tom Craddick has become THE issue. This is the revenge of Carter Casteel.
Capitol Observer says:
Good analysis Paul.
Craddick alone has made himself the issue. Others will continue to dog pile on this new sea change in the Texas election. This proves the point that you have to have a balance of power. Craddick took it too far his way and he will suffer for it. Texas Republicans may ultimately suffer for this power grab in the polls next year. That remains to be seen.
On the flip side, would-be Speaker candidates now can more clearly see potential victory for themselves…..should they ever decide who will be the chosen one among them to be the other nomination on opening day. However, just like the yapping dog that finally caught the car tire, it will be interesting to see what the Speaker candidates try to do with the gift they may be handed. That in and of itself will be interesting to watch.
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Els says:
One day not so long from now, we’ll all look back on this era in Texas and American politics and say, “What the Hell was that?”
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Anonymous says:
Wrong, Paul. As always you fail to point out that this “Republican Rebellion” is not really Republican at all. It is 15 liberal and moderate Republicans, many of them former Laney chairmen, that simply want back in power, and are willing to join with 50 Democrats to do so.
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Anonymous says:
Tom Craddick may have been able to accomplish things for his constituents, but at what cost? His lack of ethical conduct and underhanded methods may cost him his speakership.
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Capitol Observer says:
anon @ 4:39pm – you’re wrong my friend. This is not a rebellion of former Laney cronies wanting power back. Dig deep, talk to some House members, and many will tell you (if they know and trust you) that they are dismayed and disappointed in the current climate with the Texas House. Many, many of them want to have an atmosphere of cooperation as much as possible in dealing with the affairs of the state. They have big issues coming up next session and they simply want to have a successful session and go back and tell their constituents what good was done in Austin. Right now, all they have to talk (or defend themselves) about is Tom Craddick. Even worse for the House members, the Senate is really making progress and taking charge. That is not productive.
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Anonymous says:
Ahhh, the classic: “the house was different under laney”. What a crock. This has nothing to do with leadership style, it only has to do with policy. The libs and media want to change speakers because they don’t like tort reform, etc. If they have the votes they will, if they don’t they won’t.
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TSUMRA says:
“The Mean Texas Love of Little Tommy Cryindick”
http://www.ilovepoetry.com/viewpoem.asp?id=94221
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Capitol Observer says:
anon @ 10:43 pm – this situation has nothing to do with Laney and if House members are saying that then they are doing so with tongue in cheek. there is an element of the concern of leadership, no doubt. Everybody wants a leader that inspires somewhat and can funtionally manage the affairs of the Texas House with a little cooperation from most of the House members (D’s and R’s). This can and has been done in the past because members do not want to have Washington D.C.-style politics….and that’s where we’re heading with the great amount of divisiveness.
I respectfully disagree that the liberal media is playing this up to change policy in Texas. Remember Paul’s recent muse on “The Press Corpse”? I think he is right about that dying breed.
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Anonymous says:
Let’s name names – Brian McCall, Byron Cook, Jim Keffer and Mike Krusee were never Laney Committee Chairs. Cook never served when Laney was Speaker and Laney never liked Krusee or Keffer – so I don’t think you can paint everyone with such a broad brush.
If Craddick loses more members on March 3rd (Dutton, Dukes, Flores, Pena, Phil King, Betty Brown or Macias), then the race could, for all practical purposes be over.
But I don’t see Craddick folding his tent until somebody throws down 80 plus cards on a table and declares it to actually be over. As anybody knows who follows Speasker politics history, 80 can become 120 overnite if not sooner.
That could probably happen tomorrow if all 112 announced candidates for Speaker would check their egos at the door and meet to see what would be good for the House and for the State as a whole, fold in behind one candidate and let the stampede begin.
All we need to see is some House Members acting likes Statesmen instead of politicans.
That would be a first.
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Anonymous says:
Burka, your endless flip-flops on this are getting somewhat silly. You change your mind on Craddick’s fate once again? And all because of a special election the week before Christmas where a few thousand people voted? Not very reassuring for anyone who looks to you for “insight”.
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Anonymous says:
The operative word was “Statesmen”. As someone who has worked around the Capitol for awhile I can tell you that there is a need for statesmanship on BOTH the majority and the minority.
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Anonymous says:
Paul, you’re blaming Craddick and him alone for the loss of GOP seats in the House, with no mention of larger forces such as demographics, GOP voter fatigue, Iraq, etc.
And just the other day you commented re: Dunnam that the real credit for the loss of GOP seats goes to Fred Baron and the trial lawyers’ efforts.
GOP members and grassroots voters know that Craddick is not the problem, nor is he an issue in local races.
The real issue is whether the Texas GOP will hold the House or lose it to the D’s. There is a greater chance of the D’s taking the House next session than the “insurgent” R’s.
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Anonymous says:
Its funny how when Liberal GOP incumbents get targeted, it is somehow. immoral. Yet when Dunnam targets “Craddick D’s” it is either unreported or applauded.
