AUSTIN (Nexstar) -- Two of the lawmakers running to unseat Dade Phelan as Speaker of the Texas House presented a united front on Friday, telling a crowd at the Texas Tribune Festival they will both work to enact sweeping procedural changes and prioritize more conservative legislation in an already deeply-conservative chamber.
“It's time for change in the Texas House, and not little change. It's time for big change," said Dr. Tom Oliverson, a Cypress Republican and candidate for speaker.
Oliverson and Stephenville Republican Shelby Slawson were the first two challengers to announce their bid for the speakership. Both have criticized Speaker Dade Phelan, their former ally, of inadequately championing conservative priorities in the chamber.
Oliverson, an anesthesiologist, carried the bill to ban gender transition surgery for minors, a conservative priority that ostracized him among House Democrats.
Shelby Slawson earned conservative credentials for carrying the state's major abortion ban as a first-term member.
Mansfield Republican David Cook also announced his run for Speaker this week, though he declined an invitation to participate in the Tribune's panel. Nexstar extended him an interview invite, which his team also declined, explaining he will spend his time speaking with members one-on-one.
Both candidates support appointing only Republicans to chair committees -- a break from longstanding tradition to name members of both the majority and minority parties to lead committees. Oliverson said this practice is outdated and “Texas is essentially the last of a dying breed on this.”
Having Republicans as committee chairs does not mean the minority party would be silenced, Slawson said.
“It’s incumbent upon us to model a leadership style that the majority is respecting of the minority and the voices are still heard in the chamber,” Slawson said.
Slawson and Oliverson were also in agreement that the impeachment process was mishandled. They both echoed similar sentiments that the process was rushed.
“I know that nobody, other than the people directly involved, had any knowledge that this was going to happen,” Oliverson said. “We were all just literally dumb struck on the House floor. It was as if an atom bomb had just dropped out of space and just hit us right squarely on the House.”
“It’s a frustration throughout the House chamber that we have been conscripted into a war with the other chamber that our voters didn’t send us to be a part of,” Slawson said. “Not a single time on a doorstep did anybody tell me ‘what I really want you to do is go pick fights with the lieutenant governor and the senate, that’d be great.’”
Phelan is intent on keeping the gavel and has enlisted top talent to strategize. Former Governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is joining his office as a senior advisor. At the festival Thursday, Perry said he hopes to maintain decency and bipartisanship.
"He's an honest and fair broker," Perry said of Phelan. "We can get on that House or Senate floor and we can cuss and discuss and be passionate about what we believe in, but at the end of the day, we're human beings."
Phelan will need 75 votes to maintain the gavel. That path may involve keeping the 64 Democrats united behind him -- Oliverson said Phelan does not have a pathway to keeping a majority of the Republicans.
“It has been the case in the past, and it can be the case again, that we move from mutually assured destruction to mutual respect and cooperation,” Oliverson said. “But it’s going to take a change in leadership to get there. You’re not going to be able to get there with the same two people.”
