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Politics of impeachment
Within minutes of the Texas Senate voting to acquit Attorney General Ken Paxton of all impeachment charges, the politics came into much clearer view.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who oversees the Texas Senate, broke his months of silence and declared the Texas House "rammed through" the impeachment and wasted taxpayer money and time.
"An impeachment should never happen again in the House like it happened this year," said the Houston Republican who was acting as the judge in the impeachment case.
His comments immediately triggered an angry rebuke from House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, who said Patrick was attacking the House for "standing up against corruption." Phelan said Patrick's comments show the trial outcome was "orchestrated from the start, cheating the people of Texas of justice."
It all highlights an inescapable political reality: leaders of the House and Senate don't like each other much these days. Phelan and Patrick have been at odds for months, barely communicating most of the last year and with plenty of name-calling, as I reported earlier this year. They fought over property tax reforms and when the first special session was called in the summer, Phelan had his members meet for just one day before bailing on Austin. That made certain no further negotiations would happen resulting in the 31 members of the Texas Senate having to return for yet another 30-day special session later, further ruining their summer.
As Scott Braddock and I talked about on this week's Texas Take podcast, that is a lot of baggage to be hanging over the proceedings. While the trial was supposed to be judicial, the politics of the past nine months didn't go away. The Texas House was essentially asking for the Senate members, who had felt burned by the House leaders, to hand them a giant political victory by removing Paxton from office and then giving Gov. Greg Abbott the keys to appointing the next Texas attorney general.
The House and Abbott would have walked away with more power, while Senate Republicans would have been left with angry Paxton supporters in their home districts threatening their re-election bids and maybe their political careers. In other words, there was so little political incentive for Republicans in the Texas Senate to convict Paxton, that the House lawyers would have had to put on a flawless case against Paxton to convince most of them to support impeachment. And flawless it wasn't. As I pointed out last week, Rusty Hardin, the lead attorney for the House, accidentally rested his case early, a move he himself declared a "screw-up."
 | Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter |
Who's up, who's down
Up: Ken Paxton.
The Collin County Republican is back on the job. With the Texas Senate refusing to impeach, Paxton immediately gets to return to the position he's held since 2014
Down: Dade Phelan.
The House Speaker gambled on Paxton's impeachment and lost. The Beaumont Republican failed to convince the Texas Senate to vote for impeachment. It has widened his feud with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick ahead of another special session planned to tackle school vouchers and provoked new calls for primary challengers to take on him and his fellow House Republican members who did support impeachment.
What do you think? Hit reply and let me know.
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Photo by: Jeremy Wallace
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