Speaker’s Race: Gone Crazy

It seems as though the Speaker’s race has been turned on its head: Nearly every major daily is reporting that the McCall endorsement of Jim Pitts is a “sure thing” in one manner or another.

Unique among these stories, however, is silence from both McCall and Pitts.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the media from calling it a “done deal.” The best—and most accurate, I would guess—lead on the story comes from the AP story:

One of two Republican state lawmakers trying to oust the speaker of the Texas House is dropping out of the race and throwing his support behind the other challenger, a state legislator close to the discussions said Wednesday.

Much of the other media coverage seems to kind of gloss over the fact that this is all from “sources” and hasn’t been made official by either of the two camps (and won’t be made official until 4 p.m. today at a press conference).

Of course, if all this wasn’t true, we’d expect one or both of the candidates in question would come forward and say, “hold up, playah!” But, neither has.

So, is it true? Who knows. Possibly. The bottom line is that two against Craddick is impossible, but one is possible because the votes aren’t split too many ways.

However, I have a feeling a lot of Democrats pledged to McCall would as soon be recorded as “present, not voting” as to vote for Pitts, who is much farther to the right than McCall.

In reality, the large group of Democratic House members (at least 50) probably holds more cards in the speaker’s race than any fraction of Republicans if they elect to stay united.  Why? Conservative and moderate Republicans will swing both ways in droves, between Pitts and McCall and even between Pitts and Craddick. This group of Democrats, however, could literally swing one way or the other and effectively cause the winds to change.

Conventional wisdom tells me right now that the McCall candidacy is the more popular of the two in terms of sheer number of votes—because of the Democrats. However, McCall would have a harder time on the floor in a floor fight because of those D votes. Pitts, however, could pull hard-righters from Craddick. Thus, the McCall-Pitts marriage is evidently a handy way to combine all this under one umbrella.

Will that McCall endorsement carry the Democrats over to Pitts? I say…maybe. If I was a House Democrat pledged to McCall, I’d fear that a Pitts speakership would be just similar enough to a Craddick speakership to make it not worth (a) alienating Craddick (since I still say he’s got as good a chance as anyone of winning this outright) and (b) sacrificing a vote when there could be a better candidate out there.

With the McCall-Pitts marriage, I suspect we may see another person in the race. I believe another ‘moderate’ could be persuaded to step forward and just might end up gaining more support than McCall had.

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