Conservative Partying, Part II: Legislative Priorities and (part of) Platform

 

Today is Part II of my debrief of the Texas Republican Convention. Part I is here.

I thought I would do Legislative Priorities and Platform in one post, but this has gotten ridiculously long. So I’m going to split it, and cover Platform & Resolutions in a Part III. (I’m assuming you’ll thank me later.) Most of it is written, so I should get Part III posted in a day or so. Thank you for your patience. I’m still quicker at getting this out than RPT is.

The convention ended Saturday, June 13. After two other editors did formatting and general edits, I spent all of Monday and Tuesday after convention doing a careful edit. There was integrating those changes and finishing indexing, and then a meeting between the Editorial Committee Chair, the RPT Secretary, and the Platform Committee Chair to go over any edits that needed approval—and to add the changes that were made on the floor of the convention, which I believe added one plank and one resolution, plus some other amendments to planks. I have not seen the final wording of those floor changes, other than what I saw on screen at convention. I do not understand the delay following convention to get those to the editors; a process changed after 2022, apparently.

But as of today, as I begin writing on Thursday, June 25, no updated version has been posted since the printed (and online) Permanent Committee Report for either Platform, Rules, or Legislative Priorities.

So we do not yet know the results of the scantron voting. We do not have a list of 8 Legislative Priorities, narrowed down from the 15 presented by the Permanent Committee. And we do not have the edited version of the Platform, which should include those floor changes, and the final numbering.

So all I can write about today is what we voted on, not what the results are.

To see the version we saw for floor debate, you can go here (until they move it or change it). 

I could also mention that this wasn’t that easy to find. I tried the TexasGOP.org site; I found nothing but the 2024 versions there. I couldn’t even find Convention information, other than on the calendar, telling me that event had passed.

I tried looking up the convention, which is a separate site: convention.TexasGOP.org. And all I could find were the schedules provided for convention goers.

So I did another search and found these versions on the “about” page of the convention website, and scrolled down and found the links I needed.

It shouldn’t be this hard, especially for somebody who has been paying attention all along.

If you’d like to watch the floor debates, LP and Platform happened on June 13. Floor debate for Chair election and Rules happened on June 12. And the Permanent Committees were on June 11. Temporary Committee of the Whole for Platform was Jun 10. You can find several of the livestreams on YouTube. 

Legislative Priorities

Legislative Priorities Committee was an addition not that long ago. We added them as part of our Platform Report in our Senatorial District 7 Convention in I think 2016 and 2018. And then Mark Ramsey, the 2018 State Platform Chair, had persuaded RPT to add Legislative Priorities as a separate committee, and was the first Chair of that committee in 2020.

The purpose of Platform is to guide mainly the Texas Legislature (and also some direction to other state leaders and to the US Congress) to know what the grassroots cares about.

The platform continues to be long, with lots of specific details. As we get ignored, we add more details.

There’s so much there, in the RPT Platform, it seemed like a good idea (I think it is) to tell the Legislature what is most important. That’s what Legislative Priorities is intended to do. LPs are, then, an extension to the Platform; in fact, each LP must relate to at least one plank in the Platform. So there’s some communication between these two committees during Convention Committee meetings.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Texas House Could Use Some Deep Cleaning

Back in December we talked about the race for Texas Speaker—a vote by the House members. To review, on December 7, the Republican Caucus met and voted. The rules they consented to abide by said that House Republicans would vote for the Caucus choice; that choice was David Cook. But the other candidate, Dustin Burrows—the hand-picked replacement of Dade Phelan, who had to step down because of his unpopularity, hard-earned, by thwarting Republican priorities—announced that, regardless of the Caucus vote, he had enough votes to be speaker.

That announcement was premature, and offensive. His list included several Republicans who were not supporting him, as well as some undecideds. And even his claim of getting all the Democrat votes was premature at that point. So we had a little over a month to convert the minority of Republicans backing Burrows. Spoiler alert: we failed.

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows,
screenshot from here

Usually this race is pretty invisible to us constituents. It’s just part of business on day one. And usually the outcome is well known ahead of time. But I was getting multiple text ads on my phone, trying to convince me that Burrows was the conservative choice—the one for border security and school choice, even though he had personally blocked those conservative bills last session, in his then role as Calendars Committee Chair (the committee where good bills go to die).

The Chair Vote

Fast forward to first day of session, January 14. Despite our grassroots efforts, Burrows’ minority of Republicans stood strong, and his Democrat coalition coalesced. There was no winner after the first round of voting. On the second round, a few Republicans switched over—to Burrows. One of these was Rep. Harless from here in Harris County. Sadly, my rep, Lacey Hull, despite our lobbying, stayed with Burrows from start to finish, and even gave a nominating speech. These betrayals to the conservatives gave the win to Burrows, for the Democrats and a minority of Republicans, just like we’ve had for the past 7 sessions or so.

Rep. Hull's X post attempting to convince us she's conservative.

Days later, they had to vote on House Rules. Among the rules was the vote to ban Democrat committee chairs—a grassroots priority. Yay!

Except, we wanted that in order to empower the majority Republicans, so we could get our bills passed. The Democrats gladly voted for this “loss of Democrat power.” Why would they do that?

It was a bait and switch. The new House rules indeed made it clear Republicans would chair all committees, but it also made it a rule that every committee vice chair would be a Democrat. In other words, it banned Republican vice chairs.

And then it changed the powers of the vice chairs so that they were the deciding factor in things like who would get to testify in committees, and when and whether issues would come up for discussion. The chair positions were turned into something like an administrative figurehead.

