01.01.07
My New Year Take On The Speaker Race
I think that Craddick is leaking support bad, even with his chair support letter, (and much more good stuff in that link from Kuff). Nothing good has happened to him in a while. His list of chairman supporting him is nice and not unpredictable. What’s more stunning is that four stepped out and publicly switched. I see that as worse news for him than all those that stayed. Like EOW said last week, these chairs are and would most likely be the last ones to abandon ship because they are likely NOT to retain these seats if a new speaker is chosen.
For all we heard Saturday morning about how a pow-wow was going to be held on finding ways to rework Craddick’s leadership style from all reports that didn’t pan out. It just turned into a meeting of the aforementioned committee chairs making phone calls, ahem, and trying to firm up commitments to Craddick’s reelection. So much for the new leadership style.
Vince has done some great work on this subject and still doesn’t think that Craddick will be ousted. And his latest post about framing this on vouchers and a secret ballot is a good analysis but I don’t quite buy into it. Here at EOW we’ve been trying to frame this debate as, a new speaker is what’s best for Texas. It’s hard to tell if that’s even what could swing this race. In the end it comes down to what all elections, ultimately, are about. A simple question, are you satisfied with the performance of the current office holder? If you are vote for the status quo, If you’re not vote for someone new.
P.S. Do read this Kuff post that was linked here and above, it has some great links in the update to some of the latest information on this race.