Diane Nusbaum of the North Texas Tea Party and the Paxton campaign circulated this message earlier this week: Harris County Executive Committee, with 350 precinct chairs present, invited Representative Ken Paxton to attend and speak. He received a standing ovation after addressing the crowd and encouraging folks to call their representatives to let them know who they wanted as their house speaker – that it was their business to be involved. Not only that, but Harris County Executive Committee passed a resolution for there to be a Republican Caucus, Secret Ballot, and the election of a CONSERVATIVE SPEAKER! [emphasis original] The vote was around 349 to 1 in favor of the resolution! This is huge and is sending shock waves through Texas! Spread the word! Those of you who are precinct chairs in Dallas County & Tarrant County call your GOP chairman and ask him/her to call for an executive committee meeting so a resolution can be passed for the above. If you know a precinct chair in one of the major counties in Texas, call them and get them to call their GOP chairman. Tell them Harris County did this and other counties need to follow suit. Those of you calling Harris County precinct chairs today, let them know what happened last night if they did not attend the meeting. Let’s keep up the fight! /s/ Diane Nusbaum * * * * Excuse me for asking, but … What fight? I went through my beat-up 2009-2010 Texas Legislative Handbook, and checked the names against Straus’s pledge list. I counted 54 returning Republicans and 18 Republican freshmen including spring primary winners who have pledged to Straus (Aliseda, Beck, Carter, Frullo, Gonzales, Gooden, Huberty, Larson, Lavender, Lyne, Margo, Murphy, Nash, Price, Schwertner, Scott, Torres, Workman). That is a total of 72. Straus is four Republicans short of having enough R’s to elect him speaker without the vote of a single Democrat, and there are still some unpledged freshmen R’s. My count of the Paxton forces is 21. This includes thirteen returning members, most of them disgruntled conservatives (Berman, Chisum, Christian, Craddick, Flynn, Hughes, P. King, Laubenberg, Morrison, Parker, Paxton, Riddle, Woolley, plus, presumably, Zedler, who has withdrawn his pledge from Straus). In addition, eight freshmen have publicly pledged to Paxton (Burkett, Cain, Landtroop, C. Perry, V. Taylor, Simpson, Sheets, White). Still unpledged, as best I can tell, are Anderson, Isaac, and S. Davis. I added Nash to Straus’s list, above, when I came across an obscure web site reported that said Nash had pledged to Straus, even though she did not appear on the November 3 list published by Texas Weekly. Permit me to repeat my question: What fight?