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Anonymous says:
WHY, you ask, is Craddick in trouble? Maybe it’s because he 1) made lawsuits against corporations more difficult, 2) blatantly engaged in gerrymandering, 3)deregulated tuition, making college even more difficult for struggling students, 4) cut taxes for property owners, thus ensuring a decrease in services for citizens, 5) restricted abortions for adult women who can think for themselves, thank you, 6)reduced social services for the poor and middle class, and 7) catastrophically overhauled the state’s human services and transportation systems.
Craddick is a bad legislator.
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Anonymous says:
You’re right, if you’re a liberal, Craddick is not the guy for you.
If the D’s can pick up the seats, they (and the trial lawyers)will get the speaker they want.
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Paul Burka says:
Anonymous at 4:39 p.m. says, “As always you fail to point out that this ‘Republican Rebellion’ is not really Republican at all. It is 15 liberal and moderate Republicans, many of them former Laney chairmen, that simply want back in power, and are willing to join with 50 Democrats to do so.”
I was on the House floor when the rebellion started over the local calendar. I saw who was standing at the back microphone: Fred Hill, Byron Cook, Jim Keffer, and Dan Gattis. None of these were Laney chairs. None could accurately be described as “liberal.”
Anonymous at 4:18 says: “[Y]ou’re blaming Craddick and him alone for the loss of GOP seats in the House, with no mention of larger forces such as demographics, GOP voter fatigue, Iraq, etc.”
National trends do affect Texas politics. But in 2006, Republican statewide candidates did just fine, aside from relatively poor performances by Governor Perry and Supreme Court Justice Don Willett. Republican congressional incumbents did just fine, with the exception of Henry Bonilla. Republican state Senate incumbents
did just fine. The only races for state offices where Republicans did badly was in races for the state House of Representatives. Why is it that the war in Iraq and GOP voter fatigue didn’t affect the other races but somehow were factors in state House races? Craddick is a hands-on guy when it comes to elections. And he lost six seats. If he were the UT football coach, he’d be gone.
Anonymous at 4:10 p.m. says, “Your endless flip-flops on this are getting somewhat silly. You change your mind on Craddick’s fate once again? And all because of a special election the week before Christmas where a few thousand people voted? Not very reassuring for anyone who looks to you for “insight.”
Political races ebb and flow. So do speakers races. I reserve the right to change my evaluation if I believe the circumstances have changed. It is a year and two weeks until the House votes on the next speaker. There will be a number of surprises. If I think that Craddick has regained the upper hand, I will be the first to say so.
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Anonymous says:
One major factor that no one has mentioned as far as why R’s have lost seats (beyond Craddick, political climate, etc.) is simply nuts and bolts campaigning.
I don’t know whether it’s that the R’s talent pool is astonishingly shallow or that the D’s are hungrier, but D’s seem to run much more competitive campaigns than the R’s do. I can only think of one race in recent memory where the R’s outplayed the D’s, and that is Goolsby’s 06 race.
Every other house race, including the recent HD 97 runoff, D’s outworked and used professionals to win, whereas R’s paid the same bunch of R consultants (Anthem, etc.), ran the same cookie cutter campaigns with the same tired messages. And they still find ways to seriously outspend the D’s.
Maybe it’s a function of the better R operatives working on statewides and Senate/Congressionals whereas the D’s are targeting the State House. But if someone wants an interesting project, go look at the R consultant money and see how much of that is winding up in certain people’s coffers…
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Anonymous says:
Hmmm, it’s Craddick’s fault that people like
Gene Seaman, Toby Goodman and Bill Keffer lost their seats? Seems a bit of a stretch. You’re like a novice college professor with a new theory- you try too hard to make it explain everything, when it obviously doesn’t.
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Anonymous says:
You never really addressed the point that the rebellion consists of 15 Rep’s and 50 Dems. Seems like noone wants to discuss that. Probably out of fear that the Rep base will realize what’s really at stake here. As long as you guys call it a “Republican-led” rebellion, maybe the typical GOP voter won’t notice Dunnam standing in the shadows, waiting in anticipation for his role in a coalition government. Hill, Mccall, et al might be the public face of this rebellion, but the plain fact is that almost 75 percent of its votes are Democrats. The GOP voter will have to decide if this is the group it wants to run the house, rather than the 70-ish Republicans and 15 Dems that support Craddick.
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Anonymous says:
The Republicans in state House races were the ones who lost because they’re the only ones who faced serious opposition. The Democrats put forth one serious statewide candidate in non-judicial races, Chris Bell, and he had to contend with two independents, one of whom took all the traditional Democratic money.
You didn’t see the Frosties who run the Texas Democratic Party spending nearly as much time on state Senate campaigns as state House campaigns.
