


AUSTIN – Dan Patrick and Joe Straus are going to miss each other.

Not like two Army pals who go their separate ways once their enlistments end. And not like two aging prize fighters whose epic battles in the ring made each a better boxer.

No, the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the Texas House are going to miss each other like two people in an ugly divorce where both sides battle over the house, the car, Aunt Maude's collection of sterling silver and who gets custody of the dead dog's ashes.

So let's review the journey of Straus and Patrick from their beginnings as two Republicans who each presided over one chamber of the Legislature to their coming parting as the odd couple of Texas politics minus the warm and fuzzy Oscar-Felix hijinks.

Straus, a member of business-minded wing that once ruled the GOP, had been speaker of the often-fractious Texas House when the tea party conservative Patrick was elected lieutenant governor and Senate president in 2014. Patrick ousted fellow Republican David Dewhurst, who like Straus, preferred to run his chamber under the consensus-building model that dated back to Bill Hobby's days at the helm in the 1970s and '80s.

Patrick was the first elected lieutenant governor in more than 50 years to go from being a senator to running the chamber. (This doesn't count Bill Ratliff, who was elected by his Senate peers to fill a vacancy in the office.) And as a senator, Patrick sometimes chafed at having to forge consensus with outnumbered Democrats under a longstanding tradition that demanded a certain amount of interparty cooperation to get anything done.

So when Patrick took charge, he took charge. And his solid GOP Senate majority pretty much passed the conservative agenda he set before them.

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So it was left to Straus, whose leadership in the House depended on keeping together a coalition that included Democrats and fellow business-minded Republicans, to soften some of the hard edges that came with Patrick's brand of conservatives.

For awhile, the chambers' two Republican leaders were able to paper over some of their differences, at least publicly. But that was before The Bathroom Bill.

At Patrick's urging, the Senate passed the controversial measure that sought to limit the restroom options of transgender people. Backed by the generally conservative Texas business lobby, and by the almost-never-conservative House Democrats, Straus and his GOP leadership team checkmated Patrick at every twist and turn of the bathroom bill's journey in the House.

Straus won the fight, but after lawmakers when home last year, he announced he'd quit the war and retire after the November 2018 elections. But not before emptying the ammo in his weapon. And in politics, "ammo" is code for "money."

On Tuesday, Straus announced that he was cutting loose more than $1 million still in his campaign war chest to help "reasonable Republicans" survive the current election season. 

"I'm proud to support serious, thoughtful Republican legislators who provide strong leadership for Texas and for the Republican Party," said Straus, who's from San Antonio. "These legislators have served their constituents well, and I’m happy to help them share their accomplishments with voters.”

Perhaps not without a tiny bit of justification, Patrick took Straus' use of adjectives to describe his favored Republicans as a thumb in the eye if not a knife in the back.

The next day, Patrick's political operative used language normally reserved for Democrats to basically call Straus a turncoat to the modern-day Republican base.

"Primary voters know that ‘responsible Republican’ is just a code word for ‘liberal Republican’ and the smokescreen didn’t work," said Allen Blakemore, the lieutenant governor's strategist who went on to accuse Straus of "trivializing the protection of women's privacy" for killing the bathroom bill.

Now, even as Straus prepares to leave the Austin stage, Patrick is favored to win a second term in November. It remains unclear who will take the speaker's place in 2019, or whether Patrick's next political marriage will be as happy (or not) as the one that's coming to an end.


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