There’s more. Democrats could be appointed as chairs of any subcommittees—at the discretion of the House Speaker. And suddenly there was the invention of 12 new "permanent standing committees," a category that hadn't existed before. He could also decide who could be on these committees and subcommittees. We could have exerted Republican power by having more Republicans than Democrats on every committee and subcommittee—and by chairing any subcommittees. But our chairs don’t get to decide that; the Speaker does. And he’s intending to give something to the Democrats in exchange for their vote for him. And, did I mention, the 432-page Rules document got delivered at 4:00 AM of the day they would vote on them.

People are calling those rules the Democrat Empowerment Act.

House members usually get to debate the rules, and offer amendments. That was not allowed this time. Even the pre-filed amendments were disallowed. Take the rules as is or leave them—but leave them wasn’t an option. I mean, a House member could vote against them (many did), but all the Democrats plus the Burrows-voting Republicans made up a majority. So that was that.

Who Authored the Rules?

Rep. Steve Toth notes the initials at the bottom of the Rules pages; these included HLB. He asked Speaker Burrows whether these initials referred to Hugh Brady, the previous parliamentarian, and the answer was yes. He then asked whether Brady would be the parliamentarian again, even though Burrows had previously told Toth he would not. The answer was in was an inappropriate inquiry. But Toth persisted and got the non-answer that no permanent appointments had yet been made. (I looked it up to see if the appointment had been made and found this, from the Secretary of State’s Office, saying the House Parliamentarian is Sharon Carter, as has been the case since 2019, dated January 9, so that’s confusing.)

Rep. Steve Toth asks about the House Parliamentarian,
screenshot from here

Why is the name Hugh Brady coming up? Tom Glass gives credit to Bo French, Tarrant County GOP Chair, for figuring out the Rules authorship by Brady, because of the initials, and explains who Brady is in an X post on January 27:

Hugh L. Brady was appointed by Dennis Bonnen in 2019 as parliamentarian of the Texas House. Dade Phelan continued his tenure in 2021 and 2023.

Brady literally wrote the book on Texas House rules called Texas House Practice (now out of print and unavailable for purchase anywhere online) . He taught House procedure at UT Law. And he was an attorney in the Obama administration and parliamentarian for the Travis Co Democratic Party.

His law firm, Brady & Peavy earned fees while he was parliamentarian from multiple entities, including the City of Austin and Harris County to craft points of order for Democrats to use to kill conservative legislation that he then advised Bonnen and Phelan to sustain.

A lot of us had been wondering what he would be doing under Burrows. I had been told at the Capitol that he had not been appointed again….

One of the three initials on HR 4, the rules package rapidly rammed through without debate or amendment in DC Nancy Pelosi style was HLB, Mr. Brady's initials….

It is clear that the owners of Third Coast Bank (Dade Phelan, Dennis Bonnen & Dustin Burrows) have again won control for the swamp of the Texas House.

OK. We see now that the ostensibly Republican majority House Rules were written by an Obama administration Democrat. His priority was to empower the Democrat minority. 

Trying to Follow the Money

But what was that last part, about the Third Coast Bank?

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick brought this up, just days before the vote for Speaker. Brandon Waltens for Texas Scorecard explains:

In late 2019, Third Coast Bank acquired Heritage Bank, where former disgraced Speaker Dennis Bonnen had served as President, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer. Bonnen currently sits on Third Coast’s Board of Directors.

Outgoing Speaker Dade Phelan’s brother, Lan Phelan, was a director of Third Coast from 2013 until at least 2016, according to filings with the Secretary of State. Additionally, a 2021 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that the bank’s Beaumont location was leased from Phelan’s family investment firm. Phelan’s most recent financial reports also show he owns shares in the bank.

Last year, Texas Scorecard reported additional connections between Third Coast Bank and House members. State Rep. Cody Harris (R–Palestine) was hired as Vice President of Business Development in 2021, shortly after Phelan became Speaker. Other lawmakers, including State Rep. Dustin Burrows (R–Lubbock), were also found to own shares in the bank.

On Sunday evening, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick unleashed a fiery critique on social media, accusing five key figures—Dade Phelan, Dennis Bonnen, Greg Bonnen (Dennis’ brother and a current House member), Dustin Burrows, and Cody Harris—of running the Texas House like a “personal business” through a revolving door of leadership positions and shared financial interests.

While Patrick acknowledged that these arrangements are not illegal, he argued they have created a closed system that sidelines dissenting members and punishes those who refuse to comply. “They treat members like employees, not like equally elected House members,” Patrick wrote, likening the group to a “non-criminal version of the Goodfellas.” According to Patrick, dissenters risk being locked out of key committee assignments or seeing their bills blocked from consideration.

I can’t tell from all this whether the motivation for thwarting the conservative grassroots, who are loudly demanding better results—they succeeded in primary wins this year over some 15 previous squishes—is because of the desire for money or power. Probably both.

What Can We Do?

We need to drain the swamp in Texas. And it’s going to be hard to do.

One step is to let our representatives know we are watching. Push for conservative legislation—harder than we ever have. And keep track of their votes—in committees and their floor votes—on all our priorities. (The Legislative Priorities that came up from the grassroots and were voted on by delegates at last May’s convention can be found here.) 

They’re trying to disguise themselves as conservatives. That means they’ll have some motivation to vote for at least some of our important legislation. By applying enough of the right pressure, we might not have an entirely wasted session.

Note that voting against the Caucus choice for speaker is a censurable event. So is voting against a bill supporting the Preamble and 10 Principles at the front of the RPT platform (here). Three such censures can result in being ineligible to be on the ballot in two years. This was a Rule 44 change, to give some teeth to censures; we’ll see if it legally holds up, and whether County GOP groups follow through with the censures.

Texas Republican Platform Preamble and Principles

And, probably simultaneously (depending on how the session goes), we’ll be looking for primary challengers; that vote is just a year and a month away.

The House hasn’t gotten down to business yet. Committee assignments were to have been announced January 31, but Speaker Burrows has said the announcement has been postponed. Meanwhile, the Senate has been working for two and a half weeks. They have held hearings, and have already had a floor vote on SB2, the Senate’s school choice bill. More on that another day. (I haven’t fully studied it yet, but I’m hopeful. It uses other funding for the ESAs, while more money is being allotted per child in public education, so the fearful cries you’re hearing from public ed are likely misplaced.)

Anyway, constant vigilance it is again. The session only lasts 140 days. This year it runs from January 14 to June 2 (but plan on work to wrap up several days before that).

More Resources

Besides those linked above, here are a few more resources:

·        Rep. Nate Schatzline on X explains the situation.

·        Tom Glass on X mentions and links to Chris Salcedo interview explaining the situation.

·        Carol A. Spencer blog post “No Dem Chairs Vote Rings Hollow” talks about the permanent subcommittees and other new House Rules.

·        Katy Area Republicans post on Facebook January 26, 2025 shows a Rep. Andy Hopper video explaining the situation.

End of Session—Well, the Regular Session Anyway

The Texas 88^th Legislative Session ended May 31. And the first Special Session started the next morning, so it feels like it hasn’t ended. And we’re told there will be multiple special sessions this year. So it seems never ending.

The Texas Capitol, in Austin
from a visit in 2018

The idea, I think, was to limit the legislature to part time, just January through May every other year. But someone is not clear on the concept.

I’ve been making a bill list—a list of bills to follow and do citizen lobbying on—for six sessions now. Each time my list is both larger and more focused on specific priorities. And each time I feel as though I am woefully unaware of actual good bills and what is possible to get done. Some of this is, I’m sure, my trying to have a life beyond being a citizen lobbyist. But some of it is the sheer size of the challenge.

This session there were 9,114 total bills filed: a record 5.301 by the House,  and 2,565 by the Senate.

The Bills

The bill list that I set up for our local Tea Party to follow (and lobby for) included 137 bills. These were based mainly on the list of SREC approved bills. The SREC is the State Republican Executive Committee; it is made up of two committee members (generally one man and one woman) from each senatorial district in the state. Theirs, and mine, categorized the bills according to the legislative priorities chosen by the delegates at last year’s Republican Party of Texas committee. These included:

o   Protect Our Elections.

o   Secure the Border and Protect Texans

o   Ban Gender Modification of Children.

o   Stop Sexualizing our Kids

o   Ban Democrat Chairs.

o   Abolish Abortion in Texas.

o   Defend our Gun Rights

o   Parental Rights and Educational Freedom

I also added on a sort of miscellaneous category called Platform Issues—Not Legislative Priorities. These were things that showed up in the state party platform but didn’t make it onto the list of legislative priorities. The SREC also had such a list, here, although I didn’t include all of theirs.

Of the 137 bills I tracked throughout the session, 11 passed. And we’ll spend a bit of time covering what those were. Here’s the basic list:

Election Integrity bills that passed

·        HB 1243, Hefner: criminal penalty for illegal voting. Effective 9-1-2023.

·        SB 1750, Bettencourt: return responsibility for elections to elected officials. Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

·        SB 1933, Bettencourt: greater AG oversight of elections officials. Border Security Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

·        SB 1403, Parker: interstate compact for border security. Effective 9-1-2023.

Ban Gender Modification of Children bills that passed

·        SB 14 Campbell: Lt. Gov. priority, ban gender modification. Effective 9-1-2023.

Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids bills that passed

·        HB 900, Patterson, Shaheen, et al: READER Act, restricts sexually explicit books in school libraries. Effective 9-1-2023.

·        SB 12 Hughes: restricting sexual performances on public property or in presence of child. New to the list. Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

Abolish Abortion—no priority bills passed

Defend Gun Rights—no priority bills passed

Parental Rights

·        SB 17 Creighton, Kolkhorst, et al.: Limiting DEI in public education and higher education. Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

Platform Issues—Not Legislative Priorities 

·        HB 1666, Capriglione: no commingling of funds by digital asset service providers. Effective 9-1-2023.

·        SB 15, Middleton, Bettencourt, et al: Lt. Gov. priority, protect women in college sports. Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

·        SB 29, Birdwell: no vaccine or mask mandates, no school or business shutdowns for COVID. Effective 9-1-2023.

Rep. Tom Oliverson reviews the TX legislative session
at the Cypress Texas Tea Party, June 15, 2023
screenshot from here

 

Key Wins

Key win in Election Integrity, SB 1750, which gets rid of the position of Election Administrator in large counties. This was aimed at Harris County, which has had one botched election after another since the Commissioners’ Court invented the position, taking it away from the joint work of the County Clerk and County Tax Assessor. As it stands, those positions are currently occupied by Democrats, but at least they’re elected and answerable to the people, instead of these (purposely?) incompetent appointees.

Key win in Ban Gender Modification in Children is SB 14, which took some doing to get passed. It makes you wonder what kind of world we live in when there’s opposition to preventing mutilation of children, predictably ruining their health and their lives—while failing to address the underlying issue of gender dysphoria.

Another related key win, which I categorized as a Platform Issue, was SB 15, protecting women in college sports from having to compete with biological males. We got a similar bill through last session, but it only applied to K-12 schools. Now women in college sports are also protected. And enough other states have passed similar legislation that the NCAA can no longer discriminate against schools with this policy.

A key win in Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids was HB 900, called the READER Act (Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources), which restricts sexually explicit books in school libraries. The mechanism is a requirement for publishers to identify level based on content, and only certain materials can be included in libraries. It goes into effect September 1, 2023, so it will be in place this coming school year.

The bills that pass are few. And this year, because so little got accomplished (stonewalling by the Republican-led House, backed completely by Democrats) means multiple special sessions to address the Governor’s priorities, which might occasionally happen to align with ours. And the Governor has been on a vetoing spree, aimed, it appears, mainly at my State Senator Bettencourt’s bills—bills that got through the entire legislative process and passed in both houses, but will have to now go through that all again. 

The Governor is pressuring the Senate to go along with his version of property tax relief. There are two plans, one supported by each chamber; Governor Abbott supports the House version, while Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, along with leaders like Senator Bettencourt, support the other plan. The House plan is based on lowering taxes through compression. The Senate bill aims at maintaining the Homestead Exemption. I don’t understand taxing systems well enough to explain either one, or even know which one to prefer. Both, I’m told, would indeed lower property taxes. Maybe there’s a compromise that will use both ways. I don’t know. But I resent a Governor seeming to think he has dictatorial powers, which he’s glad to use against his own party if he doesn’t get his way. (I used to think so highly of Greg Abbott.)

I looked up the bills being vetoed, and so far it looks like the ones on our list are not vetoed, although a few of ours are also not yet signed by the Governor.

Senator Paul Bettencourt review the TX legislative session
at Cypress Texas Tea Party, June 15, 2023
screenshot from here

 

Other Post-Session Reviews

There are a lot of people doing reviews of the legislative session. The thing that kind of overwhelms me is the number of really good bills I was basically unaware of—both that passed and that didn’t.

The SREC wrote their summary here. 

There’s an excellent list of “48 Conservative Bills the Texas House Killed This Session” by Luke Macias for Texas Scorecard. I only had 10 of his 48 on my list. Macias also did a podcast on the good bills that passed, here. 

We had both Representative Tom Oliverson and Senator Paul Bettencourt speak at Cypress Texas Tea Party last Thursday. I’ve posted the videos, which I’ll link below.

Rep. Oliverson did a pretty thorough review of legislation he had his eye on. Oliverson, a physician, was a key figure in the passing of SB 14 to ban gender transition surgery in minors. He had a number of bills I never had on my radar. I think you can see his presentation well enough in the video, so I won’t list them here.

A concern I’d had was that some bills might have gotten shut down because of the Paxton impeachment hearing just before end of session. But Rep. Oliverson assured me that the House had already completed their conference committees (that's where they work out differences when the second chamber makes amendments to the bill as it came out of the first chamber), so I can set aside that frustration at least.

Sen. Bettencourt is nicknamed the Taxman, from his years as Harris County Tax Assessor, where he had a reputation for helping people get the lowest rates, often by helping them challenge their property assessments. He’s also nicknamed Uncle Paul, I'm not sure why; maybe because so many think of him as their favorite “uncle.” I should add that he seems satisfied with what he’s doing in this position, without any need for political climbing. He’s influential in the legislature, and his constituency is bigger than a US congressional district. (There are 38 US congressional districts in Texas and only 31 state senatorial districts, so there are more constituents in an SD than in a CD.) He highlighted a few more bills—many of them the bills he passed that got vetoed.

In the video, after Sen. Bettencourt’s presentation, he and Rep. Oliverson both handled Q&A together. Here are both of those recordings (apologies for lighting; it’s whatever I can manage on my phone):

·        Rep. Tom Oliverson speaks at Cypress Texas Tea Party June 15, 2023 

·        Sen. Paul Bettencourt speaks at Cypress Texas Tea Party June 15, 2023 

So there’s more to be done. We’re promised that at some point this year, we’ll get school choice. I’ve been looking for that for a long time.

I’m trying not to be too discouraged. The battle must continue. What is the alternative? Succumbing to tyranny? But it is frustrating that, not only do we have to face the other party’s opposition, but a whole lot of our own party. My view might be skewed, because of the people I associate with. But from my perspective most of the grassroots are constitutional conservatives. It’s not about party or people; it’s about restoring our nation—and our state and local governments—to the limited government promised to us in our covenant, our US Constitution. It’s up to us—as Benjamin Franklin put it, “if we can keep it.”

Convention Debrief—Rules and Priorities

This is Part II of my debriefing of the Republican Party of Texas Convention, which ran Monday through Saturday of last week, June 13-18. (Part I here) I’ll deal briefly with floor debate and final outcomes for the party Rules and Legislative Priorities, and then it looks like it will take an additional post, so I can spend more time on the Platform, from my inside view as editor.

Rules

The Rules Committee is a special breed, dealing with arcane things that would take me quite a steep learning curve to fully understand. These are the rules the Republican Party of Texas and its sub-entities (local county and district bodies) will follow during the next biennium. I’m not sure of their process—how the ideas for change get from the grassroots to them. There were a few changes submitted as resolutions to the Platform Committee, and we passed them along to Rules a day or two into convention week. They must also have their own submission process, but I don’t know what it is. So I’m picking up the narrative at the point of floor debate. You can view their Permanent Rules Committee discussion here, and their floor debate from Friday here, and from Saturday here. 

The Rules Committee Report discussion was supposed to be completed during the General Session on Friday, and we did do some business then. But, as I mentioned, the printed copies of the reports had not been delivered. They had been posted on the RPT website, but in that convention hall of some 10,000 people, most of us just got an error message. So we could only read what was on the big screen; we couldn’t look through the document to make comparisons or get a larger context.

