My oldest child is very active and has some friends who work on staff in the Texas legis. There is some speculation that the Texas Speaker put Briscoe Cain in charge of the voter suppression efforts because everyone knows that Cain is an idiot and he would screw it up. This is some merit to this theory.
In his first term in the Texas House, Cain was ranked at the worst member of the Legislature in part due to his stupidity
https://twitter.com/4AnimalLife/status/1399237938127507457
Normally, Texas Monthly excludes freshman membesr of the Texas legis but Briscoe was so stupid that they waived this policy
https://progresstexas.org/blog/republican-briscoe-cain-over-his-head
Named “Worst Legislator” by Texas Monthly
Since he stepped foot in the Texas Capitol, the third-term Republican has made a name for himself — and not a good one. After his first session, Texas Monthly named Cain one of the Worst Legislators of 2017, even though the magazine usually excludes freshmen from the list but when the magazine asked legislators to name their worst - there was bipartisan consensus on Cain. The (dis)honor cited Cain as the sole vote against excusing a legislator’s absence for a serious illness, and after that, he almost eliminated funding for terminally ill Texans because he thought “palliative care” meant “death panels.”
In 2019 Briscoe went after Dr. John Zerwas who was a decent member of the Legis on death panels Zerwas destroyed Briscoe so bad that it was funny
https://twitter.com/ShastaMchardy/status/1399231475392860166
Zerwas was one of the reasonable GOP members of the Texas legis and destroyed Briscoe
Next, Briscoe evidently volunteered to represent the former guy in the Penn. lawsuit but his offer of help was evidently rejected. It is amusing that even the former guy's legal team knew that Cain was a joke
https://twitter.com/kellylmiller/status/1399211892829155333
As a chairman, Briscoe has been so inept that he had to delete the claim that he was an expert in parlimentary procedure
https://progresstexas.org/blog/republican-briscoe-cain-over-his-head
In over his head: At the hearing for House Bill 6, Cain screwed up the proceedings in more ways than one.
When legislators present a bill in their own committee, they usually let the Vice-Chair run the hearing. And while Cain did hand over control to Vice-Chair Jessica González, he broke procedure and took back control after she tried to recognize Rep. Nicole Collier, Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, for questions. In other words, Cain shut down the voices of two women of color because he didn’t like the questions they were asking about his voter suppression bill.
Immediately after, Cain recessed the hearing to stop his peers from questioning him further. Except he forgot to recess to a specific time, so under parliamentary rules, the hearing was terminated instead of recessed - everything had to be rescheduled for another day. That meant that over 200 Texans who had travelled across the state to testify against HB 6 were forced to leave.
And that “parliamentary guru” nickname? Cain removed it from his Twitter bio after Texans pointed out his total lack of any leadership skills during the hearing.
https://twitter.com/ProgressTX/status/1375507127159037953
Finally, this exchange with State Rep. Anchia was so bad that it made me laugh
https://twitter.com/RafaelAnchia/status/1390494633579384832
The Democrats were lucky that Briscoe Cain was the chair of this committee and that he screwed things up so badly that the Texas Democrats were able to kill this voter suppression bill. Now there will be a chance to really go after the terms of the next bill and we can hope that Briscoe remains the chair of this committee
