The present state of Republican politics in Texas is such a clusterfuck it's not much of an exaggeration to say it makes the United States House of Representatives' GOP majority look like a picture of comity. Unfortunately with so much else going on nationally and globally we've been unable to cover it as regularly as we might have. Getting up to speed is even harder.
The broadest contour is this: State House Speaker Dade Phelan and Lt Governor Dan Patrick (in his capacity as president of the State Senate) are locked in a full blown civil war. A lot, but not all of it, has to do with Phelan's caucus joining Dems to impeach Patrick's ally, the deeply corrupt and Picasso-faced Attorney General Ken Paxton. So overwhelming was the vote that even if all 60 Dems hadn't shown up it still wouldn't have been close as Republicans voted 60 to 23 to impeach. Then the state Senate acquitted Pax with only two Republicans joining Dems voting to convict.
Then there's this other shitshow with the chief of a major PAC linked to Patrick, Paxton, and other big time Republicans hosting Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes at his company offices last month, something even fucking Kyle Rittenhouse didn't want anything to do with. Plus there's this school vouchers mess where Phelan is dragging his ass on getting Governor Low Energy Greg Abbott and Patrick's plan passed in his chamber, no doubt chock full of batshit home schooling extremism.
Patrick and Paxton were already firing up the engines on a hardcore MAGA retribution machine to recruit primary challengers to the state House Republicans who voted to impeach the credibly accused white collar crime lord, and the Fuentes-PAC and school vouchers clusterfucks have only accelerated the engine. Among the villains stepping up is former Harris County Republican Party Chairman Jared Woodfill, a character you would say was too over-the-top if this story were fictional.
The Texas Tribune's Rob Downen reports that Woodfill has announced he's not only challenging state Representative Lacey Hull in a primary next spring, but that he'll immediately run for Speaker if elected. It literally says it in the invitation to a private campaign fundraiser for later this month.
The reason we call Woodfill the "Texas GOP version of Ghislaine Maxwell" is because in February Downen did a very long and very excellent piece investigating how Woodfill had knowingly sent young men – interns, lawyers, etc – to the ranch of his former law partner Paul Pressler, credibly accused of pederasty by multiple victims. Downen was able to demonstrate that not only had Woodfill known he had been supplying potential victims to a predator, but that the hardcore anti-LGBT activist Woodfill had perjured himself in a deposition in a suit brought against Pressler by a man who says he was molested by Pressler – also a Baptist church leader – as a teenager.
Woodfill's resume also includes challenging Harris County's drive-through voting option in the 2020 election, representing the 117 employees of Houston Methodist Hospital who sued to get out of having to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and defending the crazy asshole conservative activist who paid a former Houston Police Department captain to nearly kill an innocent HVAC repairman they thought was driving around in a truck full of fake ballots in the weeks before the 2020 election.
If you didn't click on those links we'll tell you who that crazy asshole is: Dr Steve Hotze. His name already appears in this article as the host of the fundraiser for Woodfill. Maybe we should've cropped out his address, but fuck it. Now you know where to send "Hot Twinks XXX" magazine.