The main discussion that day was about removing references to the TEC (Texas Election Code) from the document. This doesn’t mean RPT won’t abide by election law; it simply declares the RPT to be its own sovereign entity. This means the Texas Legislature, including its Democrat members, cannot determine rules for the RPT. There was a floor amendment trying to put the TEC language back in, but it failed.

Mark Ramsey speaks against an amendment
during Friday's floor discussion on Rules.
I snapped the photo from my seat a few rows away.

This change proposed by the Rules Committee was explained to me by Mark Ramsey as the most important decision we would be making at Convention. Among other things, like how we elect our Party Chair, it makes it possible for the Party to decide to have a closed primary. That means people would choose their party affiliation when they register to vote, and that will be the party whose primary they can vote in. Currently Texas is an open primary state; you declare your party on the day you vote in the primary. It allows for shenanigans, such as purposely voting in the opponent’s primary to affect who you want your opposing candidates to be.

When Mark Ramsey spoke from the floor during the limited debate, he didn’t mention that detail. I asked him later if there was some strategic reason for that. No, he told me; he just didn’t think of it while speaking extemporaneously in front of all those people. But he did convince the body of delegates, along with other testimony, to accept the Committee version and reject the minority report that was trying to change things back. So that was sufficient. (Mark's testimony and the one before him here.)

It was shortly after that that we postponed the rest of deliberation until Saturday, when we hoped the printed copies would be available.

So, when we took up Rules in the Saturday General Session, Mark Ramsey called the question on Rules—meaning that, with the exception of the Minority Report, which we were required to consider, there would be no other debate on Rules, that the previous day’s debate would suffice. The move passed, and we proceeded with the Minority Report, which was about Rule 44—Censure Process and Penalties. It seems to me that Rules talk about this Rule 44 every convention, so I think it is frequently refined. I believe the purpose is to maintain integrity and to hold elected officials accountable to uphold the Party Principles (a list of 10 core beliefs at the beginning of the Platform).

The Minority Report was an attempt to add more teeth to the censure process. But it did it in a way that was probably not legal and would open up the Party to legal liability. It failed.

 

Legislative Priorities

Legislative Priorities is a relatively new innovation to the convention, begun officially in 2018. It has a similar purpose to the Platform—to let the Legislature know what we want them to accomplish. The Platform is broad and detailed; the Legislative Priorities are a way to say, “If you can’t get anything else accomplished, at least get these things done.” That year I think we had to narrow the list down to five. In 2020 we narrowed it down to 8. But there was a new process: the LP Committee narrowed the hundreds of submissions from around the state down to 15 or 16 (we had 15 this year). And then the body votes on their priorities.

Floor debate was on accepting the wording. Each priority has a title and a short statement, very similar to Platform planks. Here are the 15 priorities presented by the LP Committee (the brief summaries here are mine):

·        Protect Our Elections (strengthening election integrity, requiring citizenship verification, limiting mail-in ballots, shorten early voting).

·        Ban Democrat Chairs (in an attempt to get more of our legislation to pass out of committee for a floor vote).

·        Abolish Abortion in Texas (granting preborn children the right to life and equal protection of the laws).

·        Eliminate Property Tax (to end the practice of people losing their homes, because on their fixed income they can no longer afford the tax—as though they do not own their property).

·        Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids (getting rid of sexualizing material in schools, which have been exempted from following obscenity laws under the guise of education).

·        Protect the Electric Grid (protection from weather and manmade or natural disturbances—which we should be able to accomplish, because Texas has its own grid).

·        Ban Gender Modification of Children (related to the transgender movement, specifically for children).

·        Secure the Border and Protect Texans (several ways of securing the border and stopping illegal alien magnets, such as taxpayer-funded services and subsidies).

·        Parental Rights and Educational Freedom (parents want to regain rightful control over the education of their children).

·        Protect Medical Freedom (in response to so much government overreach during the pandemic).

·        Defend Our Gun Rights (constant vigilance required, such as against red flag laws and gun-free zones).

·        Ban Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying (much of this relates to school districts using tax money to hire lobbyists who work against the will of the people and in favor of unions and administrators).

·        Stop Executive Overreach (another response to the pandemic response, which suspended laws and impacted religious freedom and business freedom).

·        Convention of States (the call for COS passed several years ago, but needs to be extended so it doesn’t sunset while waiting for enough other states to join the movement—more on this below, in the Platform).

·        Save Women’s Sports (another response to transgenderism; we passed legislation on public schools last session, but not for collegiate athletics).

The order above is the ranking order provided by the LP Committee. The delegates (about 5,000 participated) marked 8 of these on their ballots. The scoring came out Wednesday. I don’t yet have rankings, but these are the 8 final Legislative Priorities: 

·        Protect our Elections

·        Abolish Abortion

·        Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids

·        Ban Democrat Chairs

·        Ban Gender Modification of Children

·        Secure the Border & Protect Texans

·        Parental Rights & Educational Freedom

·        Defend our Gun Rights

Here’s a little color commentary on the process and on the RPT Chair, Matt Rinaldi, who has the very difficult job of maintaining order during all the complicated Roberts-Rules-of-Order conversation among several thousand people at a time.

During Legislative Priorities, there was debate on a proposed amendment at one point that was taking time and was probably unnecessary, considering that Legislative Priorities are merely a statement of the issue, not law cut in stone. A friend of mine, Terri Leo Wilson, who won her runoff race to become the candidate for the Texas House in her new district, HD 23 (after moving away from here, where she was our SREC person up until two years ago) called a point of information. That’s a question to the Chair to clarify something rather than to make a motion or offer debate. 

