education, and evaluation and re-authorization of the State Bar of Texas and the State Board of Law Examiners. Dunnam was elected as the leader of the House Democratic Caucus from 2003-2011. As the first leader of a Democratic minority since Reconstruction, Dunnam was charged with shepherding a demoralized caucus through a "highly partisan House." Even observers who disagreed with his tactics continued to recognize his abilities as a legislator. "In mastery of the legislative arts," Texas Monthly noted in moving Dunnam from the best to worst list, he "has few peers and fewer superiors." In the aftermath of the November 2008 elections in which House Democrats won 74 seats (just 2 shy of a majority), Dunnam played a pivotal role in ousting Tom Craddick as Speaker of the House and replacing him with Joe Straus. In a late November 2008 meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, Dunnam set in motion a series of events that would ultimately remove Craddick from power. He "pulled a blank sheet of paper out of his pocket, signed it and declared he'd publicly release his pledge to oppose Craddick whether the group signed the pledge or not." This convinced sixty-one of the House Democrats to sign the one-line pledge that night, while three more signed over the next two days. The list, kept "secret until Craddick's GOP opposition had gelled," was sealed in an envelope and kept "locked in the desk of a trusted Democratic operative." When it was released that Straus was the pick of a small group of Republicans known as the ABC's (for "Anybody But Craddick"), who publicly opposed Craddick's authoritarian reign over the House, Straus sent a consultant to retrieve the Dunnam list, and with the 13 pledges he had received from House Republicans, the Democrats' pledges put him well over the 76 votes he needed to win the speakership. He was appointed to several committees in his career, including the Texas Supreme Court Rules Advisory Committee, 1998-2003, the Texas Sunset Advisory Committee, 2001-2005, House Select Committee on Judicial Interpretation of Law, and the House Committee for Oversight of Family Law and Texas Family Code. He served as Chair of the Interim Committee on Charter Schools, the Select Committee on Federal Economic Stabilization Funding, and as Vice-Chair of the Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence. Dunnam lost his bid for re-election in November 2010, one of the "casualties of the Republican blood bath"