The Legislature may be closer than ever to a deal that will boost both parental choice and public schools, but you wouldn’t know it to hear the constant bickering in Austin.
Most of the attention in the first week of the latest special session did not go to school vouchers, boosting teacher pay or adding resources for border security. It went to the swirl of political rancor among Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dade Phelan and Attorney General Ken Paxton — Republicans all, but illustrative of the truism that familiarity breeds contempt.
Plus, a GOP consultant’s shameful association with a well-known hatemonger fueled the fire. Jonathan Stickland, the former House member who runs the prominent political action committee that generously supports Patrick, Paxton and other staunch conservatives, hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his west Tarrant County office.
Phelan called on Patrick to return the PAC’s donations; Patrick lamented Phelan’s invoking of the atrocities in Israel and called for the speaker to resign. The lieutenant governor also offered assurance that Tim Dunn, one of the billionaires funding the political committee, is aware of Stickland’s “blunder” and assures it won’t happen again.
Amid all that, the House and Senate were trying to actually work on legislation that Gov. Greg Abbott called for. The House has resisted Abbott’s plea for “education savings accounts” that would give parents state money to use for private-school tuition, home-schooling expenses or other educational needs.
But Phelan signaled an opening, suggesting House Republicans could accept a deal that expands school choice as long as public schools get a significant funding boost. The time is ripe — the comptroller confirmed that the robust Texas economy continues to give lawmakers billions of dollars more to work with.
First, though, Patrick and Phelan will have to decide if they want to compromise. The lieutenant governor kept the Senate in a marathon session last Thursday and bragged about passing bills to fulfill most of Abbott’s priorities, including a school-choice plan that would give parents of up to 57,500 students $8,000 toward education expenses.
In a state with 5.5 million kids enrolled in public schools, that’s neither the sweeping program that Abbott wants or the crippling blow to public education that Democrats and other opponents suggest. It’s a good start to assess how a targeted school-choice program could work.
The politics are tricky enough, without Patrick and Phelan engaged in their perpetual chest-puffing contest. The latest round stems from the most recent nuclear event in Texas politics: the impeachment and trial of the attorney general.
Patrick set the stage when, immediately after the Senate let Paxton off from charges of abuse of power, he blasted the House’s entire effort to rein Paxton in and promised a full accounting of the cost to taxpayers.
The lieutenant governor almost always gets what he wants, yet he has trouble banking his victories and moving on.
House members on all sides are lingering on the Paxton result, too. Impeachment managers keep trying to add to their case. Rep. Andrew Murr, the Junction Republican who led the drive against Paxton, can’t identify a single regret about the way his committee or the House impeachment managers handled the case, despite their sweeping loss.
Paxton has employed his one true superpower, finding a way to make things worse. The latest trove of documents released by House impeachment managers inadvertently included Paxton’s home address. Let’s be clear that in this era of political explosiveness, that’s a serious error.
But Paxton wants to ask district attorneys, many of them Republicans, to investigate the House members responsible under state laws that punish “doxxing.” In Tarrant County, that means he wants DA Phil Sorrells to waste time and resources trying to determine if Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, one of the impeachment managers, intended to put Paxton at risk.
Look, we get it: GOP primaries are approaching fast, and Republicans on all sides are eager to have the “establishment vs. insurgents” fight that’s been simmering for years. Some members will no doubt pay a price for supporting impeachment, but the revenge Paxton exacts will probably be limited.
Before we get to all that, though, how about locking in some actual accomplishments? How about a little governing before it’s all politics, all the time?
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
