Abraham George - Texas GOP Chair Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 3 (00:00):
But nothing.

Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's seven fifty two now here in Houston's boarding news.
The Texas House speaker races is kind of it's interesting
to watch you. It shows that at least in the
Texas House, there there is no unity. You have. You
have a disciple of Dade Feelin running against a conservative,

(00:21):
neither one apparently has enough votes in order to be
able to get the job. And I'm just kind of
wondering what's going through the mind of the Texas GOP
and all this. Abraham George joins us. He's the chair
of the Texas GOP. The unity is just not there.
How do you think this whole speaker thing is going
to work its way out?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, I think it's I mean, today, we're going to
figure out a way to get there. We have Dustin Burroughs,
who is I think is supported by about twenty six
twenty seven Republicans, who is leaving the Republican Caucus basically,
and the Republican Caucus nominie is David Cook. And then

(00:59):
we have at the the Democrat candidate. She announced last
night she's not going to run, so it's now coming
down to two Republicans. Democrats have sixty two votes and
we have eighty eight, so we'll figure it out by
the end of the day. I still believe David Cook

(01:20):
is going to win because all the state wides and
all the grassroots and Connie parties and state party and
everyone's getting behind David Cook. Governor Abbot Dan Patrick, Governor
our Age Ken Paxton, and you know, all of those
guys are saying, Okay, we needed the Concress nominee to

(01:41):
be the winner because we have a lot of work
to do.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Well, Dade Feeland, though, was able to keep that job
because he was able to garner the support of the
Democrats in return for committee chairmanships. Are you concerned that
that ugly specter could raise its head again?

Speaker 3 (01:59):
It could, and then that's what Decimboros is doing.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
One thing is a little different this year is in
the past, a majority of the Republicans would go to
that side and say, all right, fine, you know you're
going to win, so we might as well just be.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Supportive of you.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
So we want to know, we don't want to upset
the speaker.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
But this year that's not the case.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Sixty some Republicans are standing and saying, hey, no, we're
not We're not we're not playing that game anymore. We
want to have a caucus nominee and we need to
get that person to be elected, so which which makes
it a much stronger message than two years ago. When
Tony Tinderholt ran it was three people on his side.

(02:41):
This time it's sixty people on his side.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
So it's a.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Huge difference from where we were, and the party is stronger,
and we're saying, if you don't play ball and get
the right person in there and do the right thing,
we are going to come after you. We're centering you.
We're going to make sure that you understand any district
can understand that this is not what we were expecting
from you.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I guess the thing that surprises being Abraham about all
this is that you have eighty eight Republicans. All you
need is a simple majority of seventy six. So you
could have twelve Republicans drop out and you could still
elect Cook. So do we have that many Rhinos I
guess still serving in the for the Republicans in the
Texas House.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
I mean, if you look at Minnesota a couple of
weeks ago, last week they.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Had sixty six and sixty six.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Or something like that, Republican versus a Democrat, and one
of them got dropped by the court, and the Republicans
got one point lead, one seat lead, and they're electing
a Republican speaker.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
So it's not hard to do with one seat. We
have eighty eight, how we.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Needed seventy six, like you said, and we've got a
lot of work to do at the party and we'll get.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
This done, all right.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Did you think it get done today?

Speaker 3 (04:02):
I think so. I think so.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
There's a lot of people who were worried about it,
including myself, but I think we're going.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
To get there too, all right, sir, Thank you for
your time. Appreciate it. Abraham George, Texas GOP Chair