Terri Leo Wilson calls for a point of information.
screenshot from here

What she said was,

We are currently working on Legislative Priorities. We are not crafting words for the Platform. We are not making laws. We are saying, “Protect our elections, Legislature; you figure it out.” “Ban Democrat chairs; you figure it out.” “Abolish abortion in Texas; you figure it out.” We are not wordsmithing. We are just telling the Legislature, “Get busy. This is what we want done.”

So, that wasn’t a point of information; that was a statement. But it was actually a helpful reminder. The Chair, Matt Rinaldi, did not interrupt her. He let her finish. Then he said, “That’s not a proper point of information, but we’re counting that as a speech against.” And he did this cute smile that he has, no annoyance, just enjoyment, that makes him well suited for the high-pressure position as public face of the Party.

RPT Chair Matt Rinaldi
screenshot from here

Rinaldi was elected by the SREC after Allen West stepped down to run for Governor. I wasn’t very familiar with him. On Monday I was with the Platform Committee Chair in our large committee room, and he came in wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and looking so young I thought he was just one of the RPT staffers. The Chair was talking to him about logistical things we were lacking, and he agreed to see to them. The Chair told me who he was after he left. Really? The state party chair looks like a young staffer? Up on the big screen, in a suit, he looks appropriately serious. But even there he’s more casual than some of his predecessors, and he does seem to have a very pleasant personality.

The only time I saw things a bit out of control were during Platform discussion. People kept asking questions about how to fill out the scantron sheets—the way we vote up or down on each plank. It would have been less distracting to hand them out after debate concluded; also, the doors weren’t closed and a quorum called. But ta number of senatorial districts had handed them out, so others went ahead and passed them out. Many people haven’t filled out a scantron since school exams, so they wanted to know, do you put your name on it? Is there a code for your district? Does that go to the left or the right? Do you fill in zeros for the blanks you don’t use? Does True and False equate to “Yes, keep this plank” and “No, do not keep this plank”? These questions kept popping up in the middle of debate on various amendments, and it was getting annoying, especially when the same questions got asked more than once. Handing them out probably allowed more people to vote the scantron than would have waited all the way till the end. But, lesson learned for next time: explain how to use them as soon as you pass them out, whether that’s at the beginning, middle, or end.

I had originally intended to complete the whole debrief today. I’ve written and outlined a few portions already about the Platform. But there’s too much, on top of Rules and LPs, for one post. So this debrief will have a Part III just on the Platform, coming in the next post.

End of Session

The biannual 140-day legislative session in the State of Texas ended last Monday, May 31^st (yes, on a holiday, and they worked Sunday as well). So it’s probably timely to go over what got done, and what didn’t.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick gavels the close of the 87th Texas Legislative Session,
screenshot from KVUE news video

Last summer, at the state Republican convention, the delegates chose eight legislative priorities. This was done in a creative way, which actually worked out OK with the convention converted to online. During the committee working days, in person, ahead of the convention, the Legislative Priorities Committee took input from around the state and narrowed that down to (as I recall) 16. The delegates then prioritized their top 8, and weighted their votes accordingly, letting the math come up with the final 8 priorities.

The Republican Party of Texas convention is bigger than the national GOP convention. Bigger than any other state convention. This was input from over 7,000 people around the entire state of Texas, declaring what they wanted the legislature to work on.

These are the eight, each of which had wording to clarify:

1.      Election Integrity: Require citizenship verification of each voter, and felony penalties for Election Code violations that threaten election integrity.

2.      Religious Freedom: Restore the rights of individuals, organizations and businesses, to exercise their sincerely held religious beliefs by prohibiting local ordinances, state laws, or executive orders that violate those rights.

3.      Children and Gender Modification: Abolish the following practices for minors: intervention to prevent natural progression of puberty; administration of opposite sex hormones; and performance of any type of gender reassignment surgery.

4.      Abolition of Abortion: Abolish abortion by ensuring the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization.

5.      Constitutional Carry: Restore legal Texas firearms owners’ rights to carry them openly or concealed without a permit, while maintaining the option of a permit for reciprocity purposes.

6.      Monument Protection: All monuments or markers in our state shall be protected by law from being removed, defaced, destroyed, or otherwise dishonored. In particular, specific protection shall be given to the Alamo Cenotaph which shall not be removed from its current location off the Alamo Battlefield footprint.

7.      School Choice: Empower parents and guardians to choose from public, private, charter, or homeschool options for their children’s education using tax credits or exemptions without government restraint or intrusion.

8.      Ban Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying: Abolish all forms of taxpayer-funded lobbying.

This is all in addition to the state Republican Party Platform, which is also used to tell legislators what to work on—but it is bigger, with around 340 planks, categorized by senatorial committee titles, and a lot of detail, but without priorities. Except that, at the front of the platform document is a list of ten permanent guiding principles of the party:

Principles at the beginning of the Republican Party of Texas 2020 Platform

We Texans are in a state where the Republican Party controls the majority in the House, the Senate, and the Governor—along with Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and any other statewide office. This has been the case for beyond the past two decades.

So you would think it would occur to lawmakers to consider the will of the people who elected them.

Rotunda at the Texas State Capitol, from 2018

But one thing we learned this legislative session—in which we had more grassroots support, more awareness, more participation than in any past session—is that the legislative staffs are woefully uninformed about the will of the people. We can understand, maybe, a Democrat legislator’s staff not knowing where to find the Republican Party Platform and Legislative Priorities. We have a hard time understanding why a Republican legislator’s staff would not only be unfamiliar with the platform, but unaware that such a thing as Legislative Priorities existed, let alone where to find such priorities.

They were familiar with the Governor’s list of priorities. And they were aware of their own legislator’s priorities, if such a list had been made. That was the extent of the knowledge in far too many offices.

