Rep. James Frank
State Rep. James Frank, a Wichita Falls Republican who is one of the Texas House’s leading voices on health and foster care, announced Tuesday he is running for speaker, making him the fourth member to challenge the lower chamber’s current leader, Beaumont Republican Dade Phelan.
In a statement announcing his bid for the speakership, Frank said he would work to bring better communication, member empowerment and management of the flow of legislation if he became the chamber’s leader. Like the three previous challengers to Phelan, he pledged to appoint only Republicans to leadership positions on legislative committees.
“Following the end of last session, and especially after the primary election results of March, it became clear to me that the House itself and our voters want to move in a different direction,” Frank said in his announcement. “By today’s actions, I am asking you to consider whether I represent that direction.”
Pushing back against critics who say appointing only Republicans to leadership positions would take Democrats out of the legislative process, Frank said Texas is one of only three states that continues to give the minority party leadership positions. He said restricting committee chair positions to the majority party would “allow significantly more Republicans to participate in leadership roles.”
Rep. Frank joins Reps. Tom Oliverson, Shelby Slawson, and David Cook in the ring. We’ve seen this kind of drama play out before, where we go from one Speaker candidate to a horde of them quickly. Usually, the field all gets behind one of them just as quickly; it’s rare for there to be an actual contested vote for Speaker. I won’t be surprised if the field expands further, but sooner or later gravity takes over. Frank voted for Ken Paxton’s impeachment, and he’s a big vouchers guy who seems to be pitching himself as someone who will clasp hands with Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott (in an appropriately manly way, of course) and get all those Republican bills they’ve had such a hard time passing (snort) taken care of with ease. Whatever.
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