Dallas Progress at the Texas House

I went to Austin to celebrate the swearing in of Barbara Mallory Caraway for House District 110.

As we all know by now, Craddick won his bid to continue as Speaker of the House by a 121-27 vote.

While I give kudos to all 27 courageous voters, I really appreciate two reps: Barbara Mallory Caraway of Dallas and Borris Miles of Houston.

These two reps are brand new to the House. As you may know, both fought entrenched incumbents, and WON. I helped Barbara in her race and have rooted for Borris from afar.

Both are starting from zero and as new reps have no pull in the Lege. But yet they followed their campaign promises to not "go along to get along" even though they knew they would lose this battle. I'm sure there are other rookies that voted no, so I want to give them a special shout as well.

I don’t know what burned me up the most, water carriers like Will Hartnett (who killed any chance for Pitts to win with his amendment to temporarily withhold ballot stats), or the dems that sold out their districts to keep cushy chairmanships. Or the guy who compared delayed balloting records to the Alamo. Okay dude, whatever.

Here is the entire list of 27 courageous reps:

Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas
Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth
Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio
Garnet Coleman, D-Houston
Yvonne Davis, D-Dallas
Jim Dunnam, D-Waco
Craig Eiland, D-Galveston
Juan Escobar, D-Kingsville
Joe Farias, D-San Antonio
Jessica Farrar, D-Houston
Pete Gallego, D-Alpine
Juan M. Garcia, D-Corpus Christi
Ana Hernandez, D-Houston
Abel Herrero, D-Corpus Christi
Terri Hodge, D-Dallas
David Leibowitz, D-San Antonio
Barbara Mallory Caraway, D-Dallas
Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio
Borris Miles, D-Houston
Paul Moreno, D-El Paso
Rick Noriega, D-Houston
Dora Olivo, D-Rosenberg
Solomon Ortiz Jr., D-Corpus Christi
Richard Raymond, D-Laredo
Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin
Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston
Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth