Mitch Little - Texas House Elect In District 65 (North Texas) Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welling O.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Dade Feelin wants to be the House Speaker. Still plenty
of people, including the governor, do not want him to be.
In fact, it was Governor Abditt who came out and
said he has enough votes now to pass school choice,
but if Dade Feelin finds himself as Speaker of the
Texas House, that bill will never see the light to day.
Mixed Little Joints a former Ken Paxton defense attorney also

(00:23):
Texas House elected District sixty five that's in North Texas.
If you're not aware of that, welcome to the show, sir.
I guess you know your thoughts first and foremost on
the chances of Dade Feelin being re elected to Speaker
of the House. It's not looking good right now.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
I don't know if you happen to see some of
the information that came out yesterday. Apparently he can't get
more than eleven people on his side out of the
Republican caucus, which is an absolute nightmare for those potential
supporters of Dave Feelin. I mean, they'd be in probably
the primary fight of their lives in twenty twenty six
if they try to hold on with a majority of Democrats.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Okay, got Representative David Cook who would like the job.
I understand he doesn't have enough votes either, well, he
doesn't publicly at the moment. He's got forty eight on
a list. I'm one of those on a list.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
You've got some Houstonians who are also on that list too,
representing your people. I think what you're going to see
is you're going to see people who have not come
out publicly in support of Dave Cook or Dave Feelin
saying you know what I want to I want to
get my legislative agenda done this time, and we just
we can't do this again. And so when we head

(01:33):
to the Republican caucus in about three weeks or so,
I think you're going to see some energy behind replacing
the speaker that maybe is unexpected, or maybe Dave Feelin
doesn't anticipate.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
You know, when you said he has eleven Republican supporters,
that surprised me a little bit because I know there
was a real purge of Rhinos like Dave Feelin from
from the Texas House, but clearly there are still some
that are there.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Well, you got to understand people, people really cling to power,
and the people who think that now I'm safe. I
don't need to worry about a primary. People who've been
in the Texas House for way too long are clinging
to the authority and power that they have, as you know,
chairs and vice chairs under the Feeling administration. And so
this is some people like to learn things the hard way,

(02:19):
and they certainly will. Well is that true? That is
very true, sir. There are people who are in many
cases are unteachable. So what is it about this issue
the Daide Feeling just can't get behind. If he would
just get behind it, he probably could have avoided all this,
including almost getting primary.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
You mean school choice?

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yes, yeah, So it's school choices is not the disease
for Daid Feeling, it's a symptom. It's that Dade Feeling's
leadership in the Texas House is completely dependent now upon
a complete the complete support of the Democrats in the
Texas House. So when he goes to county's numbers, the

(03:03):
Democrats are basically his base now. And so it's it's
not just a school choice. It's the same reason we
didn't get any election integrity bills passed in the previous legislature.
It's the same reason that you see red flag laws
come up in the legislature again, over and over again,
the same reason you see sports gambling and casino gambling

(03:24):
coming up, yes, and yet over and over again, despite
the fact that we have an actual Republican Party platform
item against sports gambling casino gambling. The Democrats want it.
They want to grow government, and date feeling is their
way to do that.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
All right, Mitchelle, let me ask you one last thing
about date feeling, and that what is it about that
position of the House, the speaker of the House, that
is so powerful that you're willing to make a deal
with the devil in order to try to keep it.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
It's it's purely about money. So if you look at
the chairs and vice chairs in the in the Texas House,
they're able to raise about four or five times as
much as the regular member because of their ability to
control what comes in and out of their committees. It's
the same thing for the speaker. The speaker raises as
much as i'll call it a statewide official. When he's

(04:13):
out raising money and he says, oh, well, you know what,
I'm doing this for you, This is all for you,
and he used he dispenses political campaign funds in order
to gain loyalty. The problem. The problem is that the
speakership in the Texas House was never intended to be
that powerful. Is intended to be a servant position that
generally people don't serve more than one term. In the

(04:35):
last twenty or thirty years, the novelty is that we've
taken a speaker ad made it an inordinately powerful position.
We need to reform that job, perform the Texas House,
and we're well on our way to doing that now.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
All right, sir, thank you appreciate your time. This morning.
It's former Ken Paxton, defense Attorney Texas House District sixty
five elect Mitch Little