Weekend Roundup
Phelan is out—Battle for House Speaker continues.
Last week, Beaumont Republican Dade Phelan officially dropped his reelection bid for Speaker of the Texas House. A win the conservative-right has been seeking all year.
Rep Dustin Burrows decided to take his place. Which hilariously enough, our very own Tommy Oliver predicted in one of his comics all the way back in March.
Mansfield Republican David Cook recently emerged as one of the front runner for the Speakership vacated by Phelan.
The Republican Caucus met Saturday to decide who they would support for Chair, with David Cook and Dustin Burrows emerging as the top candidates in the days before the meeting. After two rounds of voting, neither Cook nor Burrows reached the 59 votes needed to win, and the team supporting Burrows finally walked out after the second round of voting. This left the remaining Republicans with enough votes and a quorum to elect Cook.
Afterwards both groups held a press conference. And as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Team Cook:
Team Burrows:
Burrow’s team would go on to release a list of House members claiming to back him. The list was billed as “bipartisan support,” appearing to have secured the number of votes needed to become House Speaker.
However, many on the list Burrows released also appeared on the list supporting Cook, leading to lots of confusion.
Some of the Republican representatives would release statements saying they never had any intention of supporting Burrows; additionally, several Democrats also stated they never intended to endorse Burrows.
Not sure what the strategy was by Burrows— placing Republicans and Democrats on his list without their explicit support, but we’ll see how it plays out.