And Perry’s performance was not particularly poor considering that he had three major opponents. How would Dewhurst or Combs or Abbott do against a Democrat, a very well-funded independent who had held statewide office for a decade and a mini-celebrity with a catchy name and a few funny lines.
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Anonymous says:
Anon @ 8:06 pm, if you’re going to be throwing around the “l” word (as in “liberal”) then you’re just inviting a flurry of “f” bombs (as in “fascist.”) Now, please tell me you didn’t see that one coming.
Really, such name calling (on either side) is the direct result of a dry well of ideas; and you, my Republican friend, are clearly plumb out.
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Anonymous says:
By the way, Craddick is a fascist. (It’s late, hopefully more will come to me tomorrow).
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Paul Burka says:
No, no, no. Tom Craddick is not a fascist. That’s a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. He is a conservative and a partisan, with a political philosophy that is pro-business and anti-populist and anti-government. That description applies to many successful politicians over the years, the difference being that Craddick understands how to get and wield power, and how to bend people to his will, better than any of them.
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Anonymous says:
Paul,
You miss the point. If conservatives are going to frame the debate by calling everyone opposed to their view a “liberal” — carrying with the label all the well-tailored connotations Republicans have cultivated around the term over the past 30 or so years, then “fascist” is on the table too. It is not such a great stretch that the marriage of government and corporations that defines “fascism” is represented in Craddick’s philosophy (much less his Capitol apartment).
If you want to call it “unsportsmanlike” (which I expected and was reassured to see), then let’s keep the playing field even. “Liberal” is off the table too. From laws to blogs, conservatives want to control language. Well, that game’s a two-way street.
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Republican Bunker Buster says:
most recent anonymous:
I am glad you are putting the word “liberal” on par with the word “fascist”…you defeat yourself at the outset of the argument.
Paul: your statement about congressional and legislative races deserves better than a drive-by analysis. How many congressional seats are actually in play? Very few of the 32. Many more House seats re in play, which, with a bad enough national environment for one party, can cause the flip of several seats.
It seems your analysis that Craddick is the difference is based on faulty math…or a failure to do the math.
Or, keep this in mind: losing one congressional of 32 is roughly equivalent to losing five house seats of 150. Therefore, losing Bonilla was roughly the equivalent to what R’s lost in the leg.
Lastly, while you are clearly a bright political thinker, you do seem to toss to and fro a little to easily…almost like some kind of mood swing, with your emotions governing over sound reasoning.
A Christmas-time race with low turnout does not begin a revolution. Let’s give this one a little more time before declaring winners and losers. My two cents
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Anonymous says:
RBB: Thank you for making my point. As do you, with the continuous name calling. In fact, our entire country has meed mired in Republican defeatism (the constant sense of victimization) since your world-view has prevailed. Praise God those days are ending soon.
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Paul Burka says:
Do I really have to explain why “liberal” is not the correlative of fascist?
The worst that can be said of liberals is that they do the wrong thing for the right reasons. That is, their motives are good but their methods — the use of government for the purpose of social engineering — can do great harm. School busing comes to mind. Vast public housing projects come to mind. Welfare comes to mind. Read Nathan Glazer’s book, “The Limits of Social Policy.” The first chapter is enough. He was a Harvard liberal, a colleague of Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He laments that the liberals did not see the damage they were doing to stable inner-city communities with these policies. Liberals are full of right reasons for why we should all live in dense, high-rise-filled urban environments and take mass transit to work instead of our nasty polluting automobiles. Still, anyone would have to say liberalism has done a lot to make society better. It has ended the shame of legal segregation; it has provided a social safety net for the poor; it has fought monopoly concentrations of industrial power; it has provided equitable taxation; it has educated the masses. Its adherents have not always appreciated that resources are limited, and that big-government solutions are particularly exposed to the perils of unforeseen consequences. Liberalism is a perfectly respectable political philosophy. The closest it comes to tyranny is the tyranny of political correctness — in particular, the insistence on trying to remedy all inequalities. Fascism, on the other hand, is the glorification of the state over the individual, the extension of the government into every area of life, without restraint. It is not a respectable political philosophy. It is antithetical to freedom. Liberalism is tainted because of its failures; fascism is tainted because of how fascist governments behaved when the fascists were successful.
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Anonymous says:
Paul,
Can you or anyone really say that Conservatives are not “social engineers”? If Liberals ever tried to engineer society through government in the wake of the excesses of the Gilded Age, Conservatives today engineer society through “market solutions” such as privatization, tort reform and proselytizing religious ideology through education.
The New Deal was about social solutions by the people for the people. Today’s Conservatives are an elite few working for the elite few — either way, it’s a form of “social engineering.”
As for Liberalism not being corollary to Fascism — in fact, your description of Fascism very much describes Conservatives in Texas today. You have me more convinced than ever they are two sides of the same coin — both addicted to centralized control and power (albeit with different motivations and aimed at different ends).
What Texas needs now is moderation — and that is not the direction of the Republican Party. Times they are a-changin’.
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