Hope you and yours had a great holiday. Sorry for being AWOL last week, I needed to tune out for a bit and focus on family and my Fantasy Football championship game. I lost. -Elise

A lot of developments in the race for House Speaker to note, notably that Public Ed Chair and state Rep Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, broke away from Tom Craddick to join the "ABC (Anybody But Craddick) Republicans", as they are called. Also House Democratic Caucus head Jim Dunnam must have been up early this morning; he released his list of 64 Democratic members which some have called the UNC's (Under No Circumstances... will they vote for Craddick.)

See the list here. Some of the signatures came in later on their own separate sheets, note that the last attachment shows freshman Tara Rios Ybarra signed her pledge and then also put "#64" next to her name.

The only Democrats who did not sign the anti-Craddick pledge are:

Dawnna Dukes
Harold Dutton
Al Edwards
Kino Flores
Helen Giddings
Ryan Guillen
Ruth Jones McClendon
Tracy King
Aaron Pena
Sylvester Turner

If the ABC's and UNC's combine to make at least 76 votes for another speaker candidate, the current speaker won't be re-elected. But who that other speaker candidate is is unclear; there are twelve other candidates besides Craddick in the hunt.

Also to note, Williamson County state Rep Dan Gattis, R-Georgetown, said he too will seek the post.

1 Comments

fozBut said:

I didn't vote for a Democrat to turn around and see that my Democratic representative is going to vote for Tom Craddick. I will campaign vigorously against any Democrat who supports Craddick.

January 2, 2009 7:40 PM

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