Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick takes aim at two Republicans who crossed his path.

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Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s pugnacious leadership style was on display this month when he publicly targeted two Republican colleagues who crossed his path by sending an early message in this year’s legislative session that anyone – friend or foe – would stand up for him. way, will face his wrath.

State Rep. Steve Toth, a fellow Conservative from The Woodlands, learned that lesson earlier this month when Patrick unleashed a vigorous attack against him in the form of numerous press releases from his campaign that were sent to news organizations and posted on social media. Patrick criticized Toth for comments he reportedly made, suggesting the Senate shares blame for the Legislature not passing a bill that would have banned medical care and surgery for gender reassigned children. Patrick denounced Toth as a “fraudster” who used misdirection and a revisionist story to put the blame on the Senate, which Patrick leads.

A few days later, Patrick rekindled an old feud when he took to Twitter and essentially demanded that several companies and organizations drop former state Rep. Chris Paddy as their lobbyist. Patrick has been waging a vendetta against Republican Marshall since 2021, when the Senate clashed with the House of Representatives over the political backlash against the power outage. At the time, Paddy chaired the influential House State Committee, which was the main clearinghouse for network reforms.

Conflicts with Toth and Paddy underscore Patrick’s aggressive start to his third term overseeing a state Senate with a GOP majority on his side like never before.

“This is Patrick the boxer to the fullest,” said Brandon Rottinghouse, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, adding that Patrick is “now at the height of his power” and making an impact. “He runs the Senate as effectively and without fear as any lieutenant governor since Bob Bullock,” a prominent Democratic lieutenant governor who served in the 1990s. “For me, that’s what he wants to complete through the rotunda.”

Patrick, who led the Senate for eight years, used his power as lieutenant governor to push Texas politics in a more socially conservative direction.

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The most outspoken of the “big three” government officials — the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House of Representatives — Patrick has not been shy about bending his arms or using public pressure to get other government officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, to agree in the past. with your plans. In the past, he has removed leadership positions from Republican senators for refusing to agree with his priorities, helping to create an environment in which he has tremendous control over Senate legislation and rarely faces dissent.

But much of his anger has been centered on the members of the House, a lower house that Patrick sees as not being conservative enough and that sometimes gets in the way of his priorities.

His recent feud with Thoth is striking in that they are two sides of the same ideological coin. Thoth is one of the most socially conservative legislators in the Legislature, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, and a common favorite of grassroots conservatives. In this session, he submitted two bills to prohibit childcare during the transitional period.

He in an interview did not want to be on the bad side of Patrick and insisted that it was all a misunderstanding.

“He’s a fucking rock star,” Toth said of Patrick. “Who in the House supports him more than me?”

The trouble began when the conservative website Texas Scorecard published an article saying that Toth accused the Senate of “killing” such legislation, which is a top priority for the Texas Republican Party. The website says Thoth made these comments in a private meeting that was secretly recorded.

“It came from the Senate ridiculously late and they knew we were going to be in trouble,” Toth said. “There’s a lot of blame to share in this case.”

A day later, Patrick’s campaign issued a press release denying Toth’s “irrational allegations”. The press release detailed when the Senate pushed through the transitional childcare ban bill and how House bills on the same issue stalled in the lower house.

“Rep. Thoth has a reputation for blaming others for hiding his shortcomings in passing his bills,” Patrick said in a statement. “Rep. Thoth’s groundless accusations and his misplaced guilt have robbed him of all credibility.”

He said his comments were taken out of context. He said he explains the difficulties lawmakers face in getting through the legislative process and does not blame the Senate or Patrick for the bill’s death. He said the conservative website was trying to drive a wedge between conservative lawmakers, who were naturally on the same side.

In the recording, Toth said that the Big Three leaders could do more to address the issue and criticized Abbott for not putting the issue on the agenda during the three special sessions he convened in 2021. considered at special meetings.

“None of them wanted it,” Toth said on the recording.

Thoth’s explanation did not calm Patrick, who issued another press release calling Thoth a fraud. Patrick did not respond to Thoth’s request for a meeting to clarify the situation.

On Thursday, Patrick again attacked Toth in a statement to The Texas Tribune, saying that Toth’s words were not taken out of context and misled the group he spoke to about the Senate’s intentions.

“He continues to ignore the truth and has not publicly apologized for blaming the Senate. He knows we wanted to put this law on the governor’s table,” Patrick said.

Resentment becomes more personal

Patrick’s dispute with Paddy dates back to 2021, when Paddy was a key player in the political response to the network failure as chairman of the House State Committee. Patrick went to great lengths to try to cancel billions in wholesale electricity payments during the winter storm that caused the disaster, but the House of Representatives resisted the idea, known as repricing, in favor of a more measured approach. Along the way, Patrick accused the leadership of the House of Representatives, including Paddy, of siding with “big business” rather than the average Texan.

Patrick never got the price revalued, a rare major loss for the all-powerful leader of the Senate.

But Patrick’s grudge against Paddy became even more personal. Later that year, Patrick accused Paddy of misleading government regulators about the bill’s intent to help energy companies that had to gobble up huge prices from gas suppliers during the grid crisis. Patrick said that Paddy was “disingenuous throughout the legislative process and beyond.” He also publicly suggested that Paddy, who has since announced that he will not run for a second term, is preparing to take “a high-paying position in the same power industry that would benefit from his position” in the bill.

Paddy really became an electric power lobbyist, signing contracts with clients like Vistra, an Irving-based power company, after finding a way around the ethics law that had previously ensnared him. When the news came to light late last year, Patrick reiterated his criticism of Paddy, stating on Twitter that “Vistra’s management and shareholders should know that he has lost confidence and is not welcome in my office.”

In his last tweet this week, Patrick tagged six clients of Paddy’s lobby and said he hopes they “know he is not trusted and not welcome in my office due to his hypocritical and unprofessional behavior in the last online session” .

Paddy declined to comment on Patrick’s latest assault. So did Vistra, the company whose hiring of Paddy seems to have angered Patrick the most.

As of Thursday, reports from the Texas Ethics Commission showed that Paddy was still registered to lobby for all of the clients Patrick singled out.

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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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