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Straus in statewide office? Going to be tough

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus might have his eye on a statewide office, says Texas Monthly blogger Paul Burka.

It’s an interesting idea, but it’s fraught with peril for the San Antonio Republican.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/will-straus-run-statewide

Why is that? It seems that Straus works too well with House Democrats, whose numbers have dwindled considerably in recent years. The Democrats’ numbers ticked up a bit over the 2011 Legislature, but they’re still in a serious minority mode in the 150-member legislative chamber.

Texas Republicans appear to have climbed aboard the vessel that says Republicans should work only among themselves and to heck with them nasty Democrats. That explains why Straus’s speakership has been challenged by members of the far right wing of his GOP caucus. The challenges haven’t gone anywhere mainly because the alternative candidates have been unable to muster enough support from lawmakers who get prime chairmanships courtesy of the speaker.

It’s been said that Straus runs the House the way former Speaker Pete Laney, D-Hale Center, used to run it. Laney – the Panhandle cotton farmer – was fond of “letting the will of the House” determine legislative flow. He was ousted from the speakers office prior to the 2003 session by Republican Tom Craddick of Midland, who ran the place far differently.

Straus replaced Craddick two sessions ago and has returned a more collegial environment to the House. But as other Republicans elsewhere have learned, collegiality doesn’t win votes among diehard conservatives who’ve taken over many GOP state machines. Just ask former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, who got the boot in his state’s 2012 Republican primary from someone who actually campaigned against Lugar’s willingness to work with Senate Democrats.

Texans are thinking much the same thing these days, it appears to me.

And that makes any notion that Joe Straus has his eye on a bigger prize a bit unlikely. Unless, of course, he tries to become a rigid right-winger overnight – of which there is plenty of precedent.