My sense of what Rick Perry is doing by adding items to the call in the special session is that he is trying (a) to stay relevant and (b) to leave his options open. This is all speculation now, but I think Perry would like to find a way to run for a fourth term as governor, and by calling the special session and infusing the call with red-meat issues, he reestablishes his own relevance and isolates Abbott, who has no answer to Perry's initiative.
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I attended the signing ceremony yesterday at the Governor's office, which Perry began with a few words about the six education bills he was signing: "They struck an appropriate balance between accountability and flexibility," Perry said.
The bill everyone wanted to know about, of course, was House Bill 5, which represented a major overhaul of the high-stakes testing regime and graduation requirements. Perry had been skeptical about the bill at one time, but on this occasion he was ready with words of praise. "House Bill 5 came a long way from where it started," he said. "We are standing our ground and not compromising our standards. We refuse to dilute our standards."
Governor Perry and Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst published an op-ed piece on redistricting in today's Houston Chronicle. Here is an excerpt:
Following every federal census, the Texas Constitution requires the Texas Legislature to draw new district boundaries for the Texas House of Representatives, Texas Senate and U.S. Congress, which the Legislature did in 2011 based upon the 2010 census results.
But the boundaries in place today were not drawn, nor have they ever been approved by the people's elected representatives in the Legislature.
In 2012, after extensive litigation and delay, Texas' elections were conducted based on maps ordered by a federal court instead of the maps enacted by the Legislature. The maps used in the 2012 elections reflected negotiations between the state and several minority groups who complained that the legislatively enacted maps denied them the representation required by law.
In fact, according to the San Antonio federal court, the 2012 maps drawn by the judges corrected for every meaningful allegation of illegality levied against the legislatively enacted maps. The 2012 maps also addressed every legal flaw identified by a separate federal court in Washington, D.C.
Is this a true statement? Did the judges correct for "every meaningful allegation of illegality?" as Dewhurst and Perry claim? Dewhurst and Perry want it both ways. They want to be able to say that the judges have already corrected the interim maps and therefore they should be adopted, and they also want to say that the negotiations between the state and minority groups locked in whatever decisions were made on the interim maps.
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The 83rd Legislature was the best session in many years, going back to at least 2003, when Republicans completed their sweep of Texas politics by securing a majority in the House of Representatives. Two things made this session different from the ones that preceded it. One was money. In particular, the bounty from oil and gas production swelled the Rainy Day Fund to dimensions that would have seemed unimaginable even five years ago. This created some angst among Republicans, who did not want to see the state's savings account depleted. What Republicans who sought to protect the fund failed to take into account is that oil and gas are being produced in such copious amounts that the fund is in no danger of being drained. When the Legislature takes money out, it is replenished almost immediately.
The second reason why this was a successful session is that there were leaders who wanted to get things done. Senate Finance chair Tommy Williams set the tone for the session months before it began when he called for raising automobile registration fees. It was an acknowledgement that the state needed to start addressing its problems, and that it was okay to consider new revenue. Speaker Joe Straus did his part by saying, "We can't cut our way to prosperity," a remark that drew fire from fiscal conservatives. But Straus never wavered from his insistence on having the House address the big issues facing the state: water, transportation, education. The restoration of most of the education cuts in 2011 was a major accomplishment.
The one issue that did not get addressed was health care, specifically, Medicaid expansion. It is going to have to be dealt with at some point. If the state does nothing, the feds will levy an assessment, a fine of sorts against Texas businesses for the state's failure to participate. Is the leadership really willing to let that happen?
If the economic outlook for the state is stable, the political outlook is not. Republicans are split between mainstream and tea party conservatives, and the momentum is with the tea party. During the session, the Straus forces were always looking over their shoulder at the tea party contingent that threatened to get in the way of the agenda. Most of this group did not want to do anything. They never found a purpose except for protecting the Rainy Day Fund. Most were only too willing to embrace Michael Quinn Sullivan as their nominal leader. The Straus team could not penetrate the tea party contingent, and they were often scrambling for the votes to pass their issues. Republican caucus chair Brandon Creighton was no ally of Straus's. When Straus said of Medicaid expansion, "We can't just say 'no,'" the Republican caucus said, "Oh, yes we can," and voted overwhelmingly against it. Still, when the numbers went up on the House scoreboard on the key issues of the session, such as the passage of SB1, the state budget, it was clear that the mainstream conservatives had the balance of power; the budget passed by the comfortable margin of 118-29.
The Straus coalition, however, is fundamentally unstable. It works so long as Democrats are willing to function as Republicans to provide the votes to pass the speaker's agenda. The worst thing that can happen to Democrats is an unpopular (in Texas) Democratic president in the White House, and that is the situation that exists. Midterm elections are coming up next November; in the last midterm cycle, Democrats got blown out in the House. The redistricting map is more friendly to Democrats this time around, but their situation is still precarious, with only 55 members in their caucus, barely enough to break a quorum. What the Democrats lack in numbers, however, they make up for in talent. They're just better than the Republicans at the parliamentary game.
The missing faction in Texas politics is moderate Republicans, of whom Straus is one. There have been several recent races in Texas politics that have defined the evolving nature of the Republican party today. One was Dewhurst vs. Cruz; another was Van Taylor vs. Mabrie Jackson in Plano for Brian McCall's seat. I could add Craig Goldman vs. Susan Todd in Fort Worth to this list. Right now civic-minded Republicans cannot win races against movement conservatives. There is no place in Texas politics for establishment conservatives like Dewhurst--they either change or they go home.
There is a missing person in this report, and that is Rick Perry. No one, perhaps including the governor himself, knows what he is going to do. Perry has fashioned the modern Texas Republican party and changed Texas politics forever by driving the state GOP to the far right. The betting around the Capitol is that he won't run for a fourth term as governor, but I didn't think he would run again in 2010. There is also the possibility that he will run for president, but he would have no chance to win. Maybe he doesn't care; his goal may be to show that he is still a formidable politician and one who might have been a serious contender in 2012, had it not been for the limitations imposed by his back surgery.
Perry's immediate future, however, will include a decision of whether to call a special session of the Legislature. Greg Abbott wants a session on redistricting, but it is hard to see what advantage Republicans can gain. They are already facing a ruling that the interim maps represent intentional discrimination; at some point Abbott is going to have to come to grips with that finding. If, as David Dewhurst wants, the special session agenda will be a smorgasboard of uberconservative social issues, that could turn ugly for Republicans. They are on the wrong side of a lot of the social issues, especially gay marriage. The world is going in one direction, and the Texas Republican party is going in another. I think Rick Perry is smart enough to figure that a special session driven by social issues is a non-starter these days. On that point, we'll know soon enough.
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After a week (or more) of animosity, House and Senate conferees have come to an agreement on one part of the budget. In the end, the sticking point was the System Benefit Fund, an obscure line in the state budget that has traditionally been a parking place for funds budget writers have used to assure certification of the budget by the comptroller. As Sylvester Turner explained it to me last night, the fund, which gets its money from a miniscule fee on electric bills, will continue in existence for three years. During that period, the money in the fund will continue to be accessible by families who need help paying their electric bills in the hot summer months, as has been the case in the past. Thereafter, the fund, and the fee, will go out of existence, which, as Tommy Williams said, is like getting a $300 million tax cut each biennium.
AP Photo | Harry Cabluck
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