A stunning end to a Texas House speakership

I don’t know, maybe it’s an altogether fitting and proper way for this particular political career to come to an apparent end: The speaker spoke his way out of a job.

Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, R-Lake Jackson, early Tuesday did the inevitably right thing after he had done the inexcusably wrong thing. Turns out a political leader who talked bipartisanship and cooperation in public, talked in a decidedly different and combative, disrespectful, obscene and homophobic tone in private.

RELATED: Top House Republicans no longer support Bonnen as speaker

Unfortunately for Bonnen — and eye-openingly for the rest of us — he was secretly recorded in his office in June by a conservative activist who doesn’t believe Bonnen and many other Republicans in charge of Texas politics are conservative enough. When the hourlong recording was released last week, it became clear the speaker couldn’t survive.

Monday night, one by one by one until it was many, House Republicans said the speaker must go. They included some put in leadership positions by Bonnen and his brother Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Frendswood.

Tuesday morning, Bonnen announced he won’t seek reelection to the House next year, which means he won’t be around to run for reelection as speaker when the House convenes in January 2021 (or sooner if there’s a special session).

Speaker politics is a different kind of politics, an intramural kind played in-House without direct input of voters. A Texas speaker becomes one of the Big Three, along with the governor and lieutenant governor, at the Capitol. The speaker appoints committees and selects the chairs. A speaker also can have control over the flow of legislation to the House floor.

A speaker is a big deal. But it’s a different political path, a high office that’s rarely a steppingstone to even higher office. The last speaker to move up was Ben Barnes, who held the post from 1965 to 1969 and was elected lieutenant governor in 1968. The others since then have been a series of folks about whom you’d say, “Wasn’t he somebody?” (The pre-Bonnen list includes Gus Mutscher, Rayford Price, Price Daniel Jr., Billy Clayton, Gib Lewis, Pete Laney, Tom Craddick and Joe Straus.)

Unless he also chooses to quit now, rather than just not seek reelection to the House next year, it’s going to be a prolonged bye-bye to Bonnen as he becomes the latest Texas politician to endure an odd end to a political career. The list is long. The reasons varied.

For a while, top Texas politicians’ careers fell victim to a fickle electorate. From 1972 through 1994, Texans unelected every governor they’d elected. The list includes Preston Smith, Dolph Briscoe, Bill Clements, Mark White and Ann Richards. (Clements, however, was reelected in 1986 after being ousted by White in 1982.)

RELATED: Recording reveals Bonnen sought deal on GOP members

More recently, Texas Republicans said in their 2014 primary they’d had enough of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and gave Dan Patrick a primary victory over him. Patrick continues today as our lite gov.

In the more distant past, Lena Guerrero, a former local state representative who’d been appointed to a Texas Railroad Commission vacancy by Richards, saw her bid for an elected term on that panel snuffed out when it turned out her claim to a University of Texas degree was a lie.

It was a sad end to a promising political career. Guerrero had been elected to a Texas House seat from Central and East Austin in 1984 when she was 25, becoming only the second Hispanic woman elected to the chamber. In 1991, Richards appointed Guerrero to the Railroad Commission, where she was the first woman and first Hispanic on the three-member panel that regulates the state energy industry. After being forced to acknowledge her lie about her college degree, Guerrero was trounced in the 1992 general election by Republican Barry Williamson.

Guerrero died of cancer in 2008 at age 50.

In 2003, former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales pleaded guilty in federal court to trying to steer tobacco settlement money to a former associate in Houston. Morales’ plea came after his unsuccessful 2002 bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Today, as we watch this latest local political drama unfold, former Gov. Rick Perry, who seemed to be one of the few Trump administration appointees to largely steer clear of the Trump taint, sees his political career probably careening toward an end as he’s on his way out as energy secretary while his role in the Ukraine mess is under scrutiny. We’ll have to stay tuned on this one to see what kind of an end Perry’s political career, which includes two failed presidential races, will come to.

Problems in the Texas House speaker’s office are something of a tradition, though some have survived. Clayton, D-Springlake, continued to serve after beating federal bribery charges in 1980. His successor, Lewis, D-Fort Worth, pleaded guilty in 1992 to misdemeanor financial disclosure law violations. He continued to serve, but then did not seek reelection.

Fabulous footnote: Texas has named state prisons for Lewis and Clayton. Years ago, Capitol press corps members had an informal pool going on who’d become the first Texas politician to serve time in a prison bearing his or her name. Hasn’t happened. Yet.

In 2007, Speaker Craddick, R-Midland, survived a House coup led by members who didn’t appreciate his leadership style. But Craddick, the first GOP speaker in Texas since Reconstruction, didn’t get another term as speaker in the following legislative session when Straus, R-San Antonio, got the coveted gig, which he then held until he didn’t seek reelection to the House in 2018.

Is there a political afterlife for folks ousted from high office in Texas? There was and is for Craddick, who now has completed 50 years in the House and, last I heard, planned to seek another term next year.

I don’t see any political future for Bonnen. In fact, I don’t see any political present for him. He should quit the House now and put his tenure out of its misery.