In November 2010, as he was readying for his second term as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, Joe Straus invited Midland oilman Tim Dunn to breakfast. It was an attempt, after a bruising election season, to extend an olive branch. Dunn had helped bankroll the tea party surge in Texas, and an organization he started, Empower Texans, had attacked Democrats and participated in rallies across the state protesting property taxes and excessive government spending. Straus, a San Antonio businessman from a well-off Republican family, had been chosen as Speaker in January 2009 by a coalition that comprised GOP fiscal conservatives like himself and all the chamber’s Democrats.
But in the 2010 election, the Democrats lost 24 seats. Dunn, in other words, had done much to shrink the Speaker’s base of support. Nevertheless, Straus regarded himself as fiscally responsible and thought he and Dunn might find common ground on that subject.
With plates of eggs before them, Dunn and Straus sat at a table in the Speaker’s Conference Room, surrounded by dark pecan paneling, Audubon prints, and photographs of Straus family members posing with George H. W. Bush (a friend of Straus’s mother) and U.S. senator John Tower. Dunn never lifted his fork. He didn’t seem interested in hearing what the Speaker had to say. But he did have an agenda. He demanded that Straus remove a significant number of committee chairs and replace them with tea party activists supported by Empower Texans. Straus refused. Then the conversation moved on to evangelical social policy, and, according to Straus insiders, Dunn astonished Straus, who is Jewish, by saying that only Christians should be in leadership positions.