After the Texas governor, the two most powerful state positions are the speaker of the House of Representatives, and the lieutenant governor, who presides over the Senate.
Yet, you couldn’t tell it by the pay scale. The governor is paid $150,000 a year. The speaker and lieutenant governor get less than 5 percent that much: $7,200.
That’s the same annual salary as the other 149 House members and 31 senators over whom they preside.
Obviously, that doesn’t keep people from seeking the jobs and during the past half-century, from trying to hang onto it once they’ve got it.
The speaker is chosen by the other House members. It is a contest of popularity, respect and power. It takes 76 of the 150 votes in the House to win. The term is two years.
The lieutenant governor, by contrast, is chosen by Texas voters every four years. Unless there’s a mid-term vacancy — as happened in late 2000 when Gov. George W. Bush won the presidency and Lt. Gov. Rick Perry moved up — the senators have no say over who it will be.
On the other hand, the senators do have a say on whether the lieutenant governor can indeed exercise the extensive powers he has.
Most of those powers are awarded not by the Texas constitution, which says that the lieutenant governor shall preside over the Senate, but by the rules senators pass at the outset of each regular session every two years.
They award to the lieutenant governor powers including appointing committees and their chairpersons, setting the Senate’s agenda by deciding which senators to recognize to present bills, assigning bills to committees, and appointing the senate’s members of the Legislative Budget Board.
If the lieutenant governor is too autocratic, the senators might decide to change the rules, and install their own internal leader or committees to make those decisions.
Until the 1970s, no House speaker had served more than two two-year terms, before moving on — sometimes to seek statewide office.
But since 1975, when Democrat Billy Clayton served the first of what became four terms — eight years — as speak, no speaker has served fewer than three terms.
Two factors in the 1970s contributed to speakers staying in those jobs for longer periods.
One is the growth of power at the state level — often fueled by the federal government passing rules, and pushing to the state government much of the money, and responsibility, to enforce them.
Another, perhaps oddly, was the switch in 1974 from two-year to four-year terms for major state officials such as governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.
The four-year terms meant that other offices were up for grabs half as often.
House speakers who previously would use their statewide name identification to seek other offices began to have fewer opportunities
At the same time, those speakers increasingly realized that their current office was significantly more powerful than most other statewide offices that might interest them.
Plus, as one of 150 House members, the only electorate they had to face was the one in their home legislative district — as long as they kept at least 76 House members happy enough, or intimidated enough, to vote them in again as speaker.
Incumbent Republican Speaker Joe Straus, now in his third term and pointed toward a fourth, will be challenged, as usual from the right wing of the Republican party.
The latest to announce his intention is freshman Rep. Scott Turner, R-Frisco. He’s a former pro defensive back, evangelical preacher and motivational speaker, who several years ago finished eighth in a special congressional election in California.
Usually, these challenges fade, as more legislators would rather throw in with the power-that-is than risk backing someone without much chance to win.
As for lieutenant governors, part of the reason that they tend not to move on is that only two jobs are more powerful and higher up the pecking order than their own: governor, or United States senator.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who was elected in 2002, had waited for years for a senate vacancy, or for Gov. Rick Perry to move on.
But Perry has hung on for what will be 14 years by the time he leaves office, and that considerably backed up the political ambition pipeline behind him.
So when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was retiring in 2012, mega-rich Dewhurst was in. He led in the first Republican primary, but lost in the runoff to now-Sen. Ted Cruz.
And so he’s running again to hang onto the lieutenant governor’s job. Republican primary opponents include Sen. Dan Patrick, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples.
The Democratic candidate is Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio.
The winner, like the House speaker, gets $7,200 a year.
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