Bonnen’s ethical lapse left him little choice for his political future

Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen doesn’t have many defenders these days — and it’s easy to see why.

His decision Tuesday to retire at the end of his 12th House term rather than seek re-election is probably the right one, but it’s also one that may serve his selfinterest in some ways, allowing him to serve another year in office and perhaps salvage some of his legacy.

“Historically, when speakers of the House are forcibly removed from office, it’s because they’ve had ethical lapses or lost the trust of the House,” observes Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston.

The Angleton Republican has managed to do both during his first year as speaker.

The “Bonnghazi” scandal — to summarize — centers on a meeting that Bonnen had in June with right-wing activist Michael Quinn Sullivan that was also attended by state Rep. Dustin Burrows, then the chair of the House GOP caucus. In July, Sullivan alleged that Bonnen had made a “quid pro quo” offer during the course of the meeting, as well as derogatory comments about several Democratic freshmen that Republicans hope to unseat in 2020, including Jon Rosenthal of Houston.

To be specific, Sullivan alleged that Bonnen was hoping to enlist his support in targeting 10 fellow Republican legislators in next year’s primary elections — and that he offered media credentials, in exchange, to the bloggers who toil for Empower Texans, Sullivan’s conservative advocacy group. And after Bonnen scoffed at this claim, Sullivan said that he could prove it, if necessary, because he had secretly recorded the conversation.

This was all hard to believe. It was also surprising that Bonnen had agreed to meet with Sullivan in the first place. His predecessor as speaker, the centrist Joe Straus, had little time for such gadflies. And Bonnen seems to feel the same way. During the 2019 session, Bonnen pleasantly surprised observers on both sides of the aisle who had been worried about the mischief right-wing activists

would make, via their intermediaries in the House Freedom Caucus, under a new speaker.

Still, Bonnen took the meeting. Last week, that audio was released to the public. And the result is one of the most abrupt reversals of fortune any Republican leader has experienced in recent memory. Sullivan wasn’t exaggerating. In addition to everything else, Bonnen expressed a desire to make life miserable for city and county officials across the state, as part of the Texas GOP’s ongoing and inexplicable war on local control.

It’s possible that Bonnen, who was first elected to the Legislature at age 24, might have survived the scandal. With the legislature out of session, there is apparently no way to remove Bonnen from the speaker’s office. But his support was fading.

More than half of the members of the chamber’s GOP caucus withdrew their support for him as speaker after the audio’s release, and some called for his immediate resignation.

“It is clear that trust and confidence in the speaker has significantly eroded among our membership, and the matter has both damaged the reputation of the House and relationships among individual members,” said a joint statement from state Reps. Dan Huberty of Houston, Four Price of Amarillo, Lyle Larson of San Antonio, Chris Paddie of Marshall and John Frullo of Lubbock.

That statement was significant, in part, because its authors are among the most highly regarded members of the 83-member GOP caucus. For such colleagues to withdraw support from the embattled speaker could easily have influenced his own calculations.

Bonnen himself suggested as much on Tuesday.

“After much prayer, consultation, and thoughtful consideration with my family, it is clear that I can no longer seek re-election as State Representative of District 25, and subsequently, as Speaker of the House,” Bonnen said in a written statement.

He went on to thank the 43 Republican colleagues

who had helped him reach this conclusion, and appended a list of their names.

Bonnen lost an opportunity to build on the legislative successes of the 2019 session, including a major school finance reform package, and put Texas on a sound course for years to come. And his troubles are not over, as he’s the subject of a Texas Rangers investigation into his conduct that will be turned over to both the Legislature and the Brazoria County district attorney.

To Rottinghaus’s point, Bonnen has lost the trust of many of his colleagues as a result of the ethical lapses he committed during the meeting with Sullivan, and since then.

But it was an ethical lapse on the speaker’s part to meet with an activist such as Sullivan in the first place, and it’s telling that the Republicans who have lost confidence in Bonnen haven’t put it that way.

There are a lot of voters who want new leadership in the Texas House, too, and may remember such things in 2020.