Texas speaker race: Will Democrats be the deciders if GOP can't unify?

One of the underlying factors in the GOP-driven effort, which began in late 2023, to deny Rep. Dade Phelan a third term as speaker of the Texas House was that Republican lawmakers felt they should be able to elect the chamber's leader without any help from the outnumbered Democrats.

After all, the GOP at the time enjoyed an 86-64 majority, and surely they could install a speaker who could marginalize the Democrats even further because he or she would owe nothing to the minority party. Democratic members, therefore, could kiss goodbye the long-standing House tradition of allowing members of the minority party to chair at least some legislative committees.

With the legislative session looming Jan. 14, the House speaker race is still undecided.

And once Republicans netted two additional seats in the November elections — augmenting their majority — it stood to reason that Democrats' role in the speaker election Jan. 14, the first day of the 2025 legislative session, would be either to suck it up and line up behind the inevitable winner in a show of bipartisan comity or to cast a symbolic protest vote.

It appeared that the only thing standing in the way of Republicans running the table in the House would be Republicans themselves. And just days before the House is set to convene, that's exactly how events seem to be playing out.

Quick recap: The House Republican Caucus met privately in the Capitol on Dec. 7, and after a couple of rounds of balloting, state Rep. David Cook of Mansfield emerged as the consensus pick for speaker. By that time, Phelan had dropped his candidacy to hang on to the top spot. But he and a cadre of his supporters didn't fall in line, and Cook was left with far fewer than the 76 votes he'd need to win in the House.

Instead, Lubbock Republican Dustin Burrows — with the help of other Phelan loyalists — managed to corral what his camp figured were enough Democrats to give him the prize. The problem was that some of the Republicans on Burrows' column began to bail, and several grassroots party activists warned that any Republican who'd cut a deal with the Democrats for control of the House would have hell to pay in the 2026 primaries.

Democrats, meanwhile, decided as a group that none of their 62 members would align with Cook.

So for several weeks now, the race for speaker has been something of a stalemate. And in the effort to break it, Cook did what Republicans thought — or at least hoped — they wouldn't need to do: reach out to the Democrats for help, and dangle one of the minority party's coveted issues as the carrot: public education.

In a letter late Thursday to Democratic state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio, who until late last year chaired his party's House caucus, Cook said he was open to overhauling the way Texas funds its public schools and giving teachers a pay raise. Phasing out the high-stakes State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, which students must take, might also be on the table, he added.

While Cook said he would make an aggressive push to pass school voucher legislation regardless of Democrats' objections, he more than hinted that he's making at least some inroads in the ranks of the opposition in his bid to become speaker.

"While you may not be aware of all the conversations happening, I can assure you that I have support amongst Democratic members," he told Martinez Fischer, who has not publicly endorsed a speaker candidate. "I’ve been mindful about putting out a list prematurely, as building a true list of 76 committed supporters takes time."

Cook's comments come after Martinez Fischer, who lost his bid to be reelected as the Democrats' House leader to Houston state Rep. Gene Wu, sent a letter to the caucus reminding members that they're holding some valuable cards in the speaker race even though they are vastly outnumbered. And that, he suggested, means Democrats should demand something meaningful for their constituencies in return for their support.

"Let's not beat around the bush," Martinez Fischer told Democrats. "Republicans have 88 votes and they can eliminate Democratic Chairs alone — they don’t need us to help them. They just need us to elect a Speaker. If the 88 can’t produce a 76 member majority — well, then that’s on them.

"If our power is worthy enough to elect a Speaker of the House, then our power is worthy enough to meaningfully participate as a member of the leadership team by the same manner and means that our fellow Republicans do."

It remains an open question whether any Republican candidate for speaker would make such a deal with the Democrats along the terms that Martinez Fischer suggested. And the open follow-up question is, could enough Democrats hold out for such a deal, assuming Republicans remain divided?