Craddick Borrows A Page From Warren Chisum & Claims Trial Lawyers Behind Effort To Oust Him

Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick (R-Midland) says that trial lawyers are behind the effort to oust him as speaker because they want to repeal tort reform:

Speaker of the House Tom Craddick said Wednesday that dissident representatives who tried to replace him last January and again in May are backed by trial lawyers who want to repeal the lawsuit reform he sponsored in 2003.

Addressing 50 members of the Downtown Lions Club, he predicted there will be another no holds barred free-for-all for the speakership in January 2009.

“Republicans did not fare well in the 2006 election and our majority shrank from 88 to 80 in the 150 member House,” the Midland representative said. “Even though we’ve got this Republican majority, we have several Republicans who don’t vote with the rest of us.

“The trial lawyers are a big factor. I’m the one who pushed tort reform and I’m not their favorite person. I think I’m on their dart board. The group that’s really pushing to get a different speaker is the one that wants to reverse the tort laws.”

Evidently Speaker Craddick has borrowed a page from House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum (R-Pampa). Rep. Chisum first told me about this theory–of his–when I interviewed him this summer about the opinions pending before AG Greg Abbott for the San Antonio Current:

“I believe [the anti-Craddick insurgency] is purely political and that it has been driven from the get-go by trial lawyers. They have been hurt very bad under Tom Craddick as speaker. They’ve been hit in the pocket book. We’ve passed several tort-reform bills that have helped lower insurance rates, and brought more doctors to Texas and it’s cost them money,” Chisum says.

Does he have hard and fast evidence of this? In his infamous West Texas patois, Chisum says it’s a hunch.

“I don’t have any hard evidence to back that up and haven’t been able to trace it back to the trial lawyers, but if you look at the briefs that have been filed by some of the members, it’s a lot of very complicated legal material, and I believe the trial lawyers helped with that.”

Perhaps Speaker Craddick is reading his media clips, or maybe he started this idea to begin with, but the fact is Warren Chisum was talking about it three months ago (and I was reporting it three months ago in the print media).

So, it’s really nothing new. But, it does hit on a major campaign theme of the Republicans for 2008: Trial Lawyers Are Responsible For The Destruction Of The GOP Majority!!! You can bet Republicans will be hammering on that to get their faithful out in a year where they’d probably rather sit home, since Rudy G. will likely be at the top of the ticket.

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