If neither Gov. Abbott or voucher opponents blink, how long will lawmakers stay in Austin?

AUSTIN — In 2021 when Democratic members paralyzed the Texas House by dashing off to Washington as they were about to be rolled by Republicans on a voting rights bill, Gov. Greg Abbott said that sooner or later the Democrats would come home.

And when they did, he promised he'd reconvene the Legislature and make sure the bill passed. He proved to be right.

Abbott, a Republican now in his third term, earlier this year dusted off his two-year-old playbook as he vowed to "call special session after special session" when the House and Senate were at loggerheads over how to structure the $17 billion property tax that the governor and top legislative leaders all said they wanted. And again, Abbott's tactic worked and all sides came to an agreement.

Which brings us to yet another special session now ongoing, but on another topic, and again the House and Senate are singing from different hymn books. And that could well mean that Abbott will run his familiar play yet again. In this iteration, not all of the Republicans in the House are on board — not even at the 35,000-foot level — with what the governor is demanding that they pass.

Abbott is investing his considerable political capital in the effort to pass what he and like-minded supporters are calling a school choice bill that would effectively allow tax dollars to help offset the cost of K-12 private school.

The GOP-run Senate has already passed what the governor wants. Nearly all of the outnumbered House Democrats, who have adopted the less benign-sounding slogan "voucher scam," are doing all they can to bottle it up in the lower chamber, and because a couple of dozen Republican members aren't exactly fans of siphoning money from their local school districts, it doesn't appear the votes are there to pass it.

In addition to the "special session after special session" promise, Abbott is brandishing another pretty blunt weapon. There's a ton of unspent money in the state treasury, and much of it is more or less promised for sundry education initiatives like generous pay raises for public school teachers. But because the agendas of any special legislative session are set solely by the governor, Abbott is telling anyone who'll listen that he's not allowing lawmakers to allocate that money until he gets his school choice bill.

On Thursday, the chairman of the House Public Education Committee, Killeen Republican Brad Buckley, filed sweeping legislation that includes a school choice component. On its face, that should please Abbott and the corps of deep-pocket conservative donors who are helping underwrite the PR campaign designed to spur a groundswell of grassroots support for school choice.

But Buckley signaled that two can play Abbott's game. He told reporter that his measure, House Bill 1, isn't going anywhere until the governor gives ground on the other education priorities.

“We can’t do anything until he expands the call,” Buckley said.

But because the bill includes many of the features — like more money for special education, reading instruction, virtual learning and early childhood education — that a broad swath of House members from both parties support, it might present an opportunity for both Republican voucher skeptics and Abbott to blink simultaneously.

And if enough of those Republican lawmakers do blink, that leaves House Democrats, who have limited clout in the chamber where they have just 67 of the 150 seats, without the cross-party alliance they need to keep vouchers at bay.

But if the GOP holdouts, nearly all from rural districts where private schools are all but nonexistent, continue to hold firm, then look for the governor to once more invoke the "special session after special session" mantra.

The present 30-day special session ends Nov. 8. If Abbott calls another immediately after that, lawmakers would be looking at spending the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving in the Texas Capitol. No deal after that, they'll be legislating in the shadows of the giant Christmas trees that traditionally stand in in the center aisle of both the House and Senate chambers.

John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at jmoritz@gannett.com and follow him on X, formerly called Twitter, @JohnnieMo.

Is the Texas Legislature bucking tradition and now taking political cues from Washington?

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Why Gov. Abbott will 'call special session after special session'