The Fall of Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick

Back in 2001 when new census numbers became available and all representative districts across Texas had to be redraw, the Republican leadership in Austin decided to block the usual process wherein the Texas House of Representatives and Texas Senate redraw their own lines to comply with “one person-one vote” requirements. The Texas Constitution mandates, in such cases of legislative inaction, that new House and Senate districts be draw by a five-member Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB). Back in 2001 the LRB was controlled by a bloc of three statewide elected Republicans who were very responsive to the wishes to U.S. Congressman Tom Delay, then Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives As a consequence, the leaders of the respective bodies, House Speaker Pete Laney and Lt. Governor Bill Ratliff, were effectively shut out of the process of redrawing the 181 state legislative districts.

The 2001 LRB plan for the Texas House, effectively dictated by Congressman Delay, was a very skillfully drawn partisan gerrymander aimed at wiping out the 78 to 72 Democratic majority in that body. The Delay plan gave Republicans an opportunity to win as many as 100 seats in the November 2002 General Election, but virtually assured a new Republican majority would run the House after January 2003. Republicans fell a bit short of their maximum goal, but still ended up with 88 of the 150 seats,enough to comfortably elect their longtime leader, Representative Tom Craddick of Midland, as the new Speaker. Most analysis assumed Chaddick could retain his position, health permitting, for the next ten years until the 2010 census would require another round of redistricting. However, on January 4, 2009, a hale and hearty Speaker Craddick, was forced to step aside when it became clear he could not muster anywhere close to the minimum 76 votes needed to hold his job. What happened to the man Texas Monthly cited just a couple of years ago as the most powerful politician in Texas? Most press stories today are casting Speaker Craddick’s fall as largely personal – his arrogant style of leadership had gradually alienated enough of his colleagues so that a challenger like Representative Joe Straus, a moderate Republican from San Antonio, could round up enough votes to wrestle the top job in the Texas Legislature from the man from Midland. I have a somewhat different take. Craddick lost his job and power, in my opinion, because the 2001 Delay redistricting plan, which he signed off on, turned out to be badly flawed over the next seven years. While the original plan delivered in the 2002 General Election, it worked less and less well in every succeeding cycle so that by November 4, 2008 the Republicans had been whittled down to a 76 – 74 majority, and that 76th GOP member prevailed by just 19 votes out of about 40,000 total votes in Dallas County district. In my view, it was the steady erosion of the Republican majority that gave enough members the gumption to stand up against a powerful speaker known for his vindictiveness.

Where did the 2001 House Republican plan fail? The answer is: in the big urban counties of Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, and Travis. In the 2002 General Election, Republicans won 38 of the 67 House districts in these five counties. In November 2008 the GOP held on to just 25 of these seats while the Democrats won 42 – a 13 seat swing that accounts for all Democratic gains since 2002. The table below shows the county-by-county changes.

Partisan Makeup After 2002

Partisan Makeup After 2008

County

Republicans

Democrats

Republicans

Democrats

Harris	14	11	11	14
Dallas	10	6	6	10
Bexar	3	7	2	8
Tarrant	8	2	6	4
Travis	3	3	0	6
Total	38	29	25	42

  Why did the House gerrymander fail? For two reasons. First, the Delay map-drawers overestimated Republican strength in these urban counties by relying on recent statewide election results from 1998 and 2000 that had been unusually favorable to their party’s nominees because of weak Democratic opponents like gubernatorial candidate Gary Mauro, matched up against popular Governor George W. Bush. But more importantly, the map-drawers did not foresee how quickly the demographics in urban districts could change to the detriment of Republican representatives.

In my next blog I’ll zero in on the Harris County case where the 2001 map produced a 14 – 11 Republican majority in 2002, but yielded the reverse Democratic margin in 2008.

- Dr. Richard Murray

Comments

[Greg Brewer]

Interesting but totally fails to mention the out-of-cycle redistricting that happened a few years ago when Republican leaders decided that was more important than other priority items like education.

[m-girl]

Gene Brewer: stay on point and quit trying to deflect the spot on analyis of why Tom Craddick fell out of grace with throwing in the republican misdeeds of inter-census redistricting. Tom Craddick is a jerk and acted like a dictator and alienated even his own kind - so they turned on him in favor of someone that they could work with and would also not be devastating to the long term future of the rapidly becoming irrelevant republican party in Texas.

[Bobby O]

A cogent analysis; thank you. Indeed, the Republican party in Texas is becoming less relevant as a result of "Type A" personalities such as Tom Craddick. Many believe strongly that President Bush the junior has done much the same kind of damage for the GOP in general and our nation.

The future of our state relies more heavily on higher education made available to more Texas citizens than at any time in our history. What Republicans have done through public policy, by and large over nearly a half a centruy, is price higher education in Texas out of reach of the least wealthy Texans who stand to benefit themselves, our state and indeed our nation the most. Tuition deregulation has been and continues to be extremely bad policy, and this pad policy is is almost wholly owned by the state and national GOP. I hold with a strong conviction that this bad public policy has been and continues to steadily drag our collective futures downward.

Instead of deregulating tuition at state supported institutions of higher education, we, as a society, should have insisted on raising academic standards.

What do I mean?
I mean insistence in higher academic standards from High School students at the expense of extra curricular programs including Athletics. Too many "coaches" and not enough dedicated and professional educators.

I mean insisting on higher standards both to enter and continue at public Universities.

I mean insisting in more generous public funding for community colleges, where students who were not prepared either for the work force OR college level work in High School get the training and educational foundation required to advance our state economically as well as their own socioeconomic status.

I mean insisting on more generous funding for public universities with a mandate thereto to both demand better academic performance and far more affordable tuition.

I mean an almost 180 degree reversal in the direction of education policy in the State of Texas.

Today, a Texas Resident must pay between $3,500 and $4,000 per semester at a public university for what that same Texas Resident would pay around $300 30 years ago for the same courses. As an exercise in perspective, think of today's Texas Resident tuition rate in terms of having to pay between $25 and $30 for a gallon of gasoline; 20 gallons of gas for a mere $500 to $600.

Tuition deregulation is the cause whereby today, a smart kid from a poor family MUST agree outrageous student debt in order to be in the running for entry level jobs. And guess what, people, that ability to take out student loans is not available to all students who need and deserve help.

We the people need to ask tough and important questions, questions such as:
A) What are the long term economics of public policy which ensures only the wealthiest are enabled to earn advanced degrees in our public institutions of higher education?
B) What are the long term economics of public policy which mandates that college graduates of limited means must first agree to a debt load which is insane?
C) Where will our state rank, not so much in relation to other states in our union but other nations on our planet as a result of public policy that discourages participation in higher education?

The list goes on and on while other nations are building their futures through assisting citizens with higher education. Texas was a leader in this method of economic growth once and we can be the leaders once again. To start, wee simply MUST start asking the tough questions of our representatives and continue to replace elected officials who underachieve and over-reach, for example Tom Craddock.

[WILEY CARPENTER]

TOM CRADDICK NEEDS TO RESIGN PLANE AND SIMPLE.

[WILEY CARPENTER]

TOM CRADDICK NEEDS TO RESIGN SO TEXAS CAN GET BACK ON ITS FEET