Speaker's Race: Criminals and Secrets

There was a dearth of news yesterday until late in the afternoon, when all sorts of things started happening, not the least of which being this story about Representative Lon Burnam filing a criminal complaint against Tom Craddick with Travis County DA Ronnie Earle. Vince from Capitol Annex has the letter.

Remember, if you will, that I've been hollering about how a secret ballot will doom Craddick and a public vote will deliver a win to him. The Chron has this story about that very idea, including the news that Craddick supporters moved to do a random roll call vote as opposed to a secret ballot.

A larger discussion gets underway in that article as well: the foibles of open government. People in favor of open government may be the very people clamoring for a chance at a secret ballot in order to topple Craddick, who is not known to be a huge fan of transparency. Despite the current topsy-turvy, all-mixed-up nature of that situation, an enduring fact of government becomes clear: in order to get to good government, sometimes you have to consider a thing specifically rather than generally and act in the best interest of government.

Are leadership elections the same as votes on bills? No, plainly, they are not. Personal politics, negotiations, and strong-arm tactics certainly occur in votes on legislation as a matter of course, but the current GOP argument that you can't be in favor of a secret ballot in the Speaker race and also call for record votes on bills and resolutions is fallacious. To imply that the meta-politics of a leadership election and the environment that results from that election are the same as voting on a bill, that voting for or against a man is the same or must be handled identically to voting for or against a proposal or appropriation, well... that stretches the logic quite thin.