A House Divided

If you missed the action in the Texas House this weekend, you may want to catch some of the archived video of what happened. In short, legislators tried to move to remove Craddick from the speaker's chair, and Craddick answered with a ruling that he did not actually have to recognize any such motion — or, indeed, any motion at all.

Craddick, assisted by his two new parliamentarians (after his old ones resigned amidst rumors that they had told Craddick that was against the House rules and parliamentary law, and were ignored), turned back challenges to the chair by Reps. Smith, Hill, and Dunnam with questionable rulings. This culminated last night in the chair's refusal to recognize a motion to adjourn, one of the most privileged motions on the books, which got the chamber upset enough so that Rep. Haggerty (R-El Paso) held a voice vote for the matter, and when the chair finally stopped him, he asked for those voting in favor to leave the chamber, which they did, breaking quorum and forcing the chair to adjourn for the day.

We will be following the action in the House throughout this last day of the session, as we did through the weekend. But the question still gnaws at all of us: What next? How will this loss of credibility of the House leadership play against the chair's insistence that he is unassailable, that he can ignore any motion he wishes?

Legislators were asking themselves the same question yesterday. Rep. Dunnam, in his protests against the chair, asked if there were "any mechanism" for the House's voice to be heard in the matter. In this week's feature article, I address the parliamentary questions that have been brought up over this past weekend, and cite the one mechanism that can be used to circumvent the chair when it has become clear that the chair no longer serves the interests of the body as a whole. It is my hope that the House will, in its final day, be able to move forward unhindered by the paralyzing effect that this contentious speaker has had on the body.