Going forward, educating staff ahead of the session will be an additional task Republicans will have to undertake in order to be heard and not dismissed as just those pesky demanding grassroots whose votes can be taken for granted.

I’ll take the priorities in order and say what was and wasn’t accomplished with each.

ELECTION INTEGRITY

Of the bills I followed, two passed: SB 1113 on cleaning voter rolls, authored by my state senator, Paul Bettencourt, and also Sen. Lois Kolkhorst just to the north of here; and HB 574 making certain election offenses criminal offenses. Both were useful.

But the bill that we really needed was SB 7 which was an omnibus election integrity bill, containing multiple improvements, many of them reinforcing current law that was flouted during the past election season, using the pandemic as a pretext for the lawlessness.

It passed in the Senate and then the House, with amendments. There was a reconciliation committee, and the Senate approved the committee’s reconciliation. Late at night, on the last day to legally finish business, the House Democrats were instructed by text to discretely leave the chamber, denying a quorum so that a final vote could not be taken in the House on the reconciliation.

There’s argument about who to blame. Certainly the Democrats who participated in the walkout. But the House Speaker, Republican Dade Phelan, could have called the Sergeant-at-Arms to bring them back into the chamber. He didn’t. And there’s speculation about his indicating to them ahead of time that he wouldn’t.

Phelan replaces a Republican House Speaker who was caught making deals against Republicans. We were hopeful that we would finally have a better session. I’m sure we’re going to be told it was better. But, seriously, Republicans seem to be unable to wield power, and instead seem overly eager to conspire with the enemies of freedom against the free people of Texas.

Governor Abbott has declared he will take action in response to these shenanigans:

·       He plans to have a special session to handle this bill. It is unknown whether that will be soon or in the fall when the redistricting special session will happen. So far he hasn’t scheduled it.

·       He has promised to veto Article 10 of the budget, to deny funding to pay legislators until they fulfill their obligations. (As far as I know, he hasn’t yet followed through on this threat.)

You can view Lt. Governor Dan Patrick on Fox News talking about this event, here. Senator Paul Bettencourt comments on what happened here. 

It seems to me, if there’s a will to pass a bill, it passes. If there isn’t, it doesn’t. But there’s always plenty of cover—that there wasn’t time, that there was too much opposition. This is what frustrates so many of us.

 

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

There were several minor religious freedom bills that passed. That’s good, but they mostly reiterated freedoms already guaranteed to us in our state and federal constitutions. These are:

 

·       SB 581 Bettencourt: HOAs must allow homeowners to have religious displays.

·       HB 525 Shaheen: Protect religious organizations.

·       SB 797 Hughes: The national motto is to be displayed in schools and institutes of higher education.

·       HCR 1  Stephenson: Support Prayer at public gatherings.

·       HB 1239 Sanford: Prohibit suspension of religious freedom. (This is in relation to the pandemic response.)

·       SJR 27 Hancock: Proposing a constitutional amendment to prohibit limiting religious service. 

 

GENDER MODIFICATION

This priority was an abject failure. SB 1646 would have changed the definition of child abuse to include permanent gender modification. It passed in the Senate and was assigned to the House Public Health Committee but did not receive a hearing—where the committee is chaired by Republican Stephanie Klick. SB 1311 went about the issue through an insurance angle. It passed in the Senate and was eventually assigned—late, but seemed to be given a deadline exception—again, to the House Public Health Committee, but did not receive a hearing. 

There’s a case in Texas, a boy named James, a twin, whose mother treats him as a girl and wants to permanently transition him, but he claims to be a boy with his father and doesn’t want to be a girl. (I wrote about this here and here.) This is a very confused child—and it appears to me the confusion is caused by a mother I would consider abusive. James is not safe from this permanent mutilation, nor are other confused Texas children. And now it will be another two years before there’s an opportunity for the legislature to deal with the issue.

 

ABORTION

A couple of relatively positive abortion bills passed. SB 8 prevents abortion after the heartbeat is detected. Similar bills in other states have so far failed to prevent abortions, due to lawsuits and skirting the law. (An ultrasound technician admits that it’s possible to find or not find a heartbeat at will, at least up to a point.) The Texas bill has the innovation that individual civilians can file suit against an abortion provider, rather than depending on a district attorney to decide to prosecute.

HB 1280 is called a trigger bill, meaning it comes into play, abolishing abortion in Texas, if/when Roe v. Wade is reversed in the US Supreme Court.

We had a good bill to actually abolish abortion, HB 3326. It didn’t even get a hearing in the supposedly Republican-led House; this was, once again, the committee led by Rep. Stephanie Klick.

 

CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY

This is being hailed as the brightest success of this legislative session. HB 1927 passed and has been sent to the Governor for signature.

This isn’t as clean a win as you would suppose. The original bill, passed in the House without amendment, had numerous serious issues. These ranged from minor (repetition, and contradiction between sections within the bill) to major (eliminating illegal carry for violent gang members age 21 or over, and some probable cause issues). The Senate attempted to correct the problems. One solution was an entirely new bill; that didn’t fly, so they had to amend. 

The amendments were a pretty reasonable attempt to solve the issues. But they were met with cries of “attempted sabotage” and "poison pill amendments" from the writers of the bill and supporting organizations (mainly GOA Texas). Nevertheless, the Senate passed the amended bill, which meant there would be a committee to reconcile. This meant ending up with an OK-for-the-most-part bill. It ends up granting the ability for felons legitimately convicted of illegal carry to have their records expunged. Not good. But we can hope the remaining problems can be dealt with in courts. 

The lesson here is, read the bill. Most of those crying their strong support hadn’t read the actual wording or considered the legitimate issues law enforcement has to face. A constitutional carry bill in the free state of Texas shouldn’t have caused that kind of rift in the party that is soundly pro-Second Amendment.

 

MONUMENT PROTECTION

There was a minor victory in this priority. HB 3584 to protect monuments and markers by the Texas Historical Commission was able to pass.

Then there was a bill directing the General Land Office to maintain the Alamo that didn’t pass.

 

ASIDE

Meanwhile, the General Land Commissioner, George P. Bush (yes, a relative of that family) is leaving that job. He was much maligned for his attempts to protect and improve the Alamo site—much of which I thought was good, but which included relocating the Cenotaph to another location in the compound; that got a lot of people very upset—but he was nevertheless qualified by education and background to be Land Commissioner. He has announced he is running for Attorney General, a position I don’t see that he is qualified for, and it’s against a Republican incumbent, Ken Paxton, who may not be as stellar as Governor Abbott had previously been in that position, but who is generally well regarded.

While we’re interrupting to mention job endings and political campaigns, just days after the close of session Republican Party of Texas Chair Allen West announced he will be stepping down—less than a year into his first term; he was elected at the state convention last July. West, I think, has been good at public messaging. He has been less good at the nitty-gritty duties of the party chair, which have in the past included working with the legislature. It’s a fundraising and administrative position. I don’t think that is what holds his interests. It’s unfortunate that his campaign ousted a chair who was particularly good at those things.

Speculation is that West will run for governor. Governor Abbott has already received the endorsement of Donald Trump. But he has upset a great many former supporters (myself included) this past year by failing to uphold our constitutional rights during the pandemic response. And he attempted (but failed) during the legislative session to institutionalize the executive powers he usurped during this past year. That makes him vulnerable, and West probably sees that. But, if West can’t do the administrative work of the party for even a year—and he’s pretty cavalier about leaving us in the lurch—why would we think he’d be good at administration of this very large state? We would probably speculate that he has his sites set on running for US president in 2026, with barely a term as governor under his belt, but the governor title would help him in such a campaign.

OK, the aside is over.

 

EDUCATION/SCHOOL CHOICE

We had one very excellent school choice bill: SB 1968 The Family Educational Relief Program, authored by my state senator, Sen. Paul Bettencourt. It allowed low-income families to be granted a portion of their child’s allotment to be used for educational purposes, with the parents as trustees over their child’s fund. It would have taken zero dollars from public schooling, and it added funding in a creative way, related to business insurance premium taxes, that actually added to the education budget.

Each of these legislative priorities had a statewide committee from the SREC (State Republican Executive Committee) to work on getting legislation passed. I was invited to help out with this one, as a citizen (I am not on the SREC, which has just one man and one woman from each senatorial district). Anyway, I got very familiar with this bill, and I’m extremely disappointed with its failure.

The bill was filed on the last possible day of filing. It got a committee hearing on nearly the last possible day, and got voted out of committee—where there was plenty of good pro-school choice testimony and no opposition testimony—at the last possible moment. There was still time for a floor vote, but it didn’t get one. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said it didn’t have the votes. We had one Democrat who voted for the bill in committee, but Sen. Perry, a Republican voted against, so I’m assuming he’s one of the four who indicated to Patrick that they would vote against. Others may know some of the other names, but I do not; when we find out, we should get the word out to get them primaried next year.

There was much opposition to school choice in the House—if it had gotten that far. This was displayed in a vote on the budget, which had an amendment slipped in to disallow any funding for any type of school choice of any kind whatsoever. The amendment passed with a vote of 115 to 29. That means a whole lot of Republicans voted with all the Democrats to keep low-income students in failing schools with no way out. And this was a policy amendment, which has no place in a budget; it circumvents the committee hearing process. I’ve kept the record of the vote so we know who to target in the primary. (Note: We were promised by senators on the conference committee that it would be removed during reconciliation. I’ve gone through the final budget, here, and it does appear this anti-school choice amendment was removed.)

In testimony on this amendment, Rep. Steve Toth brought up the polling data: all over Texas, among every demographic and party, no less than 70% approve of school choice. It’s one of our 8 legislative priorities; and it’s one of our 10 party principles. And yet a majority of Republican lawmakers—along with nearly all Democrat lawmakers, who claim compassion for the poor and underprivileged—refuse to support anything that would give families a way out of failing public schools. These lawmakers are sorely out of touch with the people of Texas. I imagine it’s because teacher’s unions are in touch with their campaign coffers.

One significant education bright spot is HB 3979, by Rep. Toth, requiring that civics teaching must include the moral, political, and educational foundations of America. It’s an anti-critical race theory law. And this is great news.

 

BAN TAXPAYER-FUNDED LOBBYING

This was another failed priority. The Senate passed SB 10, Senator Bettencourt’s bill to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying. It got sent to House State Affairs Committee, where it was voted favorably out of committee. But the House floor vote was postponed multiple times and ultimately did not get a vote. So, unless this is handled in a special session, we’ll go on paying tax money to have lobbyists go to Austin and lobby our elected officials to go against our will. The very idea rankles thinking Texans.

EXTRA OPINIONS

Here are some additional opinions on the wind up of the legislative session:

·       “Legislative Priorities Report 6.6.21” by Jill Glover, posted at the RPT website. 

·       “Did Lawmakers Really ‘Run Out of Time’?” by Jeramy Kitchen for Texas Scorecard, June 1, 2021. 

·       “Mediocre 87th Texas Legislature Gavels To Close; Special Session Coming” by admin at The Golden Hammer, Montgomery, TX, June 1, 2021.