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Notes -
I am plugged into Texas politics.
SB 16 and 17 will both pass the senate, but the senate passes everything Dan Patrick wants passed on party line. SB 18 is a little bit less certain.
In terms of the house, it’s a lot more up in the air. I’d expect either 16 or 17 to pass, maybe not both and probably not 18. The Texas house is governed by a coalition and its entirely possible that Dade phelan will sink at least one of the three to shore up his support among democrats against an at-this-point-guaranteed primary challenge.
I’d be interested in anything you have to say about the state of our state politics. I don’t keep track of the dynamics as much as I probably should.
The TDLR is that the senate runs off party line votes under the control of the lieutenant governor, who isn’t the most conservative statewide elected official, but probably was fairly recently. The house has multiple major coalitions within it and none of them have a majority, so despite 60% of seats having an r next to their name it doesn’t really mean much in terms of partisanship- the speaker(Dade Phelan) was elected with proportionately more D votes than R, despite him being a Republican, and needs to pay that support back with some level of committee chairmanships(as in most houses of rep, committee chairs hold a lot of the real power in agenda setting). This is a predictable source of irritation to more partisan republicans, and means that the house can be expected to sink some conservative Republican bills because, well, it did give democrats enough power to stop at least some things(although not anything they want; realistically the governor and lieutenant governor can pick a few items to ram through even with the D committee chair trying to prevent it, although not everything. You can probably expect some drama about the governor/lieutenant governor doing this for school choice/vouchers/whatever the term is today.). Of course the flip side is that there are much more conservative republicans in the house(one of whom is currently distracted by a sex scandal) than the senate, as well, they just happen not to be part of the ruling coalition.
The house is reliable in delivering pro business legislation, but often strikes a much more liberal tack than the other branches of state government on education and criminal justice. Like I said, Abbott and Patrick intend to spend their ability to ram through legislation on school choice and macho border posturing this session, so if the house rejects one of these three bills, it’s unlikely to get revived and shoved through anyways.
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