The first two speaker races showed a tale of two outcomes: an opposition floor vote versus no opposition floor vote. The difference was huge.
The opposition floor vote in 2011 undermined establishment Kabuki Theater by authorizing a band of truth tellers. There were 15 truth tellers the first time, and they were potent. There could have been many more in 2013, but the vote never made it to the floor.
Conservative opposition eventually emerged in 2013, and did some good, but it was late to the party and weakened.
An opposition vote on the floor is worth its weight in gold for Texas policy. There are at least two ways to keep it from happening.
The obvious one is not to have a floor vote. That can be accomplished by backing down real speaker opposition or by planting friendly speaker opposition with a directive to back down at the end.
The other way to avoid an opposition vote is to have an “opposition” floor vote. This would be possible if an establishment-coordinated speaker challenge collected all of the conservative opposition. This kind of speaker candidate would probably want to avoid a floor vote, but even if the grassroots could force such a challenger into a floor vote, the inside chatter would still undermine the value of the exercise. Even 74 challenge votes of this kind would mean less than the 15 real opposition votes meant in 2011 because the establishment could claim to have orchestrated it.
The emergence of a real conviction conservative challenge guaranteeing joiners a floor vote, a clean conscience, and a kind of grassroots credibility that money can’t buy would be bad news for the Texas ruling class.