Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen Has Plans to Attack Fellow Republicans

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Jul 30, 2019

Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen is being accused of conspiring against Republican colleagues in 2020.

Michael Quinn Sullivan, the Executive Director of Empower Texans, claims Bonnen is trying to derail the campaigns of 10 members of the Texas GOP.

If true, this rumor could potentially hurt Bonnen’s reputation during the 2020 elections and into the 2021 legislative session.

The Texas Tribune reports that Sullivan and Bonnen met up after the 2019 legislative session.

At this meeting, Bonnen offered to extend an olive branch to Sullivan but with several conditions, all which the Tribune reported:

“He [Sullivan] said Bonnen offered to give long-denied House media credentials to Sullivan’s Texas Scorecard writers “if we would lay off our criticism of the legislative session, not spend money from our affiliated PACs against certain Republicans, and — most shockingly — go after a list of other Republicans in the 2020 primary elections.”

State Representative Dustin Burrows, the head of the House Republican Caucus, was present at this meeting as well. As Bonnen left the room, Burrows read off a list of the Republicans that needed to be targeted:

Steve Allison of San Antonio, Trent Ashby of Lufkin, Ernest Bailes of Shepherd, Travis Clardy of Nacogdoches, Drew Darby of San Angelo, Kyle Kacal and John Raney of College Station, Stan Lambert of Abilene, Tan Parker of Flower Mound and Phil Stephenson of Wharton.

Sullivan claims that he sent Bonnen and Burrows a letter “unequivocally rejecting” the deal and he published Bonnen’s reply which refuted Sullivan’s claims about Bonnen: “No offer was made to you of any kind, and thus, there is nothing for you or anyone associated with you to ‘reject,’” Bonnen wrote.

Like most conservative activists in Texas, Sullivan has been an outspoken critic of Bonnen throughout the 2019 legislative session. And for good reason.

One of the most important pieces of conservative legislation—constitutional carry—was killed during the 2019 session. This left many gun rights activists and their grassroots conservative allies angry.

With Texas becoming more competitive after the 2018 Senate elections, Republicans must start actually delivering results to their constituents.

If they don’t, they could see Democrats continue to gain ground.