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Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen offered media access to Empower Texans, suggested it target certain Republicans, recording shows
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| Contributor | EastTexasDem |
| Last Edited | EastTexasDem Oct 17, 2019 11:38am |
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| Category | News |
| Author | Cassandra Pollock, Emma Platoff, Patrick Svitek |
| News Date | Tuesday, October 15, 2019 09:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | During a June conversation at the Texas Capitol, Republican House Speaker Dennis Bonnen urged hardline conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan to target members of their own party in the 2020 primaries and suggested he could get Sullivan’s group media access to the House floor, according to a secret recording of the conversation released Tuesday.
Bonnen could also be heard speaking disparagingly about multiple Democrats, calling one House member “vile” and suggesting that another’s “wife’s gonna be really pissed when she learns he’s gay.”
The 64-minute recording of Sullivan's June meeting with Bonnen and another top House Republican, then-GOP caucus chair Dustin Burrows, was posted on Sullivan's website and the website of WBAP, a talk radio station in Dallas on which Sullivan appeared Tuesday morning. The recording largely aligned with Sullivan's initial description of that June 12 meeting — and with what certain Republicans who listened to the audio before it was public had described.
While its release prompted immediate outcry from Democrats and silence from Republicans, Bonnen said in a statement that the audio makes clear he did nothing criminally wrong in the conversation, adding that the "House can finally move on." The Texas Rangers are investigating the matter at the request of the House General Investigating Committee.
Roughly nine minutes into the recording, after discussing Sullivan’s recent trip to Europe, Bonnen tells Sullivan he’s “trying to win in 2020 in November.”
“Is there any way that for 2020 we sort of say … let’s not spend millions of dollars fighting in primaries when we need to spend millions of dollars trying to win in November,” Bonnen says. “I wanted to see if we could try and figure that out. … If you need some primaries to fight in — I will leave and Dustin will tell you some we’d love if you fought in. Not that you need our permission.”
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