My Legiscritter is in the Bottom Ten! You Go Drew Springer!

Texas Monthly brings us its biennial Best and Worst Legislators list. My own Drew Springer made the Bottom 10 list, and I will cite a bit:

Springer “is not smart enough to be a go-to for Dan Patrick or cagey enough to play the lobby,” said one lobbyist. So he’s stuck as a legislative bottom-feeder, pushing initiatives more influential senators wouldn’t touch. This session he targeted renewable-energy producers with punitive taxes. He tried to bar the children of undocumented migrants from attending public school, unless the federal government pays for them.

Unsurprising, and his head's gotten bigger moving from House to Senate. The rewnewables is especially stupid. His old House district is packed with them; hell, he can see the nighttime safety lights from multiple wind farms from his house in Muenster. 

And, the booting items from the calendar? Yeah, Springer likes to throw elbows for no reason, whether inside the Lege or not.

The non-education issue? Yeah, Springer explicitly said this was one of his top two or three priorities at a local town hall before the start of the session. Even other wingnuts don't generally talk so blatantly about such a clearly unconstitutional stance.

Springer was known as an "Abbott guy" when he was in the House, even if he was not explicitly a Dennis Bonnen guy, before Bonnen shot himself in the Mucus and got replaced by Dade "Dade" Phelan. But, "Abbott guys" are a minority in the Texas Senate. Springer hasn't totally dropped being an "Abbott guy," but he hasn't really become a "Patrick guy," either, from what I can see. Weirdly, getting back to education, I don't know exactly where he stands on vouchers. And, that's despite he and wife Lydia being dyed-in-the-wool Catholics. (That said, Conservative Cafeteria Catholics at times have a somewhat different take on these things than evangelical Protestants; sometimes the circle is still broken amongst the Religious Right.)

I think there are two added issues. His Senate district isn't totally rural, first, and as part of that, has a not-totally negligible Black population; as the Metromess continues to grow up I-35 and North Central, it will challenge him more. Second, he drew the short straw and has just a two-year term in a presidential election year that will boost Democrat turnout. Of course, that means Democraps have to get somebody to run; in my area in 2022, Burgess for Congress, Springer for state Senate and David Spiller for state House were all unopposed, and Burgess was the only one to face even a Libertarian. I doubt he'll face Shelly Luther again in a primary, but somebody may challenge him from the right if recruited by Goeb.