Dade Phelan has a weapon in bid for House speaker that McCarthy can't even dream of.
Left: Speaker of the House Dade Phelan addresses the crowd about the state of Texas and the legislature during the annual Chamber of Commerce Legislative Luncheon on Thursday, February 24, 2022. Right: Kevin McCarthy, minority leader of the House, in December 2022.Kevin McCarthy likely isn’t sleeping too well these days, what with his fellow Republicans in the Freedom Caucus tanking his repeated attempts to become speaker of the U.S. House.
That’s where the similarities end. Phelan knows his re-election as speaker of the Texas House on January 10 is a lock while McCarthy flails embarrassingly because, at least for the time being, the Texas House is still not like the U.S. House in several important ways. In spite of the Republican majorities in each chamber and the strong support within the GOP caucus enjoyed by the two speaker candidates, the process and dynamics surrounding these two Republican speaker elections could not be more distinct. A gulf continues to separate the hyper-polarized U.S. House from the Texas House, where capitulation is a dirty word, but compromise is not, rather than the two being viewed as synonyms as is all too often the case today in the U.S. Congress.
McCarthy needs the support of an absolute majority of those casting votes to be elected speaker, and with every Democrat voting for New York Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, and these 20 Republicans voting for other Republicans , McCarthy has suffered the additional indignity of placing second behind Jeffries with 201 votes most recently in a fifth vote on Wednesday.
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