The Texas Tribune gives a skeptical appraisal of what is about to begin next next when the 83rd Session of the Texas Legislature convenes.
The normal business of politics will be briefly interrupted by the temporary need for some governing to happen.
In civics textbooks, governing is the thing. Politics is in there, certainly, but the elections have a beginning and an end. The Legislature meets every two years for 140 days. A period of civic peace and prosperity follows for six or seven months. Birds sing. The sun shines. Children laugh and play. Late in the year, candidates file for March primaries. When that’s over, another period of relative calm would fall on Texas, ending around Labor Day, when candidates fire up their general election campaigns. The November elections would start the cycle all over again, regular as weather.
Back here in real life, the elections never stop. Neither does the electioneering. It’s a two-year political season, interrupted by five months of fierce legislating — a bit of which has as much to do with politics and elections as with governing the state.
The interruption started last month with the beginning of a ban on raising campaign contributions during a legislative session, and runs until June. Not only can elected state officials not raise money during a session, they can’t really campaign, and they must cross a parliamentary minefield, knowing that what happens between now and Memorial Day — the end of the session — could bite them in 2014, when the next elections take place.
Once the session starts next week and the politics of the speaker’s race ends, the politicos become lawmakers.
The Pollyannaish civics books are right, in part: the real consequences come during the governing part that starts next week. Everything else is just the fight to